Is AI in recruitment an ethical choice? Should we be putting the precious jobs of individuals in the hands of computers? Or can AI ensure fairer hiring, away from the unethical biases of race, gender, age or religion?
AI is still a relatively new concept in recruitment. But up to 35% of hiring managers and talent professionals boast how AI is the top trend impacting how they hire.
Understanding how AI in recruitment works is crucial to trusting its success of it. Stay posted as we’ll be discussing the benefits and downfalls of AI in recruitment. And in particular what you can do to incorporate this advanced technology into your recruitment process.
How is AI used in recruitment?
The use of AI has the potential to make recruitment more efficient and effective. By using a predictive model, we can identify top candidates for a position based on their skills, experience and personality.
What is an artificial intelligent predictive model in recruitment?
A predictive model of AI is when predictive algorithms or machine learning is integrated into the resource-intensive or time-consuming parts of hiring. These algorithms measure the data points from candidates. This includes cultural fit and personality, and the ability to do the job with qualifications, skills and experience. It even goes so far as to analyse the voice and text sentiment plus facial expressions, body language and gestures.
This process enables recruiters to automate the recruitment process, making it faster, easier to manage and more efficient at filtering through candidates.
How does recruiting AI work?
Software is used to apply machine learning to CVs to automatically screen up to thousands of applicants. The AI can also be used on job descriptions to identify and change any potentially biased language.
This software can be embedded into your ATS data. This enables new job postings to be checked against past successful candidates who have long-term roles at the company.
What are the benefits of using AI in recruitment?
There are many benefits to artificial intelligence in recruitment. Recording candidate attributes, identifying and training key talent, predicting candidates’ behaviours, and analyzing and assessing job performance are just some of the various ways helped by AIs. Let’s look at some more benefits:
Reduces recruiting costs
The money savings to be made from AI in recruitment is astounding. Back in 2017, costs pre-screen decreased by 75% as a result of the implementation of AI recruiting software. They also found a further reducing turnover by 35%. Significantly reducing the overall costs in the recruitment process.
Reduce unconscious bias
Using algorithms and computational thinking, employers can minimise potential personal liabilities from social bias.
Where a human can sometimes be unconsciously biased, a robot would have no such weaknesses or influences. The AI won’t fall prey to emotion and will score all candidates based on the same present metrics.
While the ultimate decision does lie with the hiring managers, the AI can be a great base for hiring managers to compare their scoring against. Hiring managers can then put more careful consideration into which candidates they’ll hire. Even with unexpected candidates. One of the benefits is that the system reduces company bias since there is extensive data collection, which is usually more neutral to gender and racial inequalities.
Understand and know employees better.
Some of the benefits of using AI in recruitment are that AI systems can know employees as much as 21% more. This enables them to get to know them better faster and select the best candidates.
Refining the recruitment process
Other benefits come from refining the recruiting process through AI to increase hiring, re-training, and retention rates.
Match candidate with company culture
There are many benefits to using AI in recruitment. One of the most important is that it can help you find a candidate who matches your company's needs and culture, rather than simply finding "any" candidate.
Fast automated process
A company can input their needs, such as the desired salary and benefits package, to find a list of candidates that meet those requirements. This speeds up the recruitment process dramatically.
The key benefits of AI recruitment are listed as follows:
- Increased speed and accuracy
- Reduced costs for hiring and training
- Improved efficiency of human resources management.
How can AI help to improve the quality of candidates?
Through using AI, the quality of candidates can dramatically increase.
This is because it can save hiring managers a huge amount of time by running the screening process. An AI can go through thousands of applicants automatically, accepting and ranking the highest qualities of candidates.
AI can automatically reduce the candidate pool, by focusing on the top candidates which match skills, experience, personality and qualifications.
How can AI help to reduce the time to hire?
Artificial Intelligence is generating better reviews for applicants, and these reviews can help narrow down the most likely candidates. This shortens the recruitment length and increases the success rate of their trial period.
What are the risks associated with using AI in recruitment?
Many recruiters are in the dark when it comes to understanding how their machine learning works.
There are immense risks associated with the automation of recruitment by businesses. One suggestion is that bots represent a risk due to their undetectable nature. As the technology is constantly being developed and readjusted there can be a few teething problems that we run into on the way.
How are AI Mistakes being made?
To fix this, the AI software needs to have a staged approach. This is so that the algorithm can be checked and not make mistakes. It’s essential that recruiters are auditing their data before training the AI.
When the AI is making mistakes it’s important to rectify them asap, as it could lead to bad matches. Massively impacting on the recruitment costs, time to hire and more importantly, the candidate experience.
Ethicality
Hiring managers need to ensure their recruitment AI software is working currently and running smoothly. Whichever AI software you choose, always be mindful that there can be too much control given to AI, and it should be used sparingly.
As the tools can impact people's lives heavily, a clear and strong ethical framework is necessary.
This can be apparent in the data rights of individuals. Care must be taken over the data fed into the software as machine learning follows what is being fed. Blindly trusting the AI can lead to unsatisfactory results as the algorithm can only be as good as the training data it receives. As a result, if the initial data is biased so too will be the results.
How can AI help to increase diversity in the recruitment process?
AI can transform recruitment from a dated, biased process to an unbiased, highly personal experience.
As the technology gathers information and selects candidates based on the job description, the AI has a clear set of rules to follow for selection.
This also means that there is no internal bias selection or fighting of any kind. The best person is hired for the role based on their credentials- not the colour of their skin, gender, age or religion.
How Has COVID-19 Influenced the Need for AI in Recruiting?
Since the pandemic hit, many recruiters are turning towards using AI in recruitment. This is so that recruiters can better manage their hiring processes, with the team split up and working from home. AI allows the team to save on costs, and time and makes the hiring process more flexible.
Companies are also looking to hire more candidates for remote work since the pandemic too. This drastically increases the company’s candidate pool. It will be an essential tool for narrowing down a huge pool of candidates effectively and quickly.
Reworking Video Interview Software
What AI Recruiting Tools Are Available?
There are many different AI recruitment tools available out there, let’s take a look:
1. AI tools for Job Ad Postings
As we mentioned earlier in the post, AI is also used to reduce unrealised bias in job descriptions. Some verbatim we use can be displeasing to candidates or biased to a gender which can deter candidates.
2. Candidate Sourcing and screening
AIs for candidate sourcing use a resume parsing tool which utilises Natural Language Processing, deep learning, and machine learning to contextually screen resumes. They help to match and rank candidates for shortlisting.
3. Candidate assessment
An AI tool is used to compare the competencies of the candidates to find the best cultural fit. This AI tool can come in the form of Chabot, personality assessments, skills assessments, social skills and culture fit assessments.
4. AI interview tools
It’s important for recruiters to provide candidates with a great candidate experience. Therefore, using efficient AI recruiting tools in the interview process is a great way to achieve that. AI interview tools can come in the form of video interviewing, interview scheduling, and automated candidate communication tools.
5. AI tools for the onboarding process
Ensuring the ease of the candidate into their new role as an employee is essential. AI tools are used to maximise employee engagement and communication.
What are the potential future applications of AI in recruitment?
While recruiters are just getting to grips with AI in recruitment, it's clear to see there are many benefits, while some challenges to work through too.
We are sure to see the future of AI in recruitment change with the times as it develops and becomes more sophisticated.
What can we predict for the future of AI in recruitment?
There are no guarantees, but experts in the recruitment industry believe that Augmented Intelligence is the future of recruitment AI.
Augmented Intelligence instead works with human capabilities to enhance human efficiency and aptitude.
It works by automating repetitive, administrative tasks to free up the recruiter’s time. Resulting in, the recruiter's time being better spent with candidates in-person to build relationships and determine culture fit.
This also allows recruiters to be more proactive in their recruiting decisions.
A healthy mix of machines with humans seems the appropriate path for recruitment to be truly effective.