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Generative AI in Recruiting: Peril, Promise, or Both?

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Sponsored by Radancy

Generative AI has risen to the forefront of work technology at a staggeringly rapid rate — bringing opportunities for employers to achieve powerful productivity gains. But, as with other disruptive technologies, it is also raising some serious concerns. For example, what are the implications of generative AI in recruiting?

AI-based content creation tools may be relatively new, but they’re clearly here to stay. That’s why it’s important for employers to understand how this technology is changing HR ecosystems, and prepare for its impact on recruitment and hiring processes.

Meet Our Guest: Todd Maycunich

Please join me in welcoming Todd Maycunich, a driving force behind Radancy, a leading talent acquisition platform. During his 17 years at Radancy, Todd has held multiple strategic roles, including VP of Product Innovation and Director of Platform Development.

Currently, Todd serves as SVP of Radancy Labs, where he leads a global insights team that leverages primary and secondary data to understand and address key trends that are shaping the future of talent acquisition. Join us as Todd and I dig deeper into the promise and pitfalls of generative AI in recruiting…

Behind the Rise of Generative AI

Todd, welcome to #WorkTrends! Why such a massive interest in generative AI now?

ChatGPT was released to the public on November 30, 2022. It wasn’t the first conversational user experience that demonstrated the ability to reason — but it was the most popular by far. In fact, it reached 100 million users faster than any other application.

These tools are capturing the imagination. People are suddenly having experiences they haven’t had with conversational bots. And they’re wondering if we are at the precipice of the next paradigm shift in computing. So I understand the hype.

The Downside of Generative AI in Recruiting
What are some of the risks of using these tools in HR – particularly in the recruitment process?

When new technology emerges, so do new problems. That’s particularly true when the pace of technology moves as quickly as AI is today.

But after six months of studying and using this technology in the context of hiring, here’s one of my concerns:

We’re using AI now in many ways to generate content. And that content is training the AI that will ultimately generate content in the future.

I think this poses more risks than opportunities. It creates a homogenization effect, so it’s harder to stand out. This can have a negative impact on brands, among other things.

Avoiding AI-Induced “Sameness”

That’s so scary. I think this tech is wonderful, but the risk isn’t just to recruiting and hiring. It will touch everything, yes?

There’s a lot of energy focused now on making sure some guardrails are put in place. Most companies are already thinking about how to protect their brand and their voice when AI helps generate content.

So the good news is that this is top-of-mind now. And companies like ours are integrating it safely into the talent acquisition process, as opposed to being a little bit fast and loose.

Implications for the Hiring Process

Can this technology make candidates seem indistinguishable by obscuring certain characteristics or attributes?

Yes, this is fascinating. Will it make a hiring manager’s job easier, or harder? I’m torn.

For example, what happens when a candidate uses AI-based writing suggestion tools to communicate with an employer, instead of directly researching the company, the job, or even the hiring manager? Will it make suboptimal candidates seem optimal?

This is a good example of how these tools can make it difficult to see people as individuals…

For more insights from Todd about how your HR team can make the most of generative AI in recruiting, listen to this full podcast episode. And be sure to subscribe to the #WorkTrends Podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

Also, to continue this conversation on social media anytime, follow our #WorkTrends hashtag on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in the Hiring Process

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As artificial intelligence evolves, we’re going to increasingly rely on it for boosting the hiring process. In Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, author Max Tegmark asserts that the “rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology.” So it is, as we already see in hiring. AI is already saving HR teams time and money while attracting the best candidates in these key ways:

Solving the Sourcing Process

A recent study found that 46 percent of companies struggle with finding and attracting the right candidates for their open positions. AI programs can search online resumes and social profiles to find the best candidates for each job based on specific traits. They can also relay personalized messages to promising candidates and do it in scale — something human recruiters could not do alone. 

AI is being taught to overcome human biases during sourcing and screening. The key is teaching the program on data that presents as gender-neutral and training it to ignore other identifying information that might trigger biased decisions. An organization may end up with a pool of applicants far more diverse than if the HR team itself had sourced them.

Enhancing Employee Experience

Once your AI program sources and contacts candidates, AI can lead them through the recruiting funnel quickly and efficiently, ensuring the candidate experience goes smoothly.  Recruiter chatbots can provide real-time answers to candidate questions, offer quick feedback and suggest next steps. They can provide links to promising job descriptions, clarify company hours and location, and schedule interviews. 

Having a good experience during this phrase is a big deal, as is borne out in a study by CareerBuilder: 58 percent of candidates are likely to have a negative opinion of a company if they never get a response to their job application.67 percent are likely to have a favorable view of the company if they get frequent updates after they applied. Instead of dead air, a chatbot fills the space — and furthers the process.

Screening Boosts

AI-powered conversational tools can also give the screening process a boost. Since these tools are always learning, they’re ideal for when going back for a second look at candidates who applied in the past. AI tools can store essential data on all applicants, saving time and effort when you’re ready to reach out to them again. Companies that use AI tools have reduced their cost per screening by 75 percent.

Using technology to screen talent also saves time and effort for candidates. When CVS Health began using the Virtual Job Tryout assessment, it was looking for an automated screening tool to shortlist candidates quickly. The company processes over one million applicants per year: saving time on the hiring process is critical to the recruiting team. 

By offering job simulation inside hiring platforms, CVS enabled  candidates to virtually try out some of the tasks in a potential position. Depending on their performance, they might be invited  go proceed to the next step in the recruiting process. Or they might decide the position wasn’t a good fit, saving themselves and the company time. CVS Health found this tool screened out half a million applicants right away, saving 40 years of hiring manager time.  The tool also brought a measurable improvement in performance, training, new hire retention, and operational outcomes.

Assistance with Interviewing

AI in HR provides a simple way not only to reach out to possible candidates, but also screen, rank, and shortlist their resumes based on the traits most relevant to your company. Then, once you have a list of people you’d like to interview, the chatbot can act as the scheduler.

Certain AI tools can also help you conduct a later-stage virtual interview before inviting a candidate to come in person. Conducting a video interview with preset questions, you can run an AI program to analyze candidates’ facial expressions, tone of voice, mannerisms, and word choice. 

This technology will make it more likely you’ll end up with new employees who fit your company culture, which is why major brands like Google, Facebook, and Apple have been using this technology for years. And now even more companies use it, including Capital One, Allstate, ThredUp, Hilton, and AT&T. 

Onboarding

AI is also improving onboarding procedures — by, for instance, automating repetitive or tedious tasks like conducting background checks, putting together documents about benefits, and creating offer letter templates. AI can also help organize, print, and deliver all onboarding paperwork. 

The same can be said of training documents — another time-consuming step when the HR team has to do it manually. Instead, AI-powered tools can ensure all new employees receive copies of the paperwork that spells out company policies and log-in information.They can track when documents have been read, prompt an electronic signature, and schedule meetings to go over the information further when necessary. 

And all can happen 24/7 from anywhere, which means employees can start training or getting answers to their questions any time and from any device. It also allows the HR department to focus on tasks that cannot be automated or done outside of business hours. 

Why Use AI in HR?

From sourcing and screening candidates to interviewing and onboarding, AI is undeniably changing HR’s capabilities. A report from Deloitte in 2017 notes that 38 percent of survey respondents believed AI would be widely used at their company within three to five years. In 2018, that number rose to 42 percent,. It’s still climbing.  

72 percent of executives believe AI will offer significant business advantages in the coming years, while a LinkedIn study found that 76 percent of hiring managers believe AI will be at least somewhat important in the future. As Eric Sydell, EVP of Innovation at Modern Hire, summed it up, “AI is a perfect way to recruit the best talent that will excel at your company, as it uses huge volumes of data to predict outcomes better than any person can. Not only does AI save HR departments time, but it also gives candidates some insight into whether they even want the job.” 

 

 

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Four Transformative Benefits Of AI In Hiring

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Industry heavyweight Andrew Ng calls AI the new electricity that will transform every industry.

In recruiting, companies like Indigo and Hot Topic are already using AI for their high-volume hiring.

Looking to learn more about AI? Watch our video below:

So what are the transformative benefits of AI in hiring? I list the top 4 benefits below.

  1. Reducing time to hire

A recent survey of talent acquisition professionals by Talent Tech Labs found 62% consider time to hire as the top recruiting success metric.

Four Transformative Benefits Of AI In Hiring

Source: Talent Tech Labs

If speeding up your hiring process is important, AI in hiring makes a lot of sense.

An AI algorithm can take a large quantity of data, for example, hundreds of resumes, and quickly screen and find the best 10% of applicants based on your own historical hiring decisions.

Human recruiters screening 200 resumes to 20 resumes would take several days of productivity. AI can do it quickly, freeing up recruiters for more value-add tasks like interviews, relationship-building, or building business cases for HR initiatives.

This is also where AI in hiring has an advantage over just using an applicant tracking system (ATS).

A typical ATS is good at organizing a large volume of applications, but it still generally requires humans to sift through that information. AI does the same work within your ATS in a fraction of the time.

  1. Increasing the quality of your candidates

AI is sometimes used synonymously with machine learning, which hints how it can increase candidate quality.

Once AI learns which factors make someone a successful or unsuccessful employee in a role, it can continuously tweak what it searches for and shortlist the highest quality candidates for you.

While AI may never be able to say, “This is the exact person you should hire” (this is where humans come in), it can be extremely effective at weeding out unqualified resumes and putting only quality candidates in front of you.

  1. Mining your ATS to rediscover candidates

The ability to mine your ATS is an often overlooked cost-saving benefit of AI in hiring.

To illustrate, we’ll use some simple math. Let’s say you have a job open and receive 100 applications. If we assume 80% are unqualified, that means 20 of those applicants are a good fit.

One person gets the job, and 19 receive the “We’ll keep your resume on file” email. Those resumes are kept on file but essentially disappear into the candidate black hole.

Three months later, you have another similar role open up. Rather than launching into a new time-consuming search process, why not rediscover those 19 prior applicants within your ATS who met the qualifications?

AI can mine your ATS to find those resumes again for you. This helps you source quality hires while reducing hiring time and improving your candidate experience.

  1. Sourcing passive candidates

Lever’s data shows sourced candidates are the second biggest group of hires after direct applies.

Four Transformative Benefits Of AI In Hiring
Source: Lever

Sourcing passive candidates is an important strategy for meeting headcount because according to LinkedIn, only 36% of candidates actively search for a new job.

AI can find passive candidates for you by learning what the job requirements are and then searching through job boards and candidate databases such as CareerBuilder that meet the qualifications.

This article was first published on ideal.com.