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AI Leads to More Human-Centric Recruitment & Hiring (What!?)

Leading the way to streamlined & people-focused processes

AI is more than just an ongoing buzzword. It’s the future of HR. We’re seeing more and more talent pros incorporate AI into their recruiting processes. But can it truly lead to more human-centric recruitment and hiring? Yes, it can.

Our partner Teamtailor agrees, adding, “This shift reflects a widespread recognition of AI’s power to optimize HR metrics and streamline hiring tasks like resume summarization, interview question creation, and job description crafting. This transformative impact is prompting a strategic rethink of talent acquisition.”

This efficiency will, in turn, allow talent pros to get more strategic and focus on what matters most – building relationships with top talent.

Hired predicts AI will free up HR to focus on ‘human’ aspects of their role.

“While industries like marketing, sales, and finance have undergone a profound evolution from AI over the past few years, the recruiting sector has only recently begun to recognize the advantages it brings to areas such as recruiting, onboarding, and employee monitoring, “ says Jon Dobrowolski, Hired VP of Product.

“As organizations tighten their focus on cost reduction and strategic growth in the coming year, they will entrust activities such as sourcing talent entirely to AI to surface the best candidates– freeing up valuable time for HR professionals to upskill in understanding how AI can ‘co-pilot’ alongside them, and truly focus on the strategies and initiatives that improve the employee experience.

This could include paving possible career paths for people in an organization, boosting employee recognition/morale, and implementing new benefits and ways to cultivate a positive workplace.”

Karen Weeks, Chief People Officer at Obviously on Hired’s podcast, Talk Talent to Me

“AI will push us to nurture and build relationships within our networks more honestly and authentically. AI may streamline some processes or tasks but we’ll see a renewed focus on relationship-building as a major point of difference in recruiting and hiring.”

Listen to the full episode.

AI and candidate experience

In Hired’s webinar, Bold Predictions & Benchmarks: Master Tech Hiring in 2024, Collective Health’s Director of Talent and Recruitment, Dana Dillard emphasized human-centric recruitment as essential.

“There needs to be a balance in how we operate going forward. Many of us are working with much leaner teams. We have a lot fewer folks on our teams and a lot fewer resources. So we do need to think about how to work smarter, not harder.”

She explained how her team uses AI from an efficiency standpoint to enhance the candidate experience. “We supplement sourcing strategies, get ideas of how to write boolean strings or search strings, and consider positioning language to attract candidates.”

On the Hired platform, AI is used to create a more personalized and engaging candidate journey through the power of real-time feedback. In a typical job (or talent) search, job postings get hundreds of applicants, with 80+% being a complete mismatch. This is bad for productivity and a poor use of each party’s time.

Conversely, candidates who sign up for Hired find out whether they are a good match for opportunities on the platform and get feedback on how to improve their profile. Transparency in salary ranges and expectations plus comprehensive profiles help make the process more efficient.

Candidate preferences are forward-looking and drive more sophisticated matching. This saves candidates significant time and changes an often tedious and demoralizing experience.

The intersection of AI, skills gaps, and talent availability

In the way that computers and word processing technology tools rapidly became a standard in nearly every workplace in past decades, our partner Workable believes AI will do the same. According to Workable’s Senior Content Strategy Manager Keith MacKenzie, “While the way we use it continues to be in flux, we’re entering an era where knowing how to use some form of AI technologies will be a normal expectation of any candidate’s skill set regardless of the industry they’re in.

The rapid evolution of AI has opened up numerous skills and competency gaps through the system as companies rush to incorporate AI technologies into their workflows. Meanwhile, those who build that technology will continue to be in high demand – which means the availability of talent is a major concern, especially for tech companies.”

Getting started with using AI to support human-centric recruitment

Thinking about incorporating AI into your workflow? We encourage you to embrace the change and welcome AI as the ultimate enablement tool to do more with less. Consider it your partner, not your replacement!

In a past webinar, The State of h(AI)ring – buzzword or boon for HR?, Jon Dobrowolski advised leaders on getting started with AI. He says, “With any technology implementation, you have to focus on the outcomes and driving enablement. There are goals, strategy, and KPIs. If it helps you achieve against those, you should keep it. If it is interesting but not necessarily moving the needle, you don’t want to keep it around for long.”

Tools to support human-centric recruitment

With that said, many HR and recruiting tools have AI built right in. Hired is one such offering—AI and machine learning have been ingrained in the product from the start. From candidate vetting and ranking to personalized recommendations and general experience improvements. More recently we’ve incorporated generative AI into both the candidate and employer experiences.

We also appreciate like-minded companies bringing AI-led solutions to market to make recruiters’ jobs easier, clearing a path for more thoughtful work.

Our friends at Teamable, the supercharged Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) solution, incorporate AI at almost every touch. It uses AI to power inbound applicant ranking and personalized messaging at scale. Time-saving solutions like this give recruiting teams hours back in their day for those 1:1 human-centric recruitment connections that make the work meaningful.

Going back to Jon’s advice, he encourages talent pros to be intentional. He advises against using AI for the sake of having it. Instead, he recommends, “Take the time right now to form an educated opinion on what will be helpful and begin to ideate. As you do, tools will come to market and you’ll feel that’s exactly what you were looking for.”