Embracing AI in Talent Acquisition - A Path to Innovation and Growth
Anisah’s Takeaways from a 2023 Talent Acquisition Week Conference Session:
“Talent Acquisition in the Age of AI: Putting Advanced Technology to work for you” with Rebecca Warren and Connor Volpe from Eightfold AI
Reframing the AI breakthrough as a supportive tool to collaborate with rather than an evil robot competing to take recruiter's jobs…at least not yet…
Just like with any technological breakthrough, it often feels like panic and chaos as we learn the true impact this breakthrough can have on our society and how to best utilize it, learn its limits and errors, and implement policies and boundaries to always ensure ethical practices (my partner always says “please” and “thank you” to all AI he interacts with so they’ll be sure to spare him when they inevitably take over the world).
The premise of this highly impactful session was to soothe our nerves when it comes to AI, and instead, encourage us as TA professionals to collaborate with AI, utilizing the best of both worlds (Artificial Intelligence and irreplaceable human intelligence) to empower us to do our jobs better.
While AI tools certainly have a long way to go when it comes to being bias-proof in analyzing talent, they can be incredibly helpful when it comes to finding talent from a skills-focused angle. There is a new push in recruiting to focus on translatable skills and the potential of these skills reflected in a candidate's resume rather than focusing on how the candidate's experience directly applies to the role being recruited for. AI can be used to quickly retrieve data and “connect the dots” in ways that humans may not initially see thus allowing us to efficiently connect talent to current or future job opportunities, with an emphasis on potential and translatable skills as opposed to checking a box. In this regard, AI can be used to quickly retrieve data and “connect the dots” in ways that humans may not initially see thus allowing us to efficiently connect talent to current or future job opportunities, with an emphasis on potential and translatable skills as opposed to checking a box. In this regard, AI can also be used to retrieve data analytics to help us understand the needs of our company, the existing internal talent (do internal candidates have translatable skills for open roles?), and the industry market for these skills (fastest declining/rising skills). Using this AI-generated data can be instrumental in backing up a skills-focused recruiting approach with effective data-driven evidence.
According to a recent Deloitte survey on the success of organizations with a skills-focused approach when hiring talent, they are:
98% more likely to retain top performers
107% more likely to place talent effectively
52% more likely to be innovative
98% more likely to have a reputation as a great place to work at
The bottom line: Collaboration always wins. This was a highly impactful session for me since I hear something new about AI and its seemingly unknown potential every day, with many individuals uncertain and fearful. While we still have a long way to go in discovering the potential of AI, I deeply appreciated the emphasis on human and AI collaboration rather than reverting to our human instinct to compete with and dominate anything showing signs of “independent” intelligence. And even better, utilizing AI and human collaboration for something as amazing as a skills-focused approach to talent acquisition could open up SO many new career and growth opportunities, specifically for diverse talent, and on the flip side, promote innovative change and revenue-generating opportunities for organizations.