Artificial Intelligence in Recruitment

Like all industries, there is much talk regarding the power – and threat – artificial intelligence (AI) poses to employment and

outcomes in the recruitment industry.

 

The good news for recruitment professionals is that while AI, technology, data and market needs are changing the way we work – mostly for the better – at the core of good recruitment still exists skilled humans.

 

Here’s why.

 

 

 

 

Humans are flawed. We are biased. But socially and emotionally intelligent people can use evidence-based, structured assessments to proactively know and manage our biases to reduce the negative impact they may have. 

 

AI… not so much. Just ask Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. 

 

With arguably more resources and technological intelligence at their fingertips than any other organisation on this planet, Amazon developed an AI tool which was scrapped on 2017. This tool was designed to assess key terms in resumes in order to recommend the best candidates to hire. What they learned was this AI tool didn’t like female candidates, avoiding recommending female candidates even when they demonstrated the same level of suitability.

 

AI  effectiveness is in the code – humans need to audit the code, if there is a skew of unsuitable applicants (gender or otherwise) recruiters need to be able to ensure they can evaluate the algorithm to see what went wrong. In other words, what assumptions were made about candidates’ abilities and potential and  encoded in the assessment.

Despite the increase in automation, our hours of remote work rising and our online networks expanding rapidly  , evidence is clear; humans do better, live longer, are more productive and feel more fulfilled when they have strong connections and relationships with their community. 

 

It may sound warm and fuzzy, but science agrees. Harvard University educated Matthew D. Lieberman a Professor in the Departments of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Biobehavioral Sciences has spent his career studying social interactivity. His book “Social” uses cutting edge research to support the fact our need to connect is as critical as our need for food, water and safety, and contends that even within the structures of organisations and business models, maximum productivity can only be achieved when human’s neuro-cognitive resources are engaged in a social capacity.

 

Because of this, better recruitment can occur when a human connection exists. This recruitment connection also requires trust, built over interactions and performance, but a great recruiter will overcome 3 different people’s biases including their own, to work with an employer and an employee  facilitating connections where they would not otherwise occur.

We live in the information age where you have access to more data than ever before, yet one person can rule a nation with just 140 characters. It almost seems counterintuitive that that more noisy communication that occurs the less effective it can be.  Good communication is more than the literal meaning of a sequence of words or bullet points of facts. Effective communication, compelling communication requires the combination of rhetoric, fact, emotive language and … a human delivering it.

 

As a recruiter, hiring manager or a jobseeker, your ability to communicate a message or demonstrate relevancy to your audience, is most effective through a storytelling approach, harnessing language, data, facts, metaphor, parables. How else can you effectively provide insight to a prospective employee on how a work day might feel? How their Manager might behave? New hires don’t last if what they expected is not what eventuates, so these stories are critical. 

What actions, skills or behaviours might lead to successful outcomes in one company may have the opposite effect at another. Rarely do organisations want an outcome at any cost. If the way in which an individual achieves an outcome, their application of their technical skills combined with their behaviours are critical to success; acceptance and support from peers, managers and other stakeholders matter. 

 

Context – including tone of voice and audience; along with understanding motivation and values that drive behaviour are still human domains.

Self awareness, reflection and regulation are complex and nuanced behaviours that are supposed to demonstrate a level of emotional intelligence. But even these behaviours cannot be applied in a formulaic way to establish whether or how someone will be an effective leader.

 

How could a machine or test assess charisma?

 

Marketing experts will tell you that in this phase of our social evolution, in order to be able to initiate action in someone, you must first create an emotional connection. There is still limited evidence to develop science let alone an AI algorithm around this. At its most advanced, emotional intelligence embodies itself in the ability to persuade people into action using an emotive trigger. This ability to drive action in some form, from an individual employee to large scale groups of consumers is still critical to businesses today and in the future. 

One of the largest fears of the power of AI is that this power may not be kept in check by human ethics or a moral code. These fears were not helped by hearing a robot who stated she wanted to destroy humans. And though this is an extreme example, on a small scale this is nonetheless a fundamental flaw in AI to date. 

Automating simple  tasks and processes that require less complex logic and if-then statements to enable the people undertaking the recruitment to do what they do best is for now at least, the best way to integrate AI into your recruitment process. Workflow automation, bots, mental ability testing and search intelligence tools are incredibly effective, support best-practice recruitment and create additional time for HR teams and Recruiters to connect with your people.