The Future of Recruitment is Here

By Gilbert Camasura, AFPM, President, Asia Select, Inc.

Imagine waking up one day when everything in the world is automated. Individuals go about their business without ever having to speak to another person, and all of life’s needs are just one’s fingertips in your computer or mobile application. The reality around the world now is every organization is looking for ways to streamline processes using the latest technologies in driving business. Artificial intelligence (AI) has started to dehumanize a number of business services that most leaders welcome as a change. Now, it’s being considered in human resources as an option to eliminate the lengthy and often inaccurate process of recruiting the best candidates.

Technology in recruitment through AI seems to be the new buzzword going around the boardrooms of every big and small company as human resources functions continue to be regarded as one of the most important aspects of a business. The truth is artificial intelligence has started disrupting recruitment practices over the past years, and as each new piece of recruitment software is introduced and gets integrated into our world, it has continually dehumanized the process but somehow managed to improve the human side of recruitment and quality talent management.

While wisdom says that change is the essence of life, a majority would still resist it. This is the same case for some people resisting AI in recruitment. Newsmongers would go so far as to push the wrong notion that AI would lead to losing jobs in recruitment. This would be ironic to many scientists’ concept of automation, which is to serve its purpose of removing the repetitive work from the hands of people while increasing the value of human capability to support business goals. It will be a foolish idea to fear machines that were created by us. It would be prudent to say that leveraging AI in recruitment can be a great tool in a company’s hand since it can lead to various advantages for the organization.

In a LinkedIn survey report, it presented that “Artificial Intelligence has become the top secret in recruiting talents. Further, 35% of talent professionals and hiring managers say that AI is the top trend impacting how they hire. In the recruitment practice, AI was regarded most helpful in sourcing, screening, interview scheduling and nurturing candidates.”

Can artificial intelligence recruiters work with HR professionals?

As AI continues to be integrated into the recruitment world, talent acquisition professionals will be expected to become more efficient by “doing more human relations work with talents by lessening repetitive administrative task.” Recruiters will have to be less worried about sourcing and screening. This allows them to refocus on engaging with qualifying candidates who are more aligned with the technical and culture fit requirement of the company. They will be more focused on handling the human relations aspect of closing job offers and improving the quality of candidate experience. With AI working with recruiters, it does not only speed up the recruitment process, which reduces the time it takes to hire a candidate, but also increases the chances of hiring the best talent before they get swept up by a competitor.

While a lot of people fear that AI and robotics will replace the recruiter, this is not the reality. This progress merely means AI will never fully replace the role, it will just change the job by enhancing their part in the hiring process and increase the chances of a quality hire. AI in recruitment can be a significant leap ahead in the sector. It would be pretty challenging in the coming days for manual recruitment to compete with it.

THE BENEFIT OF AI IN RECRUITMENT: AI reduces a recruiter’s tedious task and boosts productivity.

Using AI technology to initially assess resumes for keywords and concepts hidden in the text would give recruiters the ability to turn those piles of resumes into a short list of qualified candidates. Integrating AI, recruitment specialists can spend more time on the resumes that warrant more attention and not deal with the ones who are not qualified to begin with. This improvement in the recruitment process saves time for recruiters in an organization, which allows them to make better hires faster. On average, every corporate job opening attracts 250 resumes but only 10% of these applicants will be assessed and qualified for an interview and only one will be extended an offer for the job. Let’s say a recruiter’s goal is to make 8 to 12 hires a month. This means they would have to review about 2,000 resumes — which is a tough part of the recruitment process — to find the right fit applicant.

Automation streamlines the whole recruitment process and reduces the hiring time by half.

AI for recruitment is an emerging category of HR technology designed to reduce — or even remove — timeconsuming activities like manually screening resumes. Automating the recruiting workflow through AI will ironically allow recruiters to become more “human” by freeing up their time to more deeply explore candidate’s needs and desires and determine fit. One of the biggest advantages of using AI recruitment is that it is designed to integrate seamlessly into a company’s current system without disrupting their workflow. It also speeds up the process of recruitment through automation which, for a company, means that they are less likely to lose out on the best talent due to stiff competition in the industry.

A company’s reputation as an employer of choice increases due to the responsiveness of the AI to the candidate experience.

Applicants sending their resumes to corporate job advertisement would always expect to get replies from signifying interest in job opportunity. The truth is, it has been a frustration for many to not receive any acknowledgement or communication from the hiring company at all or never be contacted again for update or feedback regarding the status of their application; wondering day-in and day-out if someone received their information or even cared about their expectation and experience. This is where Artificial Intelligence comes to the rescue. By using AI, it helps in engaging candidates throughout the application process. A recruiter will have a better time managing their candidate’s experience as AI will continue to track, monitor, and communicate progress with the candidate.

AI aligns and standardizes recruitment process by removing biases and the quality of hire can be drastically improved.

On top of ensuring recruitment efficiency and improvement of the candidate experience, using AI recruitment also has the ability to reduce bias in the hiring process. In a Gallup study, “researchers found gender-diverse business units in the retail sector have 14% higher average comparable revenue than less-diverse business units. The probability of having bias is eliminated as artificial intelligence recruitment system will assess based on the desired competencies. There is also a 15-fold increase in sales revenue of companies with a high rate of racial diversity. Implementing AI in the hiring process can help achieve the goal of diverse teams as it will rank and score candidates based on qualification and leave bias out of the decision of whom to add to the short list of top candidates”.

Lastly, this automation will definitely take out the stress from the entire hiring process, making it vastly efficient.

AI is set to dominate our lives in the near future. With various industries wholeheartedly embracing AI and furiously implementing it in their companies, it would be a nobrainer to say that AI would cover almost every aspect of our lives in the next five to ten years.