![](https://miro.medium.com/max/5000/1*GUzExY_rdzsppKwaA1wcnw.jpeg)
Workplaces over the world are increasingly digital-led and technology-driven. According to a recent report by McKinsey Global Institute, rapid advances in AI and automation will have a revolutionary impact on the future of work.
And so, HR folks also have to pace up and upgrade their skills and competencies with the way they work with people, business stakeholders and communities.
The role of CHRO, hiring managers, talent acquisition teams, sourcing and recruitment specialists is not just taking a strategic shift, but also modeling new ways of working in the new-age corporate ecosystem.
Given the rise of AI, automation and analytics, one might assume that HR’s day-to-day work might become outdated. In truth: with digital capabilities and leadership in [your] organization, HR is only going to get better and more efficient in the way they source, screen, recruit, onboard, retain, engage and envision a progressive growth plan for your new-hires and existing employees.
Just as the way Patty Mccord , former chief talent officer at Netflix, talks about being a product manager of people in a podcast hosted by Mark C. Crowley, HR is becoming more aligned with financial and business goals of organizations. This also means that HR’s bigger mandate is to nurture its talent pool to be able to maximize the potential of its people in the right roles and responsibility areas. That way, HR can play a crucial role in having an impact on organization’s valuation and growth.
But before we get to the mechanics of how AI is accelerating the HR processes, systems and decisions, let’s understand what AI actually means in this context.
AI, also called as machine intelligence, works and reacts like a human, although not naturally. According to Prof. John McCarthy, it is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines; using computers to understand the potential of human intelligence. And since the human mind has its own set of peculiarities, AI-enabled tools and systems helps to automate tasks of a given function (in this case HR) in an effective and seamless manner.
So here are a few ways in which talent technology such as AI plays an integral role in augmenting your HR’s capabilities.
AI:
- Enabler for creating exceptional candidate (and employee) experience. Candidates and employees want a custom/ bespoke experience depending on their respective career pursuit journey with your organization. Candidates’ and/ or employees’ job critical questions or most pressing concerns can be addressed with AI-enabled systems in place. By programming your system with job FAQs and know-how, say at the time of onboarding an employee, you can easily create an organizational framework in which your new hires can get up to speed with connecting with other employees quickly at the first day of their work. As for candidates, AI can be a make-or-break candidate journey when they are experiencing your [employer] brand via the intent, language, messages and persona with which your AI system is interwoven in your channels of communication. That said, your prospective candidates and employees can become the best referrals for augmenting your employer brand; also mirroring your customer experience.
- Bots before bros. A large part of sourcing and screening of candidates can now be done with lesser intervention of recruiters (humans) via intelligent AI-assisted bots. Predicting candidate profiles has never been easier than with use of conversational bots. Fundamental questions that need to be asked from HR to the candidate(s) for qualifying them can be done through digitizing HR in its hiring process. Especially if your organization is into volume hiring for your respective job profiles, you can integrate chatbots into your career page and other messaging channels like WhatsApp, FB Messenger, among others, to kick-start your qualifying process in a fluid, faster and conversational way. Speaking of which, our conversational AI bot with NLP can conduct predictive assessments and language scoring thereby relieving sourcing and recruitment specialists to focus more on hiring decisions. You can then decide when you’d like to put the human back to the HR conversations once you are able to separate the [metaphorically put] ‘Wheat from the Chaff’ aka qualified candidates with whom you’d like to schedule a face-to-face meeting or advance a chat with.
- Strategic priorities over grunt-work. Low-value, repetitive tasks such as sourcing and screening candidates, payroll and employee benefit management, among others, can be cemented with AI. And high-value areas such as mentoring and giving continuous and honest feedback should rest with HR, as they are the ‘people engineers’ of boosting not just the employee productivity, but also improving employee morale and enhancing [their] purpose to work. Converting candidates to hires is a crucial role of HR. More so, it’s HR’s job to ensure there is a perceptive increase in employee retention and pipeline of qualified candidates– and that in itself is a feat to deal with. Good news? As a result of a sound candidate experience, with the adoption of AI system in your conversational recruitment platform, HR can have a more qualified discussion with the candidates at a faster pace than navigating a manual recruitment and evaluation process. Result? Hiring managers via employing AI solutions in their hiring process can estimate the longevity of candidate’s career fitment and tenure for the said organization.
- Data-driven instead of bias, observations and (human) errors. [Sophisticated] AI algorithms work in an unbiased manner when screening candidates. Although employers strive for an inclusive-oriented hiring pattern, they sometimes lean on to candidates with whom they relate emotionally or psychologically. But thanks to AI, employers can keep their individual observations and gut-feeling at check and screen diverse candidates based on apps that use AI to create data-driven interactive tests and assessments matched with candidate’s learning potency (in their pace and style). Since AI is bias-free when it comes to applicant’s race, gender, ethnicity and other diversity parameters, there is a greater of chance for your organization to ‘walk the talk’ of being an equal employment opportunity provider. Further, AI can help employers sift through massive data of candidates that includes social media accounts, resumes, and reference letters to post hiring performance assessments.
- Complements human intuition. Machines can never replace the faculties of humans, especially their imagination power, empathy, creativity and soft skills, to cite a few. In fact the ideal partnership between machines and humans, in the HR function, works best when HR can exercise their final hiring decision(s) grounded in the overall meritocracy of the candidature. Such decisions are suited for the human side of the human resources. Agree?
Over to you.
Are your looking to capture more qualified candidates, 24/7, in lesser time and cost?
Get a quick demo here and let us show you how.
Like what you read? Share it with your readers using #Letthetalenttalk