Everything
else!

There is so much talk about Artificial Intelligence (AI) now and the impact it is having on our lives. As a Business Owner in recruitment, I am inundated daily with salespeople offering me all sorts of tools that supposedly will improve my working life by using AI across most functions in the recruitment process. I agree that some tools could be useful in automating repetitive processes that do not require human interaction but when tools are offered that speak to my client or candidates, I draw the line.

In the 1980s we became aware of AI, in the 2010s, AI transitioned from a niche technology to a mainstream business tool. Now we are in the 2020s, AI is considered a necessity in business today, used in various sectors for streamlining tasks, analysing data, and enhancing business operations but can it replace a recruitment consultant.

Recruitment is more than just filling a job – taking a job order from a client or interviewing a candidate and placing them in a job to make a fee. The recruitment process needs to include listening, empathy, care, understanding and deciphering what you are being told, reading between the lines and sorting truth from deceit. Computers can read computers and no matter how well AI is programmed by a human, it cannot read feelings or understand nuances, it cannot interpret what is being said between the lines, it cannot change the course of a conversation based on what is being said. AI in the recruitment world is built to exclude the majority in search of the minority who is useful for a particular job and even then, that minority has to jump through hoops to get past the robotic gatekeeper. 

I have recently seen posts on LinkedIn where people complain that a chatbot attempted to interview them but did not understand the answers given and glitched, so the candidate tried again and eventually gave up. I speak with many candidates who are wary, cautious and concerned that the human touch will disappear from the recruitment process.

Having been in recruitment for as long as I have, I have seen many trends come and go but the human recruitment consultant has always been the mainstay of the industry. I think AI is here to stay in its many different formats and will continue to evolve and develop and become more sophisticated, but I do hope that we will not lose the human touch. It is an indelible part of an industry that is about helping people.

Here are some facts – Source - https://www.authorityhacker.com/ai-statistics/

• AI-generated content concerns 63% of individualsdue to potential bias or inaccuracies
• 35%of businesses now use AI
• 77% of devices in usefeature some form of AI
• Consumers believe that AI platform usage is 33%, whereas actual usage is 77%
• Private information protection by AI is doubted by 52% of consumers
• For 28% of people, the value of human touch in tasks is irreplaceable