Google Hire Gets AI-Powered Recruitment Features

Google's Hire app is getting a few new artificial intelligence-powered features that aim to take some of the tedium out of the recruitment process.

First launched last year, Hire is a recruiting app for small and mid-sized businesses that integrates with G Suite apps like Gmail and Google Calendar. Since launching the app, Google found that recruiters commonly use "Ctrl+F" to search resumes for specific words, so the Web giant decided to automate that process with the help of AI. Now, Hire can automatically analyze the key terms in a job description and highlight them on resumes, including synonyms and acronyms.

Hire also now uses AI to ease scheduling woes by automatically suggesting an interviewer and the times they're available. If that interviewer declines the invitation or cancels at the last minute, Hire will suggest a replacement who is available.

"This means hiring teams can invest time in preparing for interviews and building relationships with candidates instead of scheduling rooms and checking calendars," Hire Product Manager Berit Hoffmann wrote in a Tuesday blog post.

Finally, if you've ever wasted time trying to locate someone's phone number or had to log notes at the end of each call, you'll appreciate this next feature. Hire now offers one-tap "click to call functionality" and automatically logs phone calls so everyone on the recruiting team can see who has already spoken with a candidate.

Google says that Hire can already help reduce the amount of time recruiters spend on common tasks like reviewing applications and scheduling interviews by up to 84 percent. These new features should make recruiting teams even more efficient.

"There's a huge opportunity for technology—and AI specifically—to help people work faster and therefore focus on uniquely human activities," Hoffmann wrote. "Ultimately, that's what Hire is all about, and the functionality we're adding today demonstrates our commitment to help companies focus on people and build their best teams."