It seems long gone are the days of human resource professionals pouring over hundreds of resumes to find the right candidate for just one job.
Now, artificial intelligence and even robots are getting roles in helping companies go through resumes, interview and even hire the right people.
According to a recent story in The Wall Street Journal, a San Francisco-based company called DeepSense is using personality traits and algorithms to comb through prospective candidate’s social media accounts to look for certain personality traits.
It marks a 180-degree turn from the days where a resume was the most important tool for a job hunter.
Another company, HireVue, a Utah-based company that delivers artificial intelligence assessments of digital interviews to nearly 50 companies. The company said its algorithm looks at things like candidates’ tone of voice during the interview, word clusters used and even small facial expressions to give companies a different perspective on candidates applying for various positions.
In fact, a report by Undercover Recruiter found that artificial intelligence could replace 16 percent of human resource jobs over the next decade. That doesn’t mean HR professionals should start polishing up their own resumes, but it does indicate a shift in how companies are looking at filling jobs in the future.
Proponents of using artificial intelligence to help with the recruiting process suggest it can best judge a potential candidate’s overall fit with, not just the specific job, but also in the company’s culture. By looking at things like a candidate’s support of social causes or examination of their values, goals and career aspirations, a company may find the best overall candidate for the company, not just the position.
To drill down even more, AI can target potential candidates by past job titles, location, household income, salary, education, age and spending habits.
Using things like voice analysis can also evaluate those soft skills that may go unnoticed on a simple paper resume.
Human resource firms, specifically those that rely on a database of thousands of resumes to fill positions, can even monetize the use of various data points such as keywords and word flows to generate even more applications with impact through predictive analytics.
One big key to using AI for recruiting is the time factor. Human resource professionals can spend hours sifting through hundreds, even thousands, of resumes just to find the right candidate for one position. Artificial intelligence can be used to not only find the right candidates, but also do a resume assessment, contact candidates and even help conduct preliminary interviews. It could ensure that HR professionals are presented with only the most qualified candidates for that final face-to-face interview.
By using artificial intelligence in the recruiting process, it almost forces prospective candidates to increase their networking. Just using clever resumes and education will fall by the wayside for building relationships that are authentic and genuine.
Artificial intelligence can also be used to judge a prospective candidate’s character. There are some tools already out there being used that can examine honest and the ethical makeup of a candidate that can quite simply be missed during a human vetting process.
Using artificial intelligence can also mean all candidates receive some kind of consideration. Now, in the human recruiting process, contact is limited because there simply isn’t enough time in the day or week to have communication with hundreds or thousands of applicants. AI and automation can end the days of stacks upon stacks of resumes sitting on someone’s desk that never get a read.
With a platform like Automate America, artificial intelligence is already in practice. The logic used in our system finds the best possible matches for contract work as soon as it is posted. This means that as soon as a company posts a position they are looking for, the system already finds qualified matches based on several factors including skill set and availability.
The profile structure of Automate America doesn’t just focus on work experience or education, but on the complete individual. The profile breaks down into several parts to showcase specific experience a contractor has and how they have used that specific skill set.
Highlighting skills in various locations ensures that human resource professionals don’t have to look in just one spot to find answers to the questions they may have regarding a specific candidate.
All of that said, AI isn’t the complete solution to human resource recruiting efforts. There still needs to be a human element to the recruiting process. There is something to be said about that “gut feeling” more experienced human resource professionals have when it comes to screening applicants for jobs.
Reach M.A. Clark at mattc@dev-cbl.automateamerica.com