Automate the talent acquisition process with IBM watsonx Orchestrate on AWS

This tutorial provides step-by-step guidance on how to set up the scenario described in the Talent Acquistion use case.

A recruitment process involves numerous steps, such as creating accurate job descriptions in an application tracking system, posting them to job sites, screening hundreds of resumes, tagging candidates for job roles, communicating with candidates, scheduling interviews, and more.

Users with builder permission can create the following skills in watsonx Orchestrate:

• Workday skills

  • Create a job requisition: Create a job requisition in Workday by adding necessary details to a form
  • View a job requisition: View job requisition details by providing the job requisition ID
  • Edit job description: Update a job description in Workday
  • Post a job: Post a job on job sites such as LinkedIn
  • Tag candidates to job requisition

• AWS skills

  • Extract information from resumes: Extracts relevant information from resumes by scanning all the resumes that are available on an Amazon S3 service instance, and stores resumes in Amazon S3 whenever a candidate applies for a job through various sources
  • Map candidates to job role: Maps candidates to job roles using information extracted from resumes

Someone with appropriate user permission can then use these skills to perform the required tasks using the watsonx Orchestrate console.

Prerequisites

Before starting this tutorial, ensure that you have met the following requirements:

• Access to watsonx Orchestrate with builder permission in order to develop skills
• Access to Workday
• An AWS account
• Automations in AWS: In this tutorial, you will use two AWS skills. Instructions for creating these skills in AWS are not provided in this tutorial, which is focused on watsonx Orchestrate and therefore does not cover creating automations in external systems. Some additional details on how AWS services can be used to build these automations are provided at relevant sections of the tutorial but for detailed steps on creating those automations, see the AWS documentation.

Step 1: Add pre-built Workday skills to watsonx Orchestrate

1. Log in to watsonx Orchestrate using your IBM ID.
2. Click the Add skills from the catalog tile. The Skill catalog page opens.
3. Click the Talent Acquisition Workday tile. (You can scroll or use the search field.)
4. In the search field, search for the Create Job Requisition tile. Click the tile to open the Talent Acquistion - Create Job Requisition window.
5. Click the Connect app button. Enter the details to establish connectivity with your Workday instance. When you are finished, click Connect app.
6. Confirm that the connectivity status now says Connected.
7. In the Create a job requisition tile, click Add skill. The tile updates to Added.

You have now successfully searched for a required pre-built skill, connected it to Workday, and added it to watsonx Orchestrate.

Step 2: Create and add custom AWS skills

There are two custom AWS skills used in this exercise:

• Extract information from resumes: This skill extracts relevant information from resumes by scanning all the resumes that are available on an Amazon S3 service instance. The resumes get stored in Amazon S3 whenever candidates apply for a job through various sources.
• Map candidates to job description: This skill will map the candidates to the job description using information that was extracted from resumes.

Note: As noted in the prerequisites, following are high-level details about how to build AWS automations but for full instructions, refer to the AWS documentation.

• All the resumes are stored in an Amazon S3 bucket.
• Processing a large number of resumes can be a time-consuming task; to invoke processing of resumes asynchronously, we have used the Amazon SQS service.
• Resume processing uses the AWS Lambda function. The AWS Lambda function uses the Amazon Textract and Amazon Comprehend services to extract information.
• The extracted information is saved as a list in S3 and a notification is sent to the user through the Amazon SNS service.
• Another AWS Lambda function uses the candidates list and job description to shortlist the top few candidates.

When the necessary automations are available, you will create an OpenAPI Specification to add skills to watsonx Orchestrate. See Adding skills from files to create skills.

Step 3: Run the talent acquisition demo on watsonx Orchestrate with Workday and AWS

These steps show you how to recreate the tasks that are shown in the talent acquisition demo, which is included following this tutorial.

1. Go to the watsonx Orchestrate home screen. In the chat bar, type create job requisition in workday. The Create a job requisition window opens.
2. Enter details in the required fields to create a new job requisition. When you have finished, click Apply. A status message displays stating that the request was successful. Make a note of the job requisition ID. You will use this number whenever you are asked to enter the job requisition ID in subsequent steps.
3. In the Select the next best action section, click Edit an existing job requisition.
4. Enter the job requisition ID, select a reason, and click Apply.
5. Edit each of the required fields and click Apply.
6. Click the View a job requisition tile. This skill enables you to view details of any existing job requisition in Workday.
7. Enter the job requisition ID and click Apply to view the existing job requisition.
8. In the Select the next best action section, click View a job description. Enter the job requisition ID that you saved when you created the job requisition, and click Apply.
9. In the Select the next best action section, click Add or update a job description. This will enable you to review and update the job description.
10. Update the Job Description Summary field and click Apply. A confirmation message is displayed.
11. In the Select the next best action section, click Post a job. The Post a job form opens.
12. Enter details for the job and click Apply. Note: This action posts the job on the selected hiring website.

Step 4: Use custom AWS skills to find job candidates

You will now use custom AWS skills to check for and review details of candidates who have applied for the job. These are the custom AWS skills mentioned in Step 2 and it is assumed that they have already been created.

1. Resumes for candidates who have applied are stored in Amazon S3, and the CV Extraction API skill will invoke AWS services to extract information from those resumes. In the chat bar, enter candidate details and skill extraction from resumes to trigger the skill. Note: This process can take 30 seconds or more to complete. Because the process can take some time, the system sends a notification email when it finishes.
2. To view a short list from all the candidates who applied for the job, type the skill name in the chat bar or select the Map candidates to Job Description skill tile and enter the job role. This is the job role that appears in the job description that you created and updated in previous steps. When you have finished, click Apply.
3. The short list of candidates is displayed. Review the candidates and their details.
4. Tag the candidates to specific job requisitions using the skill tile Tag a candidate for a specific job. Tagging enables you to qualify a candidate for the job requisition.
5. You can view the list of candidates that are tagged for a specific job requisition using the View all candidates by job requisition skill.

You have now completed the steps to implement the Talent Acquisition use case. You've used watsonx Orchestrate to transform your the talent acquisition process and are ready to increase your productivity, efficiency, and quality of hire. You can see how the combination of watsonx Orchestrate and AWS can improve the talent acquisition experience for both recruiter and candidates.

Summary and next steps

In this tutorial, you implemented the Talent Acquisition use case. You learned how to add both pre-built and custom skills and have seen how watsonx Orchestrate can help you automate your hiring process, saving time and increasing efficiency. By seamlessly integrating watsonx Orchestrate's digital labor capabilities with AWS services like Amazon S3, AWS Lambda, and others, your organization can automate repetitive tasks, improve workflow efficiency, and address business challenges.

Watsonx Orchestrate's pre-built skills for AWS services, integration with IBM App Connect, and the ability to import existing automations provide flexibility and easy-to-use processes. This partnership enables you to tap into AWS's renowned flexibility, security, and compliance features while leveraging the power of watsonx's advanced AI and machine learning capabilities.

To learn more about watsonx Orchestrate and the IBM's partnership with AWS, see the following resources:

• watsonx Orchestrate page for the latest information.
• watsonx Orchestrate case studies: Avid Solutions | Sport Clips Haircuts | FloCareer
• Contact your IBM representative for a product overview, trial experience, demo, or deep dive

IBM | AWS partnership

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Learn more about the IBM / AWS partnership.