How AI Will Change Recruitment

Fears of AI replacing recruiters are rife across the internet, and for good reason. While AI and automation will (continue) to change the recruitment industry, recruiting will still require person-to-person interactions.

With the broad adoption of generative AI tools like Chat GPT and Bard, the opportunity to automate tasks traditionally handled by humans has been a hot topic. This is especially true in recruiting, where traditional approaches are expensive, time-consuming, and prone to bias. 

As with any new tool, limited access to knowledge has generated fear and confusion around actual use cases. Proposed applications include:

• Replacing manual candidate sourcing with AI matching
• Replacing manual resume and phone screens with algorithms
• Replacing personalized outreach with AI-generated communication

Recruiting is still a people-driven business.

Candidates are humans and make decisions based on more than just raw data.

Choosing a new role is a huge life event. Beyond salary, benefits, and company performance, candidates need to know if they will enjoy working with their managers and peers. No amount of promotional videos or online reviews will replace the impact of talking to an actual human that works in the company. The big difference is that candidates now have much more access to data than ever before and will expect recruiters and hiring managers to be able to talk about a wider variety of topics. 

That's where AI comes in:

Think of ways AI can help you recruit rather than worrying about replacing you.

Understanding where to use it will allow you to spend more time on what humans do best.

Investing the time to experiment with new tools and figure out how to apply them to maximize your productivity will protect against obsolescence. Start by mapping out your current process, then analyze each part to see if it is important enough for you to own or if you can delegate it to a tool. Some examples of this include:

• Using a skills-based hiring tool to pre-filter candidates that have demonstrated proficiency in the skills or knowledge needed for the role rather than spending hours reading profiles or resumes
• Creating first-draft outreach emails using generative AI tools that read the candidate's profile and target job descriptions. You should edit the draft to add more personalization and voice, but this approach will help you engage more potential candidates.
• Using automated pre-screening tools, such as chat-bots, to quickly disqualify candidates that don't meet the minimum requirements saves you and the candidate from wasting time scheduling, holding, and following up on phone calls.

AI will improve, but the core limitations provide an excellent opportunity for establishing yourself in this new normal.

One of the best ways to overcome fear and uncertainty is to learn.

Once you know the challenges and limitations of using AI in recruiting, you will have a solid competitive advantage over others that have yet to invest the time. Specifically, look for ways to address Generative AI shortfalls such as:

• Lack of human empathy/personalization
• Bias in algorithms trained on historical data
• Concerns around data privacy and security

I published a video walkthrough showing how Chat-GPT can be used to automate some recruiting tasks in March and will be releasing more content to our Recruiting Analytics Youtube channel soon: https://youtube.com/@recruitinganalytics 

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