The new era of AI-powered recruitment

AI in recruitment, friend or foe?

I started my recruitment career about 12 years ago when the Internet provider company I was working for as a secretary needed to hire NOC (network operation center) engineers and I offered to help. After what they considered a successful recruitment round, I was even offered traineeship as a NOC engineer, but that is a whole other story. For the recruitment drive I posted an ad, scoured some CV databases, got some referrals and began cold calling.

Long gone are the days!

We do talk a lot about AI in …everything, especially with the arrival of ChatGPT3 and GPT4. Many would say that this is just the beginning of a recruitment transformation, and in a sense that is true, but recruitment AI-powered tools have existed for a while now. We are now in what is called the era of Narrow AI, where we count on Machine Learning and Deep Learning to recognize patterns without any pre-programming and act like neural networks, feeding systems with answers based on structured and unstructured data.

Four key areas of impact

It is important to understand some of the current and active, stand-alone or part of larger solutions, organizations have access to in the four main areas where AI-powered software is changing the way we attract, hire and create relevant candidate experience.

Attraction and engagement will continue to see the most aggressive shift

• The use of chatbots in recruitment has revolutionized the way candidates engage with recruiters, providing 24/7 assistance and personalized support.
• AI-powered tools can analyze job descriptions and identify the most relevant keywords to improve job postings’ visibility and attract qualified candidates.
• Predictive analytics can help recruiters forecast the likelihood of a candidate most engaged with your employer brand or product, allowing them to focus on the most active candidates.

Interviewing at scale will cost less

• Predictive analytics can help recruiters forecast the likelihood of a candidate accepting a job offer, allowing them to focus on the most promising candidates.
• AI-based algorithms can analyze candidate data and predict job performance, enabling recruiters and hiring managers to make data-driven hiring decisions.
• The use of AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can help any TA partner to manage administrative tasks and free up time for more strategic activities.
• Face recognition technology analyzing candidate’s facial expressions to signal states such as tiredness, motivation, engagement etc in automated video interviews
• Note-taking, summaries and recommendations or task distribution is now possible with transcribing, ummm.. they even take out filler words.
• Translation tools enable you to scale with ease in new geographies, which opens a whole new world and distributes opportunities wider.

Assessment is the most challenged area due to ethics and fairness concerns

• AI and machine learning-based applications have enabled recruiters to improve the accuracy and efficiency of candidate screening and selection processes.
• The use of virtual reality simulations in recruitment can provide candidates with a realistic job preview, helping them to make better-informed decisions about job fit.
• AI-based video interviewing tools can help recruiters to assess candidates’ communication and problem-solving skills, improving the quality of hires.
• AI-based tools can help recruiters to identify and mitigate unconscious bias in the recruitment process, promoting a more diverse and inclusive workforce.

Talent strategy will drive businesses to a whole new level

• Machine learning algorithms can analyze employee data and identify patterns that indicate employee turnover risk, allowing talent functions to implement proactive retention/backfill strategies.
• Career pathing and internal mobility frameworks can be designed with ease based on the organizational needs and future-looking criteria, the path to re-skilling seems to have never been easier
• Insights and predictive analytics can show one the next geography to open up for talent in a timely and cost-effective way, replacing large & expensive consultancy companies

The time is ripe for companies to adjust their talent strategy to take advantage of AI-powered tools. These tools enable businesses to efficiently and cost-effectively complete many of today’s simpler HR tasks and will be even more important in the future as they improve. At the same time talent functions are enabled to use their skill sets more efficiently and innovate faster, while increasing their job satisfaction—benefits for both the talent partners and the companies that seek to maximize their outputs and engagement.

Regulation is needed for equal opportunity and inclusive workplaces to prevail

That being said, OpenAI has generated a flurry of spin-off applications that make regulators increasingly nervous. And rightfully so, as ethical considerations are rarely the first thing prioritized when the race for AI-driven efficiency and wealth is so hot these days.

In the EU, the European Commission is inching towards passing a crucial AI act, that among other prerogatives destined to protect EU citizens, increase transparency and set ethical guardrails around the use of AI tools, we have specific indications of the limits businesses and governments need to respect, ie: the use of emotion recognition AI-powered software is banned in the areas of law enforcement, border management, workplace, and education. In the US, state regulators have also started to propose legislation that would restrict how these algorithms are used. New York City passed a bill recently that would require “bias audits” for algorithms used in hiring, and Washington, D.C.’s proposed Stop Discrimination by Algorithms Act of 2021 would set a strict list of requirements for companies wanting to use algorithms in employment settings like automated video interviews.

“Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed”

“Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed” is attributed to Antoine Lavoisier who first formulated the law of the Conservation of mass. I am here for this tug-of-war between conversation and transformation and I’ll be honest, I am excited about the future of work.

There is though a piece of information I left out about my first recruitment project story, after doing all the “tedious” recruitment work I talked to some amazing people and got inspiring new colleagues on board. I would still like to use recruitment for relationships and knowledge building, I would still want to have the luxury to make mistakes, not life-affecting ones, but some. I would like to still be surprised and proud for having found, engaged with and hired a key person into good businesses. Maybe now the point of pride will be setting the best automation sequence or campaign prompt. All very likely, but I would like us to keep the pride of offering great jobs to great people, helping organizations grow to be inclusive workplaces with impact and purpose.