AI Can't Replace Recruiting, but it can replace the modern version of Hiring

The hot buzz around AI is the replacement of recruiters with robots. Ain't. Gonna. Happen.

The reason is a simple one - the people building these systems have mistaken hiring for recruiting, a mistake that has been compounding for thirty years.

WHAT IS RECRUITING?

Recruiting is a formalized version of referral hiring. It's literally the introduction of two people with a stamp of approval we call "social proof." Social proof is pretty straight forward - it's one human saying, "this is alright." Don't we all rave about the importance and quality of referrals?

Over the years, companies have tried to replace recruiting with hiring, which is simply the process of selecting and screening. They added applications, resumes, assessments, behavioral interviews, and other tasks that can be measured - following the old theory that if something can't be measured it can't be managed.

There's just one problem with that theory - it's not accurate. The quote comes from W. Edwards Deming, but it's a partial sentence. The full sentence is:

"It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth.”

The misuse of that sentence is at the root of so much that is wrong with hiring, and AI, instead of fixing hiring, is exposing hiring as full of useless tasks.

Recruiting isn't broken. It's been replaced with data-driven technobabble that everyone knows is a waste of time, but still has to be measured. "Time to Fill, anyone?" We know this is a useless statistic, but the clever among us attempt to change that to "time to submit," and "time to apply," and "time to offer." We do this because we don't want to face the difficult truth - recruiting can't provide a Quality of Hire metric because managers first would have to agree on an objective criteria for the Quality of a Worker.

Can AI screen job candidates faster and more consistently than humans? Yes. Is that truly what makes a good hire? Or have the consultants that broke recruiting down into is component parts missed what makes recruiting valuable?

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF AN INTERVIEW?

If the purpose of an interview is simply to screen and sort candidates for a hiring manager, then there is no need for recruiters. However... if recruiters can be replaced with AI screening and selection, what makes anyone think hiring managers will be any better? If recruiters can't be trusted, even though they spend their days interviewing live humans, then how could you trust managers who aren't full-time interviewers?

And really, what is an interview? Is it just screening, or is it a process where two human beings picture a future together, and jointly make the decision to work together? The persuasion principle of consistency plays an important role here.

When a human being tells another human being they are going to do something, they feel an invisible pressure to complete that task. When a human being tells a computer they are going to do something, there is no pressure. Lying to a person has a social cost. Lying to a computer? Who cares? Lying to your boss comes with consequences. Lying to a company's online application? You can just say it was a mistake.

This is where hiring has gone so wrong, and it's showing up in automated hiring of high volume roles. Candidates who take a role through an automated process don't care about the job as much, don't show up for the job as much, and are more likely to quit the job because they can go back to the automated system and get hired elsewhere.

That's rational behavior.

And companies have no one to blame but themselves. If you treat hiring like a commodity, your hiring process becomes a game to win. You've trained generations to find ways to get around your precious system.

WHY IS RECRUITING IMPORTANT?

The primary definition of recruiting is making an introduction between two individuals who are poorly trained to interview and be interviewed. The social proof of a recruiter introduction is useful in calming fear and creating certainty for both the jobseeker and the hiring manager. That is the human part, the high-touch part that everyone talks about.

Recruiters represent several fundamental principles of persuasion in the stages of decision making. These include reciprocity, scarcity, authority, commitment and consistency, liking and consensus.

The recruiter's role is ensure both candidate and client follow the rules, gather information, share accurate data, and remain consistent. Do all recruiters do this? Of course not - they've had their roles cut apart and reduced to screening and sorting. They've been turned into low-cost automatons, which is why people think AI can replace them.

Ask yourself a question - and be honest, it's for science.

Do you want a workforce that tamely follows the rules and is easily replaced? Sure, if you're a sociopath with the emotions of a robot. The only good news for the rest of us is that kind of behavior is much easier to automate than genuine human decision making.

RECRUITING IS HUMANS TALKING TO HUMANS

One of the ways humans generate trust comes from connecting the rhythm of speech patterns to brain waves. Two humans speaking to each other literally reach a sweet spot in their conversation where their brain is functioning on the same bandwidth. A person cannot understand you unless their brain can match your speech, including tone, speed, words, and volume to their experience. Again, humans are highly adaptable in listening to each other. Computers are uni-directional in this manner. The cues that tell us that we are being understood are not present in an AI interface, and can't be replicated.

This means any AI hiring is by definition, not trustworthy from a human perspective.

In the absence of this trust, the candidate will be assigning a large portion of their conscious processing power to thinking past the screen. Instead of exploring and discussing their value, they are seeking to tell a story that will survive the computer and create good marks in the eyes of an unseen human reviewer.

A human being making a decision has several well-known triggers. Verbal and written statements to a human being rank highly in terms of creating consistency. Typing answers on a computer or talking to a fake avatar don't rank highly. This principle is known as disinhibition. While engaging with an AI bot, the human is not making statements they feel compelled to live up to. Without the non-verbal cues of a conversation (including phone calls), a job-seeker is not making positive connections about the company, the interview or a job. They know the AI is a game, and doesn't care about them or their success.

Positive connections are a major cause of decision making later in the process. Any human-computer interface would have to mimic a large portion of non-verbal clues including facial tics, presence, breathing, rhythm, and mirroring to generate a strong response from the candidate.?

It is possible to program these cues, but the likelihood of mistakes due to what is known as the uncanny valley is not being pursued. If a robot interface is too human, we recoil. If it is not human enough, we don’t care what it thinks. Failing to understand behavioral science is a major flaw in AI systems. We don’t recognize how good humans are at screening each other, something that no AI can replicate. And even if they could, we wouldn't care. ?

Confirmation bias and the role of empathy could be big factors in the success of an employee. In short - if enough people are involved and want the employee to succeed, their chances of succeeding are probably improved. Removing human contact at any stage could very well lead to disastrous hiring.

Forget "could well" - it is absolutely leading to disastrous hiring and poor outcomes.

AI screening has to be useful to the jobseeker, or it will be seen as a net negative, leaving out top performers and instead delivering minimally qualified candidates who are willing to be shepherded into a digital cattle call.

If your company is fine hiring minimally qualified employees, your company can be easily automated.

Let me rephrase that. If your company is fine hiring minimally qualified employees through AI screening, why in the world wouldn't we just replace your entire company with AI?

SUMMARY:

AI is fantastic at replicating completed processes. It's not good with weird, and it's not capable of understanding consequences. The gains in productivity from automation are actually the removal of the loss of productivity caused by unnecessary tasks. AI only solves the problem of digital application, data collection and reporting that we created to make people function like machines.

This means Recruiting won't ever be replaced by AI, until all human activity is replaced by AI.