Dive Brief:

• Software and recruiting firm Jobvite has acquired the artificial intelligence (AI) and data science team at Predictive Partner, it announced July 13; AI is an essential tool for talent acquisition professionals, it said.
• Predictive Partner CEO Morgan Llewellyn will serve as Jobvite's Chief Data Scientist. Llewellyn will lead a team utilizing AI through predictive analytics, automation, data science and machine learning and natural language processing, Jobvite stated. 
• The company also announced the launch of enhanced intelligent candidate matching to assist recruiters, and candidate engagement scoring capabilities to provide at-a-glance engagement metrics. "The addition of Morgan and the Predictive Partner team to our ranks will help our customers derive even more value from the Jobvite Talent Acquisition Suite," Aman Brar, CEO of Jobvite said in a statement. 

Dive Insight:

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the adoption of recruiting technology is speeding up, according to experts.

Some companies that weren't already using tools like job simulations, virtual assessments and video interviews implemented them when shifting to telework due to shelter-in-place orders. "A lot of the work that recruiters have been doing historically wasn't actually interviewing people," Kevin Parker, CEO of HireVue told HR Dive in a recent interview. "It was trying to schedule people, doing follow up phone calls, phone screens and things like that. When you can automate a lot of that process, the recruiter can really focus on people that are most qualified for the position."

Research has shown that integrating automation into HR processes can be cost effective. With automation, "HR organizations can reduce costs by 17% and operate with 26% fewer staff hours," according to an October 2019 report from the Hackett Group. HR organizations the report defined as "world-class" operate at 20% lower cost than organizations that are not digitally forward. 

Gartner's Top 10 Data and Analytics Technology Trends for 2020 report released June 22 predicted that by 2024, AI implementation will move away from the testing stage toward implementation at 75% of companies. As a result of the pandemic, optimization and natural language processing and machine learning proved their viability, according to Gartner.