How AI and automation in HR is revolutionising recruitment

Artificial intelligence (AI) in human resources is seen as a way to unlock human capital. As a result of this, it can directly impact a company’s productivity, efficiency, and results. We are seeing a trend with company leaders making it a new priority and the focus for their HR leaders, or as a minimum, an area to be seriously investigated, costed, and considered.

Hiring the best talent will ensure your team can play a part in delivering the best results for the company, but finding the right candidate for a job is competitive, especially in today’s candidate-led market. It can be frustrating and take a prolonged period to find the best people. Therefore, recruitment is where company leaders can see not only immediate results, but significant opportunities to measure those advantages and what they are aiming to achieve. 

For example:

• Reducing time to hire from months to weeks.  
• Increasing productivity for internal recruiters by giving them the tools to speak to more top-quality talent and increase hiring rates.
• Delivering an employee or candidate experience that makes that top talent choose your job. 

How automation has changed recruitment processes

At this time, most of what has changed is the automation of recruitment processes to make the role of a recruiter quicker and easier.

• Video interviewing.
• Software tools to screen CVs that come in to analyse skills or key areas of interest.
• Software tools to identify candidates on job boards and flag them to internal recruitment teams to contact.
• Software tools that use the details of a job spec to immediately identify a shortlist of the best candidates, from a number of sources like LinkedIn or CV databases.
• Helping HR leaders overcome bias. Automation is now starting to be used to create inclusive job descriptions and will go on to assess candidates sourced purely on skills and experience. 
• Automation can assess not only a resume, but also take into account a person’s online presence to assess them against the company culture and overall fit accurately. 

We are only scratching the surface of what machine learning can do for businesses. However, to get real and useable results from AI requires willing HR and recruitment teams to have been inputting substantial amounts of data, so that you can adopt a test and learn approach. The adoption or acceptance of AI in HR and recruitment processes has happened recently, the investment is only recently being released to HR professionals, and therefore, it may be a while until we see a significant change in this area. 

How AI and automation can develop future recruitment processes

There continue to be exciting new developments in HR teams that utilise AI and automation. These developments include:

• Converting video to new information: Video interviewing gives you an insight into how the candidate answers questions and appears in person. There is every chance a short video could be translated into a list of key facial movements, voice intonation, and word choices that decide if someone is suitable for the company culture or shows the traits of a top performer. 
   
• Identify onboarding strategies: Video interviews could be used to determine cognitive ability and identify training to improve skills, career pathways, and the right people to train these new recruits before they have even joined. 
   
• Identify key soft skills: Using AI, you can assess a person’s way of approaching a problem, willingness to take risks, how quickly they process information, how well they plan around completing a task, and how they adapt to situations and change their approach. Further to AI, gamification within the recruitment process is increasing. Testing soft skills, cognitive and emotional abilities through challenges and games, provides a new way to test candidates in an easy way that will improve their candidate journey. This will give employers a better understanding than just seeing someone answer questions in an interview or the results of a psychometric test.
   
• Identifying new skill sets: Software, when it has all the information of the top performers in a company or society, will identify new skill sets outside of the normal candidate pools. This is especially important with a new generation of millennials who may not be going to university or following the traditional education and training routes.

How AI could be detrimental to recruitment processes

AI is only as good as the algorithm you have been sold and the data that is inputted. The results should be challenged, especially if you are making decisions on what characteristics or personality traits that you are looking for. Here are some other things to consider when incorporating AI into your recruitment process:

Too much reliance on technology: New technologies have the potential to down skill the recruitment teams who will place too much reliance on technology. AI shouldn’t take the place of recruiters’ roles, but better enable them to do their jobs.

Loss of the human element: Without the human element, recruiters and hiring managers will be unable to build strong professional relationships with the people they are working with, which will eventually cause a disconnect in the hiring processes.

Missing out on transferrable skills: By profiling candidates by hard and soft skill requirements, you risk missing out on candidates that have huge potential, but don’t have the classic CV highlights that an algorithm would target. 

The current attitude towards AI

More companies are building in-house recruitment teams and attracting forward-thinking leaders. Some have been exposed to new technology in their previous roles and others are pro-active and are looking into the huge range of companies offering AI and automation. 

This is opening up more conversations on what is possible in terms of AI and what it can look like if they bring it in-house. 

If you are interested in hiring top talent for your human resources team, please get in touch with one of our specialist recruitment consultants today. Alternatively, submit a job spec, and we will call you. If you are looking to explore new career opportunities, create a MyPage account to make the best use of matching technology.

Luc Salmon
Operating Director, Michael Page