Over the last few weeks I’ve been going to all these presentations about AI and recruiting. I wanted to see what everybody else is saying. I mean, AI is vast and broad. I don’t know everything. I’ve barely scraped the surface and I was on an ethics board about AI long before it was ever a buzzword.

The thing that I keep walking away from these presentations with is nobody gave real examples. Nobody was like, “this is what we’re doing right now.” I still haven’t heard any really practical solutions. No one answers the burning question: Will AI Steal Your Recruiting Job? Everyone has read at least one article implying or hinting at telling everyone that they should be really scared. But not 1 person just told us yes or no.

Honestly, I don’t know what is going to happen next. No one does. That’s why it’s so fascinating to see how sentiments have changed about AI. In 2018, about 50% of people in HR and recruiting thought AI was going to come for their job in 2020. Two years later, 70% reported that they thought AI was going to steal their job and as of last year, 82% thought AI was going to steal their job. But nothing has fundamentally changed yet.

AI Won’t Steal Your Recruiting Job

I’m here to tell you there is no way AI is stealing anyone’s job (yet.) Why? Well, short answer is because we’re dealing with the most unpredictable variable in the world: people. AI can only speed up a process that’s working well. If you look at hiring as a process, we most definitely have not mastered it.

On the other hand, AI can only work off of data that is true and real. Face it. We haven’t really mastered data collection or analysis either. Predictive data is often anything but predictable when it comes to recruiting. The numbers are wildly different based on role, level, location, and a million more variables. All while these folks are predicting the end of recruiting.

Look, if any of you consider yourself a master at predicting people or hiring trends after everything that has happened in this world in the last five years? Good on you. I personally feel like the car has gone off the lot. It is out of my hands now. I can’t predict what people are going to do.

Focus On Results, Not Speed

AI can help us, but it can only help if we’re focused on the right thing. So when trying to figure out an equation no one has written, it makes it all the more important to focus on results instead of speed. When we use AI, it has to be about creating the results we want. Things like building better relationships, not simply doing something a little faster.

Every HR tech is going to try to quantify impact with “10x faster” or “50% more.” If you’ve been in this industry long enough, you know that faster was never the problem. All of that doesn’t matter if you’re getting the wrong results faster.

The results we need are about making the job search feel less hopeless. I’m pretty sure any candidate would trade a hiring process that was a week longer if they could just get feedback. If we’re using AI for its best purpose, we’re making people feel like humans. Use AI to build more personalized candidate connections, not shave a day off time to fill. Let’s get the job done right, not just faster.

Case Study: AI Job Descriptions

The data shows that recruiters want to use AI for their job descriptions. Considering we need good data (aka good job postings) and a good process (hiring manager intake) to create an output, it’s a bigger challenge than you can imagine – and I’m a job post writing expert. Let me explain what happened when I tried to build AI for job description writing.

Looking for a speaker on this topic? Hire me or learn more here. My presentation, “How To Make AI More Human” has been featured on stages by HRCI, SHRM, and more.

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