AI brings recruiters and candidates together

Within many organisations, the HR department has been an early adopter of AI. Agents are conducting interviews, screening candidates and helping employers craft job postings that get results. AI is also freeing HR managers from hours spent answering employee questions, as chatbots can quickly scan and summarise company policies and benefits.

 

According to the chief of staff at one major online recruiting platform, AI removes emotion and subjective bias from the recruiting process and helps hiring managers make data-driven decisions. But agents themselves can also create bias, so constant training and improvement is imperative.

 

AI can show hiring managers which candidates most closely match the profiles of other workers who have been successful in similar roles. Some AI agents evaluate candidate personalities in addition to skill sets. Cultural fit can be as important as skills and aptitudes, and it’s not just the corporate culture that counts. The “culture of the customer” is equally important in many jobs, according to an executive who oversees the hiring of frontline workers for a major US airline. Baggage handlers don’t just need to be strong, he said; they also need to honour the airline’s customers by handling each bag as if it were their own.

 

Skills versus roles

 

The best hires often result from clearly defined, realistic job postings. HR professionals say some hiring managers shoot for the stars when describing their ideal candidate, missing the good in search of the perfect. AI can help refine a job posting and can encourage hirers to prioritise what they need over what they want.

 

Staffing experts say managers should hire skills, not roles. And AI agents can help find people who have the needed skills, even if those individuals have not previously held the job title in the listing. And agents don’t always limit their searches to job seekers. They may find an ideal candidate based on skills and accomplishments posted online, giving a hiring manager a chance to recruit someone who might never have applied.

 

Contingent workers

 

Companies often rely on staffing agencies to supply contingent or seasonal workers, and many large employers will retain multiple agencies. When the labour market tightens around holidays or other seasonal demand-drivers, turning to the right agency can mean the different between a fully staffed operation and a season of unexpected costs, frustrated customers and missed opportunities. Recruiting experts point out that the agency which seems the most effective may not actually be. Companies need to analyse cost, worker performance and retention, metrics that can be captured, compared and summarised by AI agents.

 

Scheduling and paying contingent workers is another job AI is well-suited for. The contingent workforce skews younger, and many Gen Z workers are completely comfortable communicating with an AI agent about their schedules and compensation.

 

HR is the beachhead

 

AI agents seem particularly well-suited to many HR functions, and many companies are adopting this technology for recruiting, managing and optimising their human capital. As these initiatives prove successful, AI is expected to make its way into other corporate functions.

 

The move from hiring to training is a natural progression, and indeed many companies are using AI to train machines. A major US manufacturer used videos of a complex process to teach autonomous screwdrivers to calibrate themselves. Now workers without specialised training can perform the calibration by holding the screwdrivers. The company’s EVP of strategy said AI helps scale mission-critical processes by solving for a shortage of skilled workers.

 

These are use cases with measurable returns on investment, and they are not isolated. From finance to marketing to compliance, AI is finding a foothold. The director of enterprise AI at an international consumer products retailer was recently asked which parts of his company he thought could realise a return on investment in AI, and answered “I haven’t found a single unit that couldn’t benefit and have a positive ROI.”

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