Starting with an AI colleague, but initially only in the evenings and at weekends. That’s how Amphia Hospital went about it. Their AI colleague is now active around the clock: it handles the pre-screening of applicants and independently manages 80 per cent of the interviews via the careers website. Loes Gerards-Bruin, Senior Employer Branding Specialist at Amphia, explained in our webinar with Mees van Velzen (CEO of MrWork) the decisions they made along the way, what tasks they deliberately keep with recruiters, and what they learnt. Missed the webinar? Read the key insights here.
TLDR | Amphia Hospital started cautiously with an AI colleague: initially only for chats in the evenings and at weekends, so that the team could observe and make adjustments. The AI colleague is now active at all times, carrying out the pre-qualification of candidates who respond to recruitment campaigns and handling the majority of enquiries via the careers website itself. As a result, candidates always receive an immediate response and recruiters have more time for face-to-face interviews. Amphia made deliberate choices about what should be handled by humans: the AI colleague always forwards questions about diversity and inclusion, and enquiries from extremely hard-to-reach target groups, to a recruiter. Loes’ advice for anyone wanting to get started: identify the pain points in your current processes and test a solution first through a pilot.
Focusing on the candidate journey
At Amphia Hospital, the focus is not only on patients, but also on candidates. Because that’s the only way to fill all your vacancies. “It all starts with reaching and engaging your target audience. We do that with a story. A story that’s authentic and reflects real-life practice. Once you’ve sparked their interest, the next step is to get in touch. This needs to be as easy as possible for our target audience, but it must also remain feasible for us to respond to everyone,” explains Loes Gerards-Bruin, Senior Employer Branding Specialist at Amphia Hospital.
That was the sticking point: a large organisation like Amphia – with around 5,000 staff – receives a lot of enquiries from candidates and responses via recruitment campaigns. Candidates made good use of the chat widget on the careers site, but following up on these chats took up a lot of the two recruiters’ time.
This challenge is not unique to Amphia. The poll conducted during the webinar revealed that a third of candidates have to wait several days after applying before receiving an initial response from the recruitment team. During the webinar, Mees van Velzen, CEO at MrWork, explains why a prompt response is so important for the candidate experience: “The biggest frustration for candidates is having to wait for a response from the recruitment team. We see this happening virtually everywhere.”
Started cautiously, now always on
“When MrWork introduced their AI Hub to us, we discussed it straight away within the team. Could it be something for us? In any case, it fitted in well with the drive for innovation that characterises Amphia. And we saw the potential of such an AI colleague: candidates always receive an immediate response, and it saves our recruiters a lot of time. But it was also a bit nerve-wracking. That’s why we initially had the AI colleague handle only the chats outside office hours. That way, candidates would still get an immediate reply in the evenings and at weekends, whilst we could keep an eye on things for a while first,” says Loes.
The recruiters at Amphia soon realised that the AI colleague did not come at the expense of personal contact with candidates. Quite the opposite! In fact, it gave them more time for genuine conversations. Loes explains: “That’s why we now use our AI colleague for the pre-qualification of candidates who apply directly through our campaigns and for the majority of interviews via the careers website.”
Naturally, there have also been lessons learnt from deploying an AI colleague: “At the start, we spent a lot of time monitoring all the conversations. Sometimes we noticed that incorrect information was being shared, but that was because, for example, the information on our website was out of date. So you also get immediate feedback on what you need to work on. You can actually compare the implementation of an AI colleague to training a new colleague. You have to devote time and attention to that as well,” says Loes.
The result: candidates always receive an immediate response, and the AI colleague handles 80 per cent of enquiries via the careers website independently, leaving recruiters with more time for personal contact.
Staying in control by training your AI colleague
Amphia made deliberate choices regarding how their AI colleague operates. When should the AI agent hand over the conversation? How do we ensure a smooth integration with existing processes? “We have decided that questions about diversity and inclusion should always be handled by a recruiter. In addition, we have a few extremely hard-to-reach target groups. If they get in touch, we want to take over the conversation immediately ourselves. The AI colleague always forwards those kinds of conversations to our recruiters,” says Loes.
To ensure a smooth integration with existing processes, the link with the ATS (Jobylon) was crucial.
The next steps for Amphia
As well as utilising their AI colleague, Loes sees further opportunities for AI in recruitment: “Ultimately, it would be great if AI could assist with the selection of candidates. And, of course, we’re looking at GEO. How do we ensure that LLMs mention us? That’s an important topic on the recruitment agenda.”
Loes’s tip for getting started with AI? “Look at your current processes and, in particular, the pain points within them. Discuss with the team how you could solve these using smart technology, and then simply give it a go with a pilot. That’s the only way you’ll really see if it works for you.”
