The lowdown on AI and Recruitment

September 12th, 2023 | Industry News

AI is nothing new to recruitment – at least to the recruiter. Web-based recruitment software has been calling on AI for several years, to sort through CVs and resumes but generative AI, artificial intelligence that creates (or generates) material such as text and images, is a game-changer for the recruitee too.

Recruitment management software is also beginning to benefit from AI, finding that it can be used to generate interview questions and dig deeper into CV content to engage with shortlisted candidates, easily finding the best of the best. Note that it’s shortlisting that gains these results. Longlisting has been beset by problems, because generative AI is ‘fed’ on data by its creators, and if they have biases themselves, they proliferate through the system. AI is not unbiased, as many researchers have proved.

Making the best use of AI in recruitment

There’s another issue too, which has both positives and negatives. Job seekers, especially those in IT, healthcare and social working roles are using generative AI to help them prepare for interviews. Recruitment website design may soon need to be including more than a Captcha – and while this may sometimes look like ‘cheating’ it may also be seen to benefit candidates who are traditionally disadvantaged by recruitment processes. On the plus side, AI can dig through mountains of data to create personalised recruitment plans for job seekers. On the minus side, it’s known to add the ideal qualifications and skills to their CVs, whether or not they’ve earned them! This might make AI an unavoidable partner – both poacher and gamekeeper, but smart employers and recruitment agencies will utilise AI as a collaborator; using it to support the best recruitment CRM by shaping recruiting strategies for each vacancy.

The big takeaway on the relationship between AI and recruitment is this: generative AI is not separate to human activity – it requires human interaction for prompts, state outcomes and – above all – the feedback that enables it to do better. Nothing replaces intuition and real-time interaction and harnessing AI to these capacities keeps it where it belongs, the servant of recruitment, not the master.