In its most basic form, Artificial Intelligence is a computer system designed to learn, make decisions and carry out tasks that would normally require human intervention.
Speech recognition software, self-driving cars, chatbots that talk to the public and manufacturing robots all rely on Artificial Intelligence.
In the future, perhaps we can look forward to robot butlers that can cook and clean, police that patrol the streets 24-7, robotic friends and if you believe Tesla boss Elon Musk, an eventual Terminator-style apocalypse where the machines become self-aware and decide to wipe us out…
You’ve also probably read the headlines about artificial intelligence and how “robots are going to take all of our jobs” one day. Administrators, production line workers, customer service reps, professional drivers and perhaps even surgeons are all set to be casualties of the machine learning age (apparently).
Well that’s quite scary, right?
It doesn’t need to be all doom and gloom!
In my personal opinion, you’ll always need a human touch when it comes to recruitment (and many other jobs, supposedly getting taken over by AI).
You need that gut instinct and judgement to know whether someone will actually fit into the team.
And we all know hard skills aren’t everything. We also need to assess cultural fit, personality and soft skills like confidence and emotional intelligence. Machines can’t do that.
Plus, if I were a job-seeker, I’m not sure I’d like to get interviewed and hired by a machine…
What AI can and will do, however, is help us track down great candidates, faster!
We’re not quite there yet, but that is the future of AI-powered recruitment…
How will it do that?
Here’s what AI will be able to do (whether you choose to use it, or not)…
- Scour the internet to find great candidates.
- Make contact with them.
- Conduct first stage interviews. (Automated video interviewing already exists.)
- Help eliminate bias from the process.
- Standardise interviews and CV assessment.
Obviously, you will still have to make a final decision on the right hire for you… but if artificial intelligence can manage the process up until that point, imagine how much time you could save?!
The good news is that AI is already here in its most basic form.
The systems are clunky, but these are simply beta versions. The AI systems will learn fast, so don’t judge them too harshly right now!
Here are three examples…
1. Beamery
Beamery is a candidate relationship management system that uses machine learning to enable proactive recruitment, “build talent pools, power collaboration and drive better decisions with predictive analytics.”
The start-up works with Facebook, among others, and analyses interactions between candidates and employers to identify candidates you should target and helps recruiters to build relationships with them.
2. Mya
You can encourage the right candidates to apply in the first place with the help of Mya, which parent company FirstJob claims will automate approximately 75% of the recruitment process.
It’s a combination of a chatbot at the front end, which effectively answers queries and gives feedback through messenger apps like Facebook, and an AI-powered search at the backend.
That search tool can eliminate irrelevant resumes and help find the needle in the haystack that is the perfect candidate.
If there’s information missing, the chatbot can get in touch and ask the right questions, thanks to Natural Language Processing, and plug the gaps in a resume that you might have rejected previously.
If Mya gets stuck, it refers the question to your HR department, but it can save you a huge amount of time and potentially rescue an application that simply did not cover all the bases.
It also learns, based on its past conversations, so the system will get better with time.
3. ThisWay Global
ThisWay “does in seconds, what it takes an HR professional 40 hours to do” apparently.
It’ll track down the most skilled candidates for your business, whilst removing any unconscious (or conscious) bias from the process, altogether.
And it also takes into consideration personality, culture, goals and motivations.
Summary
Artificial intelligence does get somewhat of a bad reputation.
People become obsessed with the idea that robots are going to take over the world, others just feel that human interaction is essential to get any job done (like me!)
Regardless, there’s no denying how quick recruitment could one day become, if we start using it!
What do you think?
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