Pros and Cons of Using AI in Your Hiring Process

As with everything else in the world, there are pros and cons of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to supplementing human resources management (HRM). AI seems to be stepping into every industry imaginable today, from autonomous cars to genomic diagnostics.

Data drives everything, yet as you can imagine, problems tend to arise when using AI tools in a genuinely neutral environment. They are natively blind to issues that seem overly influenced by society today, resulting in a potential clash with regulations or ethics.

Today we’ll examine some of the advantages and concerns towards more significant AI deployment in this multi-billion-dollar industry.

Benefits of AI in Hiring

Before we begin, it should be clear that this discussion leans towards in-house engagement with full-time employees. For temporary talent engagement, using an existing freelance platform will be more cost-effective and efficient.

Less Potential for Human Bias

Regardless of guidelines, policy, or other factors, ensuring an utterly bias-free hiring process can be incredibly difficult. It’s a human trait to be biased towards certain aspects – in fact, a defining characteristic.

AI, on the other hand, is purely data-driven. As long as the intent is not present in the AI tool, it won’t introduce unnecessary characteristics into the hiring process. While data-driven assessment may sound a bit cold, it is impartial.

Speeds Up the Hiring Process

Recruitment times vary widely depending on role, industry, and other factors. Yet, it’s undeniable that you can speed up at least part of the process using AI tools. For example, you can use them to create or improve job descriptions, match applications with requirements, carry out candidate screening, and more.

Taking too long to connect with potential talent is something that can cost you dearly. Remember, while there are ample candidates, almost all of them will be applying to multiple companies. If your hiring process drags on, talented individuals may quickly get snapped up by the competition.

Reduce HR Expenditure

From start to finish, hiring new talent is expensive. An increasingly large number of HR tasks can quickly lead to ballooning staff costs simply for talent acquisition. By introducing AI tools, not only can you speed up the process (as discussed above), but repetitive tasks can be kept away from expensive HR personnel and reduce cost.

Remember that the cost of AI tools is often much less in the context of large companies. As your organization grows, it makes much more financial sense to replace rote tasks with automation. You may be surprised at the overall impact on ROI.

Lowers Chances of Talent Leaks

When HR is recruiting, the focus is often on specific roles that need filling. While some companies do keep applications on file, cross-matching doesn’t always occur for various reasons. This shortcoming can easily lead to talent leaks where a candidate suited for an alternative role is lost.

Cross-matching often gets neglected due to the amount of time consumed trying to match multiple candidates and roles. Rather than onboarding more HR to fill this gap, you can leverage AI for much faster results.

Matching a potentially leaked talent with alternative roles also saves on the future need to hire specifically for that purpose. Keep these identified talents on file, or simply hire them early in anticipation of filling a need.

Improve the Sourcing Process

The traditional hiring process makes extensive use of job agencies or boards. While this helps save time and money, AI tools can give you many of the capabilities these channels offer. For example, an AI scraper can collate data from many sources and assess them for suitability.

With a single tool, you gain access to a massive potential talent pool that may not directly apply for a vacancy in the company. In this aspect, AI tools are even more important given how well individuals today reduce their digital footprint.

Disadvantages of AI in Hiring

Increasing Regulation

Like many other IT-related elements, AI remains but a tool in the hiring process. Unless you take great care selecting these tools, some form of bias may remain. The reality is that regulation isn’t seeking to eliminate bias but to direct it towards the desired outcome.

Because of this, many countries often have some form of discrimination built into regulatory systems – for instance, mandates for specific proportions of gender, domestic versus expatriate labor, or other mandated ratios.

One example of this is New York’s proposed legislation to regulate AI algorithms allowed for use in the hiring process. Similar proposals also exist in the European Union, with initial legal frameworks already in draft.

There are also varying general guidelines on occasions, such as privacy laws concerning video interviews, data collection activities, and such. Since 2019 the US state of Illinois has regulated the use of AI in video interviews mandating disclosure and specific prohibitions.

Specific Areas of Challenge Exist

AI and data often work well together and can introduce elements of analysis effectively as well. However, it isn’t perfect, and when assessing individuals, there may be some areas challenging to factor in and match.

Intangible factors are especially prominent in this area and can include company culture, values, and mission cohesion. If too much weight is placed on tangible areas of analysis, mismatches in this area can still result in poor hires.

The risk of this happening is exceptionally high if the AI algorithms deployed are less intelligent than optimal. For example, some AI algorithms do nothing more than field matching and are extremely poor in a human relationship context.

Lack of Transparency in the AI Industry

Most companies will rely on external sources for AI algorithms used in the hiring process. Unfortunately, like many commercial products, exactly how they work is often considered proprietary. The result is a high risk as they may introduce areas contrary to the company culture or legislation.

May Lower Company Image

People often have different attitudes towards the use of tech tools. These varying attitudes can mean alienating a proportion of potential candidates who prefer more direct human interaction with a prospective employer.

What makes things worse is that AI elements are often used in the first line of the hiring process. Only when data has been sorted are results provided to human recruiters to make the final judgments.

This prospective alienation may lead to a poor impression of the brand among prospective employees, which may spread in the community and be hard to counter should processes change in the future.

AI Recruiting Tools Currently Available

If you’d like to try some of the available AI recruitment tools, the good news is the abundance of choice. There’s a lot of noise in the industry, so picking the right one can be a long process for each company.

Some of the available are;

XOR – You can design this AI chatbot to fit perfectly with your brand and serve as the first line of interaction with prospective hires. It can be highly customized to reflect branding, possible queries, and more. Many big brands are already using XOR, including Ikea, McDonald’s, and Mars.

Arya – For something more comprehensive, Arya serves as a complete recruitment platform that can work relatively independently. At the same time, it offers recruiters the necessary features to reach out to candidates directly via the platform. Arya takes care of employee screening and can help drastically reduce the cost of hiring.

Seekout – If your company needs to reach out to extend the reach of HR, then Seekout is a solid choice. It’s a talent-sourcing platform capable of scouring a massive database to find candidates based on job descriptions. The scope and scale of Seekout make it more suited to enterprise-scale users.

Pymetrics – Professionals today often make use of gamification in multiple professional settings. Pymetrics does that for hiring and adds behavioral science into the mix. The result is a very modern tool that most younger professionals can relate with easily as they take Pymetrics tests.

HireVue – Originally a video software, HireVue entered the AI recruitment space relatively late, in 2020. It offers a HR chatbot suite capable of end-to-end assistance in the recruitment process. The platform helps source, screen, and naturally act as a video interview system.

Final Thoughts: Will AI Replace Human Recruiters

As with most industries new to the adoption of technology, HR is currently in a state of flux. This state is partially due to transient technology coupled with developing regulations. Overall, AI at the moment won’t replace human recruiters.

Instead, they should be seen as valuable assets capable of lowering overall recruitment costs and process enhancement.