Artificial Intelligence in Practice

19Unilever: Using Artificial Intelligence To Streamline Recruiting And Onboarding

International consumer goods manufacturer Unilever sells over 400 branded products in 190 countries. Worldwide, it has over 160,000¹ people, making it one of the world's largest employers.

With any company, people are the most valuable resource. To make sure they are enticing the right talent, Unilever deploys artificial intelligence (AI) solutions aimed at attracting, analyzing and ultimately selecting the best people to fit the thousands of roles it needs to fill each year.

What Problem Is Artificial Intelligence Helping To Solve?

Any recruiting process involves risk. Advertising for talent, screening applicants and onboarding new hires is an expensive and time-consuming process. It has to be done properly though, as hiring the wrong people can have expensive consequences and a damaging impact on business.

Recruiters have limited time available to them to search for the right candidates and once they've come up with a shortlist there is a narrow window of opportunity to make a decision on whether they are a good fit for the role.

In Unilever's case, when recruiting for their Future Leadership program, the company knew it had between four and six months to reduce a pool of 250,000 applicants from all around the word to fill 800 available positions.²

The costs don't end once the right person has been found for the job – according to the Society for Human Resource Management, the cost of training ...