Imagine this for a job-hunting scenario: you’ve spent months looking for a perfect job and finally, after plenty of false starts and hopes raised and dashed, you’ve gotten an interview. It’s a remote call, and you log on, ready and eager. But instead of the human recruiter or hiring manager you’d expected, you’re met with a bot.
If that sounds fanciful, it’s not. This is actually already a reality of 2024’s hiring landscape. In fact, even if you weren't aware of it, you’ve probably interacted with a number of AI-enabled processes during your job search.
3 jobs to apply for this week
From applicant screening systems (ATS) which companies use to filter job applications, to AI-powered job search, we can expect to see more and more artificial intelligence assisting humans in their quest for a new career opportunity.
Now, in an effort to save time and resources, HR teams are looking for ways to streamline their processes. AI’s abilities to analyse huge amounts of data points, and the fact it never needs to take a lunch break (or a nap), offer an attractive prospect to time-strapped teams.
Meet the AI recruiter
AI company Apriora has launched a recruitment chatbot called Alex, for example. The company says it is an “AI recruiter” which can automatically schedule, conduct, and evaluate interviews using artificial intelligence.
We already trust AI to do a lot of things for us every day. From curating our preferences on streaming services to powering voice commands or our banking services, there are plenty of areas where AI has seamlessly integrated, and which provide us with frictionless user experiences.
Yet when it comes to job interviews or AI being involved in candidate selection, how do people really feel?
An academic study, Dignity and use of algorithm in performance evaluation, published in 2022, found that “those evaluated by algorithms perceive lower levels of dignity, leading them to believe the process is less fair.”
Another recent piece of research from Tideo found that only 31% of respondents would agree to allow AI to decide whether or not they get hired. However, if people are included, candidates are happier, with 75% saying if there’s human involvement, then they’ll allow AI in the mix.
Much of this comes down to a generalised sense of fear and uncertainty around AI in general. In the UK, the Centre For Data Innovation has found that only 31% of UK adults were confident that they could explain how modern AI models worked.
“In practice, people still seemed to be unsure about the AI models’ relative strengths and weaknesses: thinking that they were best at maths, and weakest at sounding sympathetic”, the report states.
It also found that 66% of UK adults think it is likely that AI will increase unemployment, underscoring the negative sentiment many feel about artificial intelligence.
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AI and hiring
Looking into the future, AI’s capabilities to parse information and automate processes mean we’re likely to see a huge surge in use cases across all areas of our lives, not just in how we get a new job.
Apriora’s Alex for example, is being used by a global recruitment agency as a first step in assessing candidates. The company is using it in one clever way by making sure that every interested candidate is considered for the role they apply for.
That’s unusual. Generally, applicant tracking symptoms, for example, are set up to narrow a talent pool so that a recruitment team receives a shortlist of candidates, and can cope with a set level of interviews and the workload associated with that.
Tideo’s survey gets to the heart of how most people feel about having AI included as an assistant in a recruitment journey. When AI is good, it can be really good, as seen with how Alex can be used to include more candidates for an open role. But right now, humans come first.
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