What are the risk and dangers involved around technology use in recruitment?
Mark Standen, Director of Global Technology at S&You Technology, agrees that the use of AI and Automation technology within the recruitment process today is bringing increasing benefits to the onboarding process when hiring new employees. As with all forms of emergent technology employers need to stay mindful of the risks involved, however, as they need do so when introducing any new kinds of systems and services into the workplace today.
How is AI supporting the recruitment process for employers at the moment?
From the screening of candidate CVs, to leading background checks and more, the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been as seismic within the recruitment sector as it has been in any other industry in recent years. Like teams operating in many other fields, HR professionals are finding a myriad of ways to draw on AI technologies to make the overall systems and processes involved in sourcing the right skills for the job and bringing new employees on board smarter in the process.
From saving time during the initial candidate engagement process through the use of chatbots to engage with applicants, to rolling out algorithms that can help assess and benchmark candidates for shortlisting purposes, the possibilities to integrate AI with human-led HR strategy are endless. Such is the sophistication of the technology available today, as recruitment consultants we are also now working to provide blended resource solutions to businesses offering a combination of human and machine powered skills to help them complete their own processes in a more efficient, accurate and overall smarter way too.
Are there risks involved in using AI to aid recruitment processes?
There is widespread prediction that the use of AI and Automation will only increase and there will be a rise in new job profiles and skills, and further increases in remote and flexible working as a result. There’s also expected to be a huge focus on cybersecurity, and the use of ethical and responsible technology solutions, which will continue to prove emergent as the IT sector gathers pace.
In short, the full impact of AI is complex and still very much unknown, and employers are going to need to keep on top of developments at every turn to ensure the safety of their business and their employees as a result. There are several risks businesses need to be aware of in using AI within recruitment processes but the most immediate and important one is the risk of de-humanisation.
From both sides, there’s going to be an increasing tendency towards losing the human touch when it comes to presenting ourselves as candidates through the use of AI generated application material but also in how businesses interact with and ultimately attract talent too. For example, if your first interview is with an “interview bot” it could make the candidate experience unnecessarily negative from the get go.
From here, this gives rise to more serious breaches such as discrimination and bias, and could lead on to the wider risks associated then with phishers and cybercrime too. It’s a known fact that using AI technology can make it easier for novice cyber criminals, hackers-for-hire and hacktivists to carry out effective access and information gathering too.
Relying too heavily on Automated and AI solutions can also unintentionally present bias in the recruitment process, due to the data they are trained on, leading to discrimination against certain groups for example, and keeping the overall process ultimately human-led is therefore a must.
There is also a risk that some candidates become digitally excluded if they lack access to the level of technology involved in applying for a job and are by default of circumstance disadvantaged from the process of engagement and prospective candidate talent pool.
How can employers mitigate risk and maximise on the use of AI recruitment technologies?
Employers looking to successfully start employing AI and Automation technology to help them find the talent and the skills they require first need to understand that it’s not going to be a one-off investment. The technology available to support employers in attracting, pooling, screening and interacting with prospective employees is still developing and relatively speaking, the industry is very much still in its infancy.
To make the most of AI and Automation systems and processes in an ethical, economically sound and above all safe way, therefore, businesses are also going to have to accept and facilitate an ongoing investment in the right training for their own HR teams too. Depending on the size of an organisation and the in-house expertise available, it is also going to be wise for some to seek industry insight and support externally from specialists in the AI field, like the technology team here at S&You for example.
We are already living in a world where flexibility and digital nomadism is fast becoming the norm, and it almost certainly will become a standard feature of adult’s working lives in the future.
This means that, to protect themselves properly from any risk of reputational damage and the potential for cybercrime brought about as a result, any employers using AI technology need to take a ‘front foot’ approach to putting the right training and accompanying software in place at the same time.
Practically speaking this could mean integrating ethical and privacy considerations into AI technologies used in onboarding processes, implementing bias detection software alongside them, and protecting any AI technology you’re using with data encryption, access control, authentication, lifecycle management restrictions and more.
The blurring of lines between the work/life boundaries, expectations when it comes to responsiveness, the need for digital resilience and enhanced collaborations are all happening now and will all need to be facilitated effectively by employers in the future either way.