The Future Of Recruiting: Robots Or Humans?

Not long ago, recruiting was an entirely human-run charge, hence the name human resources. But in less than 25 years, recruiting has departed from telephones, Rolodexes and mounds of resumes to applicant tracking systems, artificial intelligence and chatbots. As technology continues to permeate the world of work, what does the future of recruitment hold? Will robots replace humans, or will humans withstand the robotic invasion?

To better understand how we perceive the role robots will play in business, Citrix collaborated with Oxford Analytica and Coleman Parkes on a project they named Work 2035. The trio conducted a comprehensive survey of more than 500 C-suite leaders and 1,000 people employed in big corporations as well as mid-sized businesses. The most striking statistic: 77% were of the opinion that in just 15 years, artificial intelligence (AI) will accelerate decision-making processes and enhance employee productivity.

Recruiting, a process deeply rooted in human interaction, personalization and connection, is hard to imagine without humans. After all, it is a recruiter’s knack for sniffing the right candidate, their emotional intelligence in matching the right candidate with the right company and their in-depth knowledge in making the tough calls that are the bedrock upon which recruitment is centered. Complement that with robots’ supersonic candidate screening prowess or AI’s human bias elimination and the future of recruiting can be reimagined.

Sourcing, screening & scheduling for robots

Recruitment encompasses a series of redundant and time-consuming tasks that render humans ineffective. According to Glassdoor, an average job posting receives 250 resumes. As the company size and brand grows, these numbers convert to thousands and during a hiring surge, the figures further multiply. An average recruiter spends 23 hours screening resumes for a single hire. Instead of sifting through a mound of resumes or shortlisting candidates from massive candidate databases, recruiters can focus on other key areas that rely on the human touch.

Technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can work every hour of the day to source and screen candidates and schedule interviews. Consequently, recruiters can condense the areas where human efforts are poured and optimize several recruiting processes by letting recruiting robots do the grunt work. This will not only reduce the burden of talent acquisition (TA) teams but also bring down the time-to-hire and cost-per-hire significantly.

Using AI reduces hiring costs and increases revenue per employee due to better candidate-profile fit.

Interviews, feedback & selection for humans

The human touch is essential to certain recruitment areas, such as candidate interviews, providing valuable feedback and making the final hiring decision. While RPA and AI can parse resumes and shortlist candidates based on specific qualifications and requirements, only humans can identify the right fit for organizational culture or candidates that are likely to stay in the organization. Once recruiting robots have sourced, screened and scheduled candidates for interviews, human recruiters can take the charge.

Whether interviews take place in a room or over a screen, a candidate still expects and prefers another human to conduct the interview. Similarly, after multiple rounds of interviews, if a candidate is rejected, only a human recruiter can frame an empathetic response and provide valuable feedback to them. Candidate experience runs through the heart of recruiting and can be elevated by technology but personalized only by humans. And while technology can provide essential data to select the best candidate, only human recruiters can make the best decision.

A human-robot crossover

There is no denying that robots can be applied to a broad spectrum of recruiting tasks and streamline the recruiting process, but technology can go only so far. For instance, AI in background verification can verify the candidate data across large data sets, but only recruiters can judge if the candidate possesses the right personality or is the right fit for the workplace culture. Similarly, engaging passive candidates or finding internal talent remain predominantly human tasks; robots can help amass data that can help recruiters make informed decisions.

In fact, the new tech-driven economy will create more jobs for humans - in newer areas!

For example, the Citrix survey revealed that C-suite leaders and employees believe that these new job types will be created due to the inclusion of robotics and AI in organizations:

● Robot / AI trainer (82% of leaders/44% of employees)

● Virtual reality manager (79% of leaders/36% of employees)

● Advanced data scientist (76% of leaders/35% of employees)

● Privacy and trust manager (68% leaders/30% of employees)

● Design thinker (56% of leaders/27% of employees)

The emotional and social intelligence unique only to humans is the key to matching the right candidate with the right company. If used effectively, robots can help recruiters with redundant and time-consuming tasks and allow humans to excel at highly-personalized and crucial tasks. Robots in recruiting can save tremendous amounts of time, which can be used for finetuning other complex tasks and key areas. Mind and machine, when brought together, can reimagine recruiting and take it to the next level.

Speaking statiscally, the melding of mind and machine will increase the productivity of recruiters by 2x, as per the leaders and employees surveyed for Work 2035.

Final Thoughts

A crossover between mind and machine, robot recruitment and human hiring can elevate and optimize the recruitment process. Human intelligence is essential to recruiting but robots can help augment it. Instead of fearing or imagining the future of recruiting, HR leaders should create the future of recruitment by blending the best of robots and humans. The answer to the question of more robots or more humans should be more robots bringing out the most in humans.

(The given article is attributed to InstaHyre's CBO & Co-Founder, Sarbojit Mallick and has been exclusively created for BW Disrupt)