AI and the human factor in recruiting (and robots)
Digital recruiting does not work because it lacks the human touch.
Recruiting will be safe from AI and robots since the human factor is most important.
These are just some of the statements that we have been facing when building Monday. The reality, however, is not quite that black and white.
It is just human that bias and judgement dominate the hiring process. Aside from outer appearance, obviously, much has been written about introverts vs extroverts, education bias or simply personal dislike. Almost every hiring decision is based on poor data of the recruiter and HR specialist. Quotas have been introduced in various aspects of recruiting, as seen lately in Germany and other European countries in regards to women in management.
AI maintains its objectivity where humans are based on bias and guts. In addition, it has even more capabilities in terms of knowledge and understanding that people do not have. However, in today’s world, finding the right talent is one of the most challenging tasks in a company. Yet, most organizations recruit in very traditional ways without much digital support.
Recruiting websites exist since the dawn of the Internet. Most of them rely on keyword search, i.e. you find candidates based on the skills you enter. When looking for a project manager, people will look for the actual skill project management. Some candidates have named this skill more specifically, i.e. Prince2 expert or PMI. A person as well as a machine has to understand these semantics. The chance that a machine learning algorithm will pick up the linkage between different skills is higher, since it is capable of evaluating large data sets.
Especially in the IT sphere, skills are exploding and it is nearly impossible for recruiters — internal or external — to keep up with the pace of new technologies popping up everywhere. Several times in my earlier career I had problems with recruiters understanding the differences between SAP MM, SAP MDM and SAP MDG (and MDM projects with SAP MDG). This even led to the fact that I was in a wrong client interview, a complete waste of time for the client and for me.
Where can AI support the recruiting process?
- Robo-recruiting can help outreach for the right candidates, enabling recruiters to identify and connect to talent faster. Modern platforms will not only search the Internet but also social media and are capable of creating 360° views of potential candidates.
- Marketplace platforms help companies to directly identify the right candidates without any middlemen. This is particularly important when the maturity of an organization allows for many external freelancers where staffing speed and precision are important.
- RPA (robotic process automation) or chatbots can automate recurring tasks around the recruiting and hiring processes, allowing HR staff to focus on more important tasks while providing a better candidate experience.
- Automated interviews pre-assess candidates before they even set foot into a company. AI-based tools are even capable of analyzing candidates during the interview, through their behavior or tone of voice.
- Analytics supports in analyzing candidates documents and assessing candidates before interviews. This includes social media checks as well as other automated background checks and collection of data.
Artificial intelligence is mostly based on data. That means, data has to be available to train systems to understand and make the right decisions. On the downside, this could potentially lead to bias or “filter bubbles” where only candidates that match a very specific set of skills or characteristics are considered. However, a well-designed system will have the right counter-measures built-in.
In essence, the human factor is important to evaluate human dynamics beyond algorithms. A final interview will always reveal whether a candidate will eventually fit into the culture of the organization and be able to adopt a similar mindset like her fellow coworker peers (even though AI-driven solutions exist to analyze candidates during video interviews). The actual recruiting, i.e. identifying the right candidate, however, will be significantly more effective by leveraging the benefits of AI, saving time and money to the organization.
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Thanks for taking the time to read this short article. A lot of what has been mentioned is what we want to improve with Monday.
Monday is a state-of-the-art workforce relationship management system that supports not only recruiting but also other aspects of HR and workforce efficiency in organizations:
- Recruiting and hiring
- Metrics and analytics
- Personnel development
- Organization and culture
Find our more at www.mymonday.co and register today.
