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AI in Hiring: Innovation or Invasion?
3 Plays7 months ago
Artificial Intelligence is transforming how organizations attract, evaluate, and hire talent, but not without raising ethical, legal, and human concerns. In this episode of Honest HR, I dive into the promises and pitfalls of AI-driven hiring tools. Are they truly creating the efficiencies that were promised? How can HR professionals leverage AI responsibly while staying compliant and people-focused?
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Transcript
Challenges in HR Departments
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HR is drowning, drowning in outdated policies, bloated processes and meetings that should have been an email.
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Consultants, they know how to invoice, but do they know how to deliver?
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I've seen both sides of the blade, in-house and external, and I know what it takes to turn bold ideas into real results.
Introduction to Honest HR Podcast
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I'm Amy Crook.
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With 20 years in executive HR, I now lead Strativist, a boutique consultancy offering fractional HR
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recruitment and strategy that actually moves the needle on this podcast i'm pulling back the curtain on hr what works what's broken and how to make it better i'll be joined by sharp minds and real talkers to keep it spicy smart and anything but scripted
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Hello and welcome to episode two of Honest HR.
AI in Hiring: Insights and Company Practices
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Today I'm going to talk a little bit about AI in the hiring process.
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This is kind of top of mind right now as I just recorded a couple episodes with a friend of mine, the former chief economist at Glassdoor, Aaron Torres.
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who is now a fractional economist available for all your economist needs.
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Reach out if you would like his information.
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So we've been breaking down the hiring process and just going through where there are best practice issues
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AI applications.
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And as part of the research that we did kind of going into that conversation, we were looking at a Workday report that had kind of a self-reported data set that
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that looked at how companies were implementing AI, like what the percentages were.
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And not surprisingly, pretty high in the right, the job descriptions area, right down to, you know, identifying the right interview team, which was more around that 20% that are currently using it.
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But a big chunk of,
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That are not using it currently but plan to.
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So I would say that like throughout the whole process from start to finish.
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There's only a really small amount of companies that were asked in this process.
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survey, if they were using AI as part of their hiring process, that for every single component of the process, that have said, no, we're not using it right now and we don't plan to.
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So it's really interesting to me because I don't think there's, you know,
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right either.
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I think there's a balance.
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So let's think about this.
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Currently, you know, the most prolific tools on the market involve some version of resume screening or
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cut through application review time, chatbots for candidate engagement and automated interview scheduling, definitely job description optimization, video interviewing has been a thing forever but comes part of this package these days and then there's other things like note takers, things like that.
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So in this set from the Workday report, there's also onboarding new hires, assessing skills, checking their references and their background, predicting candidate success,
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So there's really just every component of not only the application process, but the assessment process, the interview process, and then onboarding that candidate.
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So it seems kind of crazy to me that you would hand over that to all of that process to AI.
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So I just want to talk a little bit about what makes sense to me.
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kind of debunk some of their maybe misconceptions about AI because I definitely think it's a great
Compliance and Transparency in AI Tools
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tool.
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Like, don't get me wrong, I think it's a great tool.
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I just also believe that when you are considering making a hire, which is a significant financial investment and it will determine the success of your organization, that you need to have some
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human interaction there for the experience of that new hire and also because you know people understand people really well um you get a lot from vibe checks i think um not that that's the correct uh way to put it but i just
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If you're hiring salespeople or if you're hiring even technologists, right, like they have to work in teams and they have to interact with other people and maybe they're going to interact with your clients and.
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I just, I think that shouldn't be overlooked for the sake of technology advancement.
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But okay, so first of all, you know, AI does not eliminate bias.
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So when you're looking at your...
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tools that you're going to take on board to help with the resume review component.
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Be really careful that you are picking the right tool for your organization.
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I know for me personally, I wanted a tool that didn't have any learned behavior.
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It wouldn't take that historical data from previous candidates that it had assessed as a match or not a match.
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And if we'd agreed or not agreed, I didn't want it to retain that information.
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You might be like, why?
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Well, because, you know, all roles are different and it's going to embody that recruiter's behavior rather than
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um, learn the role.
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So it's not that, okay, it's going to understand, um, what X company is looking for when they're hiring a software engineer.
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It's going to learn what that recruiter prefers when they're looking at a resume.
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So for me personally, I didn't want that in, in the tool that I selected.
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and AI isn't fully autonomous, right?
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AI is a tool, not a decision maker.
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It can't take a process right to the very end yet.
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And so you do need to make sure that you're plugging in people as makes sense for the process, as for those things mentioned before, like candidate experience and just you making sure you're making good decisions for your organization.
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And then another thing is that AI tools are all automatically compliant with laws and regulations.
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You know, that's not necessarily true.
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So that's something that you also need to spend some time verifying for yourself and your organization.
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And then finally, the AI is only for like big enterprises.
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Also not true.
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As a small business myself, we use AI every day.
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So it's for everybody.
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You just need to pick the tool that makes sense for you and the partner that makes sense for you.
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And there's a lot of really great startup organizations out there that are coming up with really awesome tools that you can work with if you have a smaller business.
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Even if you have a bigger business, to be honest, I have always found when I've been looking to...
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get a new tool for my tech stack for my team that working with a startup with a really great idea that might need a little bit of feedback and coaching and partnership for me works really well twofold one because they'll usually cut you a great deal and two because you get to influence the product
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You know, you get to give them feedback to say, hey, this is what's going to be most impactful for me.
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Can we do it?
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And they are always willing to try and make it work.
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And so you get a much better outcome for your cost investment than you would do going to a larger company that's just going to give you something off their shelf.
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Without that flexibility to really make it work for your organization and usually they come with pretty hefty price tags.
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Another thing, I know I just touched on this a second ago, but I really can't overstate enough, especially with the recent media attention that components of AI tooling has gotten, is just being super careful about your compliance and legal risks.
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I actually think we need to move towards a model that's more transparent with candidates on what part of the process is AI driven and what part of the process we have those human checkpoints.
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I think that would go a long way to make people feel like they're
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It's out of like a human being's hand when they send their application in.
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But that's just, you know, my personal preference for how I think we should move forward with the application of AI in this particular process.
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Okay, so when you're evaluating vendors and tools, I think it's totally fine to ask them questions around how they do stay compliant with laws and regulations and understand how the
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the tool is working as i mentioned before is it going to have some component of learning in there or is it going to take each query as an individual task and then not have that learned behavior i think it's fine um to ask for a trial period so you can test um the product in real scenarios for your organization
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Bring together a good group of stakeholders when you're evaluating a tool.
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Yes, this is a talent acquisition tool that we're talking about.
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But bring in legal, bring in IT, if you're going to have hiring managers be end users of it, bring them to the table too.
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Everybody's got a different perspective and everybody's going to see different benefits and risks.
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So it's always worthwhile getting a good group of folks in when you're looking to make this kind of decision.
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And then
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I'm a big fan of transparency so choose a vendor that's going to offer that explainability factor to you and provide you documentation as and when you need it.
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So I guess I want to just move into real quick just some practical advice for integrating AI while keeping that human touch.
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So let's
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Think about using AI as a filter and not a final say.
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So let AI narrow down the pool, but human recruiters should make the final decision of who is presented to your hiring team and then your hiring team make the decision on who gets to join the organization.
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Again, I think communicating with candidates is
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on when AI is being used and how it impacts the process is where we need to move as an industry.
Evaluating AI's Role and Future in Hiring
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I just truly believe that that level of transparency would be really impactful to candidates.
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Monitor your outcomes.
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So regularly review your AI driven hiring decisions for any potential patterns of bias or exclusion.
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Humanize the process.
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So even if AI handles initial screenings, make sure that candidates interact with a real person during key stages.
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It's going to be so meaningful to your candidates and it's going to help you make a better decision.
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And finally, train your teams well.
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Ensure that your recruiters and any other partners that are using the tools feel comfortable, confident, and competent in those tools before you go into full launch.
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Make sure everybody's super comfortable with where they plug and play into the process.
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and where they can lean on these tools to help drive some efficiencies.
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And then track those efficiencies and see, okay, has this made a difference?
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I guess really the final thought I want to kind of put out there is, and this came up in my conversation with Aaron too, is when I look at that report that Workday put out to...
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share how many companies are, you know, investing in AI throughout the hiring process.
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And it's quite significant.
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And AI drives efficiency.
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I know that it does because I implemented three tools in my most recent talent acquisition function, and it drove really strong efficiencies without compromising the experience.
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So if we have, you know, a
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companies all around the country, maybe even the world that have implemented AI to such a high percentage, why is the hiring process right now worse than ever?
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Why are applications going into black holes and not getting feedback for months?
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Why
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Why are people getting, you know, requests for interview and then rejected the next day?
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do people feel like there's fake jobs on the marketplace and that's why they're not hearing back from companies uh why are interviewers showing up to interviews less prepared than ever seeming burned out and overwhelmed um
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I genuinely don't have the answer, but I would love to know.
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Um, because, you know, having been in a very busy talent acquisition function, who saw requisition volumes go up and down and, you know, application volumes go off the charts this last couple of years, um,
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I'm proud to say we never let it compromise our candidate experience.
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So I'm putting it out there.
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Does anybody have the answer?
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Okay, thanks for listening.
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See you next time.