The world of recruiting is changing and the catalyst is artificial intelligence – but what does that mean for recruiters, in their day-to-day jobs and into the future? In our recent webinar, Generative AI & Recruitment: How AI Will Transform Hiring, Appcast CEO Chris Forman gave a preview of how the recruiting environment will be changed by these new technologies.
Understandably, recruiters had a lot of questions. Though we were unable to hit them all during the webinar, we’ve tried to answer some of the most pressing questions below.
Is This Technology a Threat or a Treat for Recruiters?
There was a thread of anxiety woven into many of these questions. Change can be challenging, but recruiters should understand that AI is not here to replace them. Artificial intelligence, as it exists today, is a co-pilot to the recruiters’ expertise; an exoskeleton that brings out a super-strength in each recruiter that chooses to wield its power.
Instead of fearing that artificial intelligence will replace jobs, think of how it can make recruiters far more productive. Every day, recruiters go through myriad manual processes, completing time-consuming tasks that don’t necessarily bring them joy or challenge them. Instead of going through these mundane tasks each day, a recruiter can use OpenAI’s ChatGPT or another AI tool to up their productivity.
For instance, say a recruiter is writing a job ad. This recruiter usually sets some time aside, explores what the job title entails, and strings together buzzwords and company expectations for some time before they get the perfect job description. Instead, this recruiter can plug the job title into ChatGPT and easily prompt it to write a short job description. And if she doesn’t like the job description? She can be curious: switch up the prompt, then do it again and again until this recruiter is happy with the job description! Then, moving forward, she’ll know how to prompt to get the answer she wants. It’s important to proofread these responses – but even manually editing the AI response will save time compared to writing the job ad from scratch.
Not only can this save a recruiter time, but ChatGPT also has a step up on recruiters, as it’s something of a “pseudo specialist” with all the information it has access to. In the example above, what if the job ad was for a, say, software engineer or (if we want to get crazy) an underwater welder. Recruiters may not know the ins-and-outs of a software engineers’ day to day role or what kind of techniques an underwater welder has to be familiar with. AI can fill those holes in recruiters’ knowledge, and make their job ads better for it.
This productivity revolution could have two outcomes, and it may come down to what kind of hiring department they are:
- The team of recruiters will stay the same size, or even shrink, as the company grows. Recruiters are more productive, meaning there are fewer needed to produce the same results. The process becomes more streamlined and has an automated feel to it.
Or…
- Recruiters are given more time to connect with candidates, find out what they might have been missing through all these years spending their time heads down writing job descriptions and other mundane tasks. In other words, use the resources AI frees up to create a more human approach. Create better results, better relationships, happier candidates and recruiters.
What Tools Will Be The Recruiter’s Best Friends?
Since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, there’s been a deluge of new, shiny AI tools that you can easily get swept away in. But there are some more worthy than others, in terms of how they can help recruiters. The new search engine tool from Google, known as Bard, or the new Bing can give you more up-to-date information, as ChatCPT’s technology is only trained on information up to 2021. These chat-based tools can give you current information on things like salaries in your area, the demands for that position, and the general perception of your company.
Not every problem has an artificial intelligence answer – these tools cannot be used to do a search of LinkedIn for the right candidate or delicately source new candidates, for example. But this area is going to grow quickly – keep your eye on the AI space! In particular, look for new plugins and add-ons that could pop up in the tools you’re already using.
What’s the Government Going to Say About All This?
Like some recruiters, governments are feeling apprehensive about what the outcomes of this new technology will be. Local and national governments want to protect their citizens’ privacy, livelihood, and jobs. In New York City, regulations were passed in 2021 that companies must notify candidates if they are using AI solutions in the hiring stream. Additionally, external auditors check the tech each year for biases. In the European Union, lawmakers are attempting to pass legislation to ensure more oversight over the growing technology.
Creating an environment of transparency around this new technology is a good thing – even OpenAI creator Sam Altman has specifically asked for more regulation. But overregulating and not letting this technology grow and prosper would be a mistake. It’s likely the legal pendulum will swing too far against AI at first and gradually correct as governments and companies alike learn how this new tech impacts the world.
Can AI Remove Hiring Biases Completely?
The New York law in particular aims at protecting workers and job seekers from the built-in biases that this technology could have. As it stands, every recruiter has implicit biases that impact the hiring experience. These biases (and more explicit ones as well) have created the current workforce. As a software is trained on data from that very same workforce, that bias will be introduced into the software.
But on this front, AI might have the upper hand. See, recruiters take in the whole person, but AI can be prompted to ignore factors like race, ethnicity, gender, or age, while recruiters cannot. Instead, it can focus on an individual’s qualifications, experience, and skills that make them a potentially great candidate!
AI may not be able to completely remove biases in the hiring process, but human recruiters haven’t figured it out yet either – it might be time to try a new approach.
How Will AI Transform Our Industry?
Teetering on a new frontier of recruiting is an exciting place to be. It’s hard not to be curious about the opportunity these new tools present. Well-intentioned people hear about these new wonders and immediately, understandably, have to have more, more, more. The rush for these new products has been exhilarating but it may be time to take a breath. It’s important to remember that not every problem requires AI. Before turning immediately to artificial intelligence, consider the question being asked, the problem needing to be solved. More than ever, this is a time for the human touch to shine through. Sure, AI can write up a quick job description or map out a recruitment strategy. But those rejection emails or phone calls should be sent with a human behind it, that candidate that reaches the next step should hear from a person, the conversation that assesses a candidate’s personality and potential cannot be done by a machine alone.
Appcast is committed to using AI where and when it makes sense to help recruiters everywhere build the best job ads. We believe the transformative power of these new technologies will allow us and recruiters everywhere to automate and optimize the mundane so we can recommit to a human-based approach to hiring.
Watch our on-demand webinar Generative AI & Recruitment: How Will AI Transform Hiring for more information!
