Ever since humans learned about the phrase artificial intelligence, there’s been a fear that, eventually, these robots will take over everyone’s jobs. There are many industries that have already adopted automation and AI-backed automation, and AI is making quite the buzz in the recruiting industry. And naturally, the rise in AI’s popularity is leaving recruiters feeling uneasy and fearful for their job. So will AI eventually replace human recruiters? The short answer is: no. However, there are specific tasks that AI can help automate, meaning that humans and AI will be working alongside each other, which will increase efficiency and improve the candidate experience. Here are 3 reasons why AI will never 100% replace human recruiters.
AI Matches Jobs and Candidates Through Algorithms
AI has the ability to analyze large sets of data that are found on job boards or social media. If any of the resumes the AI comes across matches specific keywords or parameters for an open role, it’s a match in the AI’s book. A human recruiter can spend hours on hours scouring job boards or social media for candidates, but this low-value task takes recruiters away from engaging with candidates who are further down the hiring process. So yes, AI can replace recruiters when it comes to sourcing candidates.
On the other hand, AI doesn’t have the ability to analyze soft skills. An engineer may be a rock-star at coding, but if their job role requires excellent verbal communication skills, and this rock-star lacks said skill, a human recruiter would be able to pick this up. This is how AI and humans play nice together—AI helps automate those time-consuming, low-value tasks such as sourcing, and then hands that candidate off to a recruiter for further screening.
Humans Can Sell, But AI Can’t
If there’s a candidate that is on the fence about a role, there’s a good chance that AI can’t quite persuade that candidate to take the role. Having AI try to sell a candidate on a role is the equivalent of interacting with those automated customer service calls where they ask you to press 1 for yes, 2 for no, and 0 to speak to a representative. No candidate would enjoy that interaction. Human recruiters, on the other hand, are knowledgeable in the company’s culture and benefits, which enable them to sell the role to the candidate.
Humans Can Influence and Develop New Processes
AI can be programmed to send out an email or text message to request feedback on the employer’s candidate experience. What AI can’t do is take action on that feedback unless it’s programmed to do so. So while AI can collect this data, it’s up to a human to interpret the data and make the process improvements.
There’s a lot of speculation and assumptions about AI in the workplace. When we set aside our fear that robots are taking over the world and dig into what AI can and can’t do, it’s evident that there are some processes that AI simply can’t take over. AI in recruiting is meant to complement a recruiter’s work, not take it over.
