Improving the Hiring Process using Artificial Intelligence – Pros and Cons of the New Generation Recruitment Process

Hiring talented employees has always been challenging. But with all the advances in technology, particularly with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine learning (ML), recruitment agencies have easily been able to identify which candidates are a great fit for a company and which ones are not. The integration of these technologies is mainstream for several recruitment agencies, with all its paradoxes and improvements.

And although AI is a great tool for remote recruitment, it still has its disadvantages. How to fully know if all the candidates are being evaluated the right way?

There’s a Netflix series that illustrates this perfectly. ‘The Good Place’ is a story about the afterlife and what you should have done to be a good person before dying. The funniest thing of the series isn’t what people have to do to be good, but how the system decides if they are good or not.

Without spoilers, the system works with scores and points for any good/bad action. For the system, evil acts could be ‘how many times you use Facebook as a verb’ (-5.55) or ‘anytime you buy a trashy magazine’ (-0.75). If you ‘plant a booger tree in Madagascar’ (+ 4.25) or ‘eat a sandwich’ (+ 1.04), you will secure a spot in the ‘Good Place’ for sure.

The series is making a joke of how algorithmic systems decide whether a person is valuable or not. Does it sound like the beginning of another dystopian film? Nope, it is just a dull reality. Moreover, it’s the recruitment reality that bases an algorithm on choosing among different candidates and selecting the more suitable ones for a job. But, using AI to improve your hiring process isn’t entirely a bad thing. Let’s analyze the pros and cons of this system in remote recruitment.

What is AI for Remote Recruitment?

One of the biggest challenges for recruitment agencies, remote or on-site, is identifying the right candidate in a large applicant pool. The hiring process is getting harder when companies start to employ more people with fewer human resources around. Implementing this process with AI and ML allows saving money and time, speeding up the virtual recruitment stages.

For the hiring process, recruitment agencies rely on AI for three core functions:

1. Sourcing: Spotting and contacting skilled professionals.

2. Screening: Quickly selecting the best candidates.

3. Interviewing: Evaluating a candidate’s personality traits and skills for a specific role.

Candidate Sourcing

Automated systems are a great tool to find and connect faster with candidates. By searching profiles in job boards or AI chatbots, recruiters can have a pool of selected candidates saving an enormous amount of time.

Here are a few popular tools for recruiters:

• Hiretual: You can search across platforms and profiles, manage talent pools, and customize candidate engagement.

• Appcast: With predictive analytics, real-time data, and programmatic bidding, the program maximizes recruitment results.

• Shapr: As a machine learning algorithm, it suggests 15 people every day, communicating when the interest is mutual.

Candidate Screening

Screening CVs is one of the most time-consuming phases of the recruitment process. In this case, AI screening tools work on CVs, behavioral and skill assessments. Based on these data, the AI toll gives you a predictive performance that can match, or not, with the open position.

These are some popular tools for screening:

• Recruiterbox: With a resume parsing functionality and applicant tracking system, it helps screening profiles.

• Ideal: It provides automated resume screening, shortening candidates’ lists.

• Vervoe: It helps to evaluate a scale and dedicate time to high-performing candidates with a system of auto-grades and ranks.

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Candidate Interviews

When it’s interview time, AI tools come in handy in two critical scenarios. First, to assess video interviews, using voice and facial expression analysis to evaluate personality traits. A second option is to use AI tools with a pre-recorded video interview to analyze a candidate’s skills test and their response.

These tools can cut down recruiters’ time and effort, but you still need to interpret and evaluate these data. Here are some tools for interviewing candidates:

• HireVue: It is a digital interview platform where the AI analyzes work style and cognitive ability with an interview.

• VCV: With chat and call bots, the software screens candidates and invites them to video-interviews with facial recognition.

• Impress: A chatbot conducts text-based interviews with candidates.

Pros of AI in Remote Recruitment

Going through the three main functions of AI in recruitment, it sounds like new technologies are a win for any recruiter for a few crucial reasons:

1. Algorithms Save A Lot of Time

That’s the main advantage of AI and ML in remote recruitment. Rather than going through thousands of CVs and interviews, these systems give a pre-selection of the best applicants. Using automated tools during the hiring process helps recruiters deal only with selected candidates as they have already done the interview stage.

2. Data Can Find Connections that Humans Can’t

If there is something machines know how to do, it is collecting and analyzing data in no time. Automated systems will always beat humans in these tasks. That’s what they were created for: Handling the immense amount of information and knowledge we have. In a remote recruitment field, this is a crucial feature to consider. How these systems analyze data can create connections that would take years of work and research for a team.

3. Save Money and Improve a Candidate’s Experience

For each hire, the average cost is $4,129 without calculating time and resources. By saving this money, you can implement teams and communication platforms, improving the system for both recruiters and candidates.

AI tools can reduce these costs by up to 30% per-hire without considering how automated systems can cut off the waste of wrong hires. Predicting candidates’ performances, these tools allow recruiters to make more conscious decisions when hiring and finding who can fit best with the role.

Online screening and interviews save time for everyone, improving transparency and communication systems.

Cons of AI in Remote Recruitment

It sounds great, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, AI isn’t always the best option when it comes to remote recruitment. Here are some of its disadvantages:

1. When It Comes To Empathy, Humans Are More Skilled

If there is something tough to predict, it is human psychology. No-one knows what’s in people’s minds, not even machines. Especially when looking for a job, emotional variables come into play and what you need is someone able to read behind the appearance. For what is commonly known as emotional intelligence, you still need humans to do the job. We will always use machines in the future, but they cannot do all the work.

2. Gender And Diversity Are A Human Affair

Have you ever heard of algorithm bias? It is the biggest pitfall of machine learning. You can find cases in which the software prefers men to women or in which neural networks make parallels between black people and monkeys. As horrible as it sounds, gender and diversity are human affairs that the machine doesn’t see as an issue. These systems are continually improving, but you still need someone to read data and stop these patterns when they come out as an outcome.

For example, in 2015 Amazon realized that their AI recruitment system was not rating candidates in a gender-neutral way. The company’s computer models were trained to vet applicants by observing patterns over a 10-year period. As most applicants and employees were men, Amazon’s systems taught itself that male candidates were preferable to the point that it even penalized resumes according to words like ‘women’s.”

3. Humans Understand Humor Better

AI tools follow set patterns based on data and have limited conceptions to analyze data out of contexts like soft skills and humor. Here is when humans come into play. Working in a team, you work with people, not with skills. That’s why recruiters always have the last word. At the end of the day, you want to work with a great professional and a nice person. The algorithm spots the first, recruits spot the second.

What’s the Future of AI Recruitment?

Despite the fast and ever-growing digitalization of society, humans won’t be replaced by machines and robots any time soon. AI and ML save time and money to recruiters but can’t give you the last word on a candidate.

In the ‘Good Place’ the system was perfect, and yet somehow, it failed (no spoilers!). That’s because, with the fast evolution of new technologies, societies are changing – plus, we just got a global pandemic speeding up all these transformations.

With the job market in fast transformation, the skills and positions you will look for are transforming too. You can see it, but a machine can’t. When you hire someone, AI can help you save time and resources. What you can do is to spot the human skills that will make the candidate not only a professional addition but a great new team member.