By Matt Jones
Chief Product Officer, Cielo
In recruiting, we’re no strangers to technology. In fact, AI has been an invaluable tool for many firms for a number of years.
Here are some key areas where AI can help recruiters, employers and candidates alike – and some important considerations on how to integrate it successfully.
Working Faster and Smarter with AI
The traditional approach to identifying candidates involves hours of manually reviewing applications and CVs. An AI-powered system, by comparison, can automatically review CVs and compare them against job descriptions in the blink of an eye.
The latest generation of AI is also better than existing technology at “reading between the lines” to identify, for example, whether a candidate’s skills are a good match for a company. These systems combine natural language processing and machine learning techniques to rapidly identify a candidate’s suitability for a role.
When applied at scale, an AI-powered sourcing engine can closely examine entire databases or online platforms to highlight matching candidates. Once the search is done, a human recruiter can review the suggested candidates, jumping straight to the shortlist stage.
AI-powered solutions can also be applied to analyze candidate responses to pre-defined questions, automatically sorting candidates based on suitability. It also has the potential to help remove the unconscious biases of individual recruiters and support an organization’s diversity, equity and inclusion strategy.
Beyond simply examining existing data, AI-powered chatbots can also engage directly with candidates. Conversational AI systems are available from several providers, and recruiters are already using them for tasks like pre-screening, making job recommendations, providing additional information about a job and scheduling interviews. Generative AI, similarly, can help recruiters write effective job descriptions and other important text in a fraction of the time it would take them otherwise.
Important Considerations
The many benefits of AI promise to speed up the hiring process and increase the chance of finding the “right” candidate. This is better for recruiters, clients and candidates alike. However, like any new technology, we need to carefully consider how we use AI.
Lots of the technologies underlying AI are “trained” on huge amounts of existing data. Without careful supervision, they can reproduce biases that are present in the training data, potentially introducing discriminatory hiring practices and harming diversity and inclusion efforts. For example, recent news has covered how AI filters have wrongly excluded candidates with gaps in their employment history.
Data privacy is another consideration. Some AI models learn continuously from the data they access, so they may not be suitable for use with sensitive candidate and client data. Regardless of the model they use, firms must understand and be transparent about the data they collect and how they use it.
Finally, there is no substitute for human interaction. Some people feel alienated when they can only communicate with a machine, and may be deterred if there isn’t a person they can reach out to. There are also interviews, which are also uniquely human – only a person can make a one-to-one connection with a candidate and assess their suitability for a role.
What’s Next?
AI can play a valuable role in speeding up the recruitment process, creating a better candidate and client experience and processing data more efficiently, among a range of other tasks.
However, it must be used carefully and intentionally. Job seeking is a deeply personal and emotional experience, and human recruiters will always have a job-crafting experience for candidates. The best recruiters, therefore, will be those that combine the right amount of technology with a human touch.
Matt Jones is the chief product officer of Cielo, one of the world’s leading providers of global talent acquisition and management. The company designs and builds comprehensive, proven solutions inspired by technology to find and keep the unique talent.
