The Future of Recruitment (With Special Emphases on AI)

The paradoxical momentum of going artificially intelligent to leverage human endeavor.

This article seeks to answer queries on the lines of: 

1. What are the salient features of LinkedIn 2018 Global Recruiting Trends 2018 Report? 

1. How is artificial intelligence going to reshape the future of recruitment? 

1. What major apps different companies are using worldwide? 

1. How recruitment has to transform in the face of an onslaught of technological advancements?       

The Latest Recruitment Trends:  

LinkedIn conducted a survey to collect information from over 8800+ hiring managers and recruiters to see the latest impactful recruitment trends.    

The New Business Standard: Different by diversity- The term ‘diversity’ has come of age and now isn’t just confined to this term. The organizations around the world are trying hard to make people, from different backgrounds, feel a sense of belongingness. Prioritization of culture improvement is sitting high at the pedestal and has no mood to come down from it with over 78% companies pushing diversity in culture building with over 62% agreeing to do it for the sake of financial profits. Moreover, a larger consonance has been congregated around diversity being the horse for pulling the cart of better performance and deeper customer insight.     

View of the Interview: Sitting aloft and looking down upon traditional methods of recruitment is easy but that is what the norm is. Soft skills are escaped easily from the hawkish eyes of an interviewer and charisma and attractiveness takes over. But new interviewing techniques are certainly changing the landscape the likes of which are soft skill assessment, job auditions, meeting in casual settings, virtual reality assessment, and video interviews. A margin of 63% companies are using such techniques for assessment of candidate’s soft skills and 57% are using these to understand weaknesses. Removing interview bias is on the agenda of 42% of companies.    

Data Supremacy: Avoiding amplification of talent intelligence will cost astronomical costs to organizations of tomorrow. Talent intelligence strategy appears as a new superhero wearing a cape and rescuing dwindling talent acquisition and talent mining alternatives from falling flat on their faces. The corporate world is consuming data in these three major ways- increased retention rate, evaluation of skill gaps, and building better offers - with a margin of 56%, 50%, and 50% of votes- from different organizations respectively. 

Acceleration power of AI: Artificial intelligence is an enigma that turns you more human. Absurd as it may sound, the oddity is the saving grace of this demon-cum-angel playing hard for quality and time singularity. 67% of companies say it helps them save time, 43% agree with it removing human bias, and 31% point to AI being a helper in matching the best candidate portfolio with the job requirement. Moreover, 58% companies confessed to using AI for sourcing candidates. Not to forget, 56% companies use it for screening and 55% companies use it for nurturing candidates. 

The Readiness of Artificial intelligence to Select the Best:  

What started as a speculation turned into a war of words for Mark Zuckerberg vs Elon Musk about AI. They seem to be on different sides of the boundary line marking the world with/without AI future. 

Invasion of privacy is one aspect with daily reports of collusion of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica in data manipulation pouring in. You never know who the end user is. A right technology can be used by wrong people for a wrongful purpose.  

Not to forget, we still aren’t sure about the ability of AI to take into account discretion, absolution, personal improvement, and the degree of bad behavior. For example, in this politically-polarized world, a potential candidate can be tainted for his/her political views and chances of him/her getting a job are drastically dilapidated. A drunken revelry picture can be picked up as a bad digital footprint by AI.  

Recently, unchecked algorithms were studied by Carnegie Mellon University stating men are shown high paying jobs, not women. Also, candidates who are very skilled but not social-media adept could lose out on great career opportunities. Nothing new but nevertheless important to say, projections are pointing to over 43% workforce turning into freelancers and giving facetime a royal snub by 2020. AI is still isn’t ready to decide the division of labor between freelancers and regular employees.       

As another important consequence of AI taking over the job industry, job portals might die a slow death. Randstad bought Monster in an event that sent ripples across the job industry. There is always the presence of Facebook, Twitter, Kaggle (for data scientists), and GitHub (for software engineers) which have democratized the recruitment industry and pulled the rug from under the job portals.  

Upped by Apps: 

HireVue: The platform uses video intelligence based on AI for analysis of video interviews of different candidates and offers recruiters insightful information about the recruits. It has over 600 clients some, of which are international brands such as Intel, Vodafone, and Nike.     

Interviewed: The platform has automated tools series for the screening of candidates based on parameters such as personality assessment, language skills, and programming tests. Employers are better able to assess simulations. Indeed.com acquired the platform from Y-Combinator.      

Entelo: The SaaS (Software as a Service) platform is based in San Francisco and is helping talent management practitioners from around the world in browsing social network and media profiles. Such profiles are used against predictive analysis for a likelihood of candidates leaving a job. It has a diverse product which allows human resources managers to pick candidates from under-represented class categorized on the basis of veteran status, ethnicity, and gender. Its customer base consists of Microsoft, GE, and Facebook.           

Koru: This Seattle based platform offers a solution suite of technologies related to screening and selection. The hiring outcomes have drastically improved for clients like Citibank and Deutsche Bank.     

There are other famous apps too such as Talent Sonar for improvement of a job description to represent gender diversity. SkillSurvey predicts the turnover and performance of an individual and used extensively by Reebok and Adidas. Mya Systems has a separate AI recruiter for evaluation of resumes, scheduling of meetings, and screening of candidates. Google is also testing the waters with Cloud Jobs for parsing millions of job openings. Headstart creates a fingerprint after profiling each candidate. Robot Vera is conducting recruitments for Ikea, L’Oréal, PepsiCo, and other leading brands.  

Multitudinous Possibilities of Recruitment Transformation:  

Think of this possible scenario: 

Chatbot: Hello John. I came to know you are searching for a position in project management with our company.   

John: Yeah. I was. I am thinking if there are vacancies available in Manhattan? 

Chatbot: You are one lucky chap! We have availability of 5 vacancies in our offices in Manhattan. Our hiring manager will soon be reaching out to you. 

John: That’s great. Thank you! 

This is not a possibility from Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi movie but an opportunity continuously being used for treating applicant as a new customer. Consequently, you have fringe benefits of totally cutting out recruiter ghosting- a term widely accepted for no feedback or update once interviews are over.  

Today, candidate experience takes the center stage and it starts right after a candidate has applied for a certain job opportunity. You are supposed to make the best of AI for improved personalization and brand building. 

In words of Jim Stroud, Head of Recruiting Strategy, Randstad- ‘Robot process automation is the new big thing and everything which can be automated will be automated.’