The Robots Are Coming: A.I. in Recruiting

A.I.

These two letters have been causing quite a stir in the recruiting space over the last 6 months or so.

Every day as I look through my news I see at least one or two articles discussing artificial intelligence in recruiting‚Äîhow it‚Äôs going be the next big ‚Äúthing‚Äù in recruiting, how it‚Äôs going to change recruiting, how it‚Äôs not going to change recruiting, why it is or isn‚Äôt going to take all of our jobs. Every talent acquisition thought leader under the sun seems to have an opinion on the topic in a way that gives me a glimpse at what it must have been like in the blogosphere when social media began to blow up.

It‚Äôs creating so much noise that A.I. in recruiting has started to feel more like a black cloud (silver lining percentage dependent on your opinion of the matter) than something recruiters will actually put into everyday practice. By discussing the theory of it with such fervor, A.I. is slowly turning into a concept rather than a gameplan before our eyes‚Äîanother pattern that seems hopelessly similar to the social media boom.

Moving past the vague discussions of how A.I. may or may not change the recruiting industry, let’s take a realistic look at the way it’s already affected recruiting and the new developments that are out there.

It‚Äôs easy to hear A.I. and immediately picture a robot sitting in your desk chair and you sitting in an unemployment line. Not quite. To put all the fears at ease, like most new technological developments, A.I. is going to enhance many aspects of recruiting and make our lives easier, rather than replace us. Take a look at one of the biggest pieces of A.I. that‚Äôs already out there for recruiting: resume scanners. These systems run over resumes and make intelligent decisions based on the content of resumes as to whether or not they should be viewed by a recruiter. Now think about this technology has changed the recruiting industry‚Äîit‚Äôs made life just a little bit easier, right?

Despite this presence of A.I. already, it‚Äôs become such a hot topic because many companies are now looking at how they can go a step further and really increase the amount of decisions made by technology. Here are some on the frontier:

• Recruitz.io: This is a programmatic advertising company that focuses solely on the recruitment marketing space. Essentially, you tell the program what candidates you‚Äôre looking for and using the information you give, they create highly targeted campaigns across everything from Google to Twitter to Indeed in one fell swoop.
• MosaicTrack: This program works very similarly to a resume scanner, but takes the process a step further by simulating how a hiring team reads a resume and makes a Y/N decision. It can also read resumes you‚Äôve picked based on certain job descriptions and learn how to match certain resumes to certain jobs, giving you better recommendations.
• Arya: Arya, claiming to be the world‚Äôs first A.I. recruiting platform, goes from sourcing to selecting resumes for further review by a recruiter. The automated sourcing uses data collected from your past recruiting efforts and impresses those same patterns when finding new candidates for your funnel, followed by a similar learning resume scanner to what MosaicTrack has developed.
• Mya: Mya separates itself from Arya by being the world‚Äôs first A.I. recruiting assistant. But this is the big one that most articles are hailing as the recruiting A.I. frontrunner. It works with a handful of the big name ATSs and essentially does all of the jobs that need to happen throughout the interview process‚Äîprescreening, answers FAQs candidates might have for you, provides application tips, and so on.

All of these are impressive technologies are also very dependent on one thing: flesh & blood recruiters.

Programs still need data and they still need someone to at one point actually talk to the candidates. Rather than fearing the robot takeover as A.I. develops and discussing the pros/cons, take a chance on diving into a program that works for your team and see how it can make your life easier. Use it to cut the mundane tasks out of your workday and spend more time what you do best: building and maintaining relationships with hiring managers and candidates.