Recently, the conversation of a head of technology for a large staffing firm went into the topic of Chatbots and their usage for recruiting.  According to him, the Chatbot they use for engaging and screening candidates from their website is better than a human.His rationale is that the immediacy of the response, the systematic and consistent approach (100% of the time as it is programmatic), and the scheduling for a human interview makes it better.  

Are we ready to replace the screening and engaging part of the recruiting cycle by bots?

My take is that, in this world of immediacy, the benefits of setting a meeting right away (even if with a bot) is definitely superior. However, I would recommend being transparent about it. According to him, the fact that a candidate asked to meet with a bot, shows that it is not always evident to the candidate that they are interacting with them, and it makes for a bad experience for the candidate when they finally meet for a date!