Let's take a moment to talk about the elephant in the room: Artificial Intelligence. Now, I know what you're thinking—AI, really? But trust me, it’s time.
You see, AI has evolved from being that awkward cousin at the family reunion to becoming the life of the party. It's no longer just about impressing us with chess victories or deepfake videos. AI is stepping up to the plate and revolutionizing how we handle People Operations and Recruiting (and creating a few headaches along the way).
So, why is it just now becoming mainstream for HR teams? Well, we’ve hit a point where the top 3 apps in the App Store are powered by ChatGPT. Everyone has an incredibly powerful AI in their pocket.
From streamlining candidate screening to improving employee retention rates, AI is like that Swiss Army knife you never knew you needed in your HR toolkit. But don't just take our word for it. We've got some real-life HR professionals ready to spill the beans on how AI is impacting their roles. So, buckle up, and let's hear what they have to say about:
One specific way AI is impacting HR is by streamlining the candidate screening process. AI-powered tools are being used to analyze resumes and job applications to identify the best-matched candidates for the job. This helps HR teams save time and effort by eliminating the need to manually sift through many applications.
AI algorithms also help in identifying patterns in applicant data, improving the accuracy of the selection process, and mitigating human biases. However, HR professionals must remain vigilant and ensure that the AI tools they use comply with legal and ethical guidelines for non-discriminatory hiring practices.
Jefferson McCall, Co-founder and HR Head, TechBullish
The impact of AI on training and development is really powerful. Upgrading the skills of employees is a crucial process in any industry for better productivity. With the help of AI tools, the HR team can customize training and development programs according to every employee.
Offering different levels of training modules based on the skill sets of employees is possible with Artificial Intelligence. It also considers employment levels, experience, and requirements for effective training programs. Moreover, the AI tools suggest the latest courses based on the employee’s current skills.
It fills the gap between employee skills and company requirements. Many AI tools have the potential to adapt to alternative courses and programs as per the company's requirements. The HR team can easily update the tools for consistent and relevant training programs. It helps tools to match with the new projects quickly. AI is not limited to what I just shared, it has a lot more to offer.
Saikat Ghosh, Associate Director of HR and Business, Technource
We implemented pre-hire assessments for every role we are looking to fill, especially the content writer roles. I noticed that lately, a lot of candidates use AI to generate their test articles. This has become such an issue that some of our customers report that 95% of the tests they get back are generated using AI.
To combat this, we implemented an AI content checker within our software to detect the candidates that use ChatGPT to generate content. While I am glad that people are using new technologies, this is concerning for anyone hiring content writers without checking if they're using AI. AI-generated content is still on shaky legs in Google's eyes, and a website can get penalized if they publish AI-only content.
Gordana Sretenovic, Co-founder, Workello
Structured interviews are key to our overall talent management strategy, helping us to mitigate unconscious bias and maximize candidate quality. However, structured interviews require careful planning, crafting, and scoring to be effective, creating a serious barrier to implementation.
AI language tools have enabled us to automate this process, helping us rapidly create highly effective structured interview questions, probing questions, and scoring guides for hiring managers. This makes structured interviewing more viable organization-wide, encouraging managers to avoid relying on unstructured and conversational interviews.
Consequently, AI saves us significant time and effort without compromising on quality. It also gives hiring managers significant flexibility in changing, amending, and improving structured interview guidelines without taking too much of their time.
Chloe Yarwood, HR Business Partner, Test Partnership
Recently, our HR department has been recruiting IT developers. We usually give an offline test task to cut off weak candidates before the first in-person interview. Candidates receive an assignment (to write code) and automated tests, so they can check if their code works or not.
Many senior-level programmers couldn’t cope with one particular task, while ChatGPT solved all 3 tasks in the assignment. However, only one out of three algorithms passed automated tests successfully. In other words, ChatGPT created a useless code and couldn't understand its failure. This only proves that AI won’t replace people in the near future.
It is vital to check your test task through AI so that potential candidates won’t mislead recruiters. If the AI solves the problem easily, try to modify it.
At our company, we use machine learning to simulate a person's behavior in the browser. Shortly, we will introduce a ChatGPT add-on to our product—it will help recruiters create better message chains.
Daria Erina, Managing Director, Linked Helper
AI is changing the HR landscape, but not always for the better. One negative change I've seen? Over-monitoring.
Keeping tabs on your workforce is great in theory, but I'm seeing a lot of unnecessary turnover because of over-monitoring. AI makes it exceptionally easy to track employee performance and engagement, but it doesn't always tell the full story.
Make sure you're not using these new tools to turn the workplace into a panopticon, especially in the early days of the tech. You might be confusing much-needed downtime or creativity breaks with slack.
And counterintuitively, many workers do worse when they feel watched. Stress levels go up and innovation drops as employees become terrified to misstep.
Linn Atiyeh, CEO, Bemana
Among the many virtues of AI, one which I find the most appealing is its capability to guarantee diversity throughout the recruitment process. Paradoxically, AI is one of HR professionals’ biggest allies in the search for humane values. It adds tremendous value to our work and significantly facilitates the hiring process.
Luckily, AI can scan the candidates’ resumes according to this criterion and has become very efficient in pre-selecting the potential underprivileged or underrepresented employees. Most importantly, however, such an action eliminates the unconscious bias, a human factor that should not be underestimated.
Inclusiveness has been becoming one of the crucial corporate values and recruiters’ choices play an important role in creating an environment based on the DEI model (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion). In the future, AI tools will help more and more in accelerating these processes.
Martyna Szczesniak, Community Expert, MyPerfectResume
We're certainly seeing an uptick in AI usage across the industry-specific to skills-based matching for internal teams, with HR departments looking to use AI as a means of time-saving and accuracy for skills-based matching.
Currently, this trend appears to be more specific to internal training matching. However, it is very interesting to note just how quickly AI has been adopted in this manner.
Wendy Makinson, HR Manager, Joloda Hydraroll
As a recruiter, I'm seeing retention rates skyrocket thanks to implementing AI in HR processes. Things like employee engagement and performance used to be judged qualitatively, but machine analytics allows large quantities of data to be evaluated quickly, making real-time pivots a breeze.
Now, when workers show signs of disinterest or demotivation, an intervention can be called immediately. If redundant tasks are the issue, AI takes care of that too, by automating vital, but mundane responsibilities like email responses or appointment confirmations.
The result is a better experience for employees, leading to less turnover and more success for the company overall.
Rob Reeves, CEO and President, Redfish Technology
There you have it, straight from the HR professionals themselves! AI has been making waves across the industry in just a few short months. It's like having a superpowered assistant that never sleeps, ready to jump in and help whenever needed.
Of course, as with any tool, it's important to use it responsibly and keep an eye on potential drawbacks, like over-monitoring and ensuring non-discriminatory hiring practices. But with the right balance, AI can be a game-changer for HR teams and organizations alike.
So, as we bid adieu to this topic, remember that the future is here, and it's time to embrace the helping hand (or robotic one) that AI offers. Stay curious, stay informed, and stay open to the possibilities that AI brings to the world of People Operations and Recruiting. After all, a little help from our AI friends might just be the secret ingredient to transforming your HR processes into an efficient, well-oiled machine.