AI in Early Careers Recruitment - Considerations, Suggestions & Solutions

Ok, so it's fair to say that students, educators and employers are all navigating, adapting, using, enabling or embedding AI into their respective career navigating, job applications, careers guidance, employer branding and recruitment technology and processes.

So if you're one of these stakeholders, early in your approach or just don't know what to do or where to start...or even if to start...do not panic.

But also, don't get too comfortable either.

I've compiled a multi-sided view, such is the luxury of sitting between students, employers and educators as we do at Group GTI .

I hope you find the below itemised topics useful and happy to dive into any of them in more depth.

Let's chat for 30 mins via here.

Students / Candidates

It's important to consider how students and candidates engage with your communications, positioning and processes when it comes to AI.

And before we dive into the detail, let's face it...

Students have been using the internet for years to research, create presentations or enhance their applications.

They trust AI

Salesforce research showed 52% of Gen Z trust the interactions they have with generative AI.

In May 2023, Cibyl, which is a student market research consultancy and part of Group GTI , conducted a snap survey amongst over 600 students, which found that:

• Only 11% said ChatGPT was not a positive innovation
• 12% hadn’t even heard of ChatGPT despite it being in the public domain for 6 months or more.
• 51% using it for research and 47% to complete course assignments.

I expect 2024s data to look significantly different...

But how and where are students using AI?

• Research Made Effortless: gather insights for their projects and assignments, like a research assistant.
• Essay and Report Crafting: ChatGPT aids students in formulating well-structured essays and reports. It’s not about replacing their creativity but enhancing it with AI-powered suggestions.
• Presentation Preparation: help them refine their content and even suggests engaging ways to captivate their audience.
• Time Management: Juggling studies, extracurriculars, and part-time jobs is a challenge. ChatGPT assists students in managing their time by providing quick summaries and key points from their study materials.
• Global Learning Connections: With AI, students are transcending geographical boundaries. ChatGPT supports language translation and cultural insights, enriching their global learning experience.

From a less job-specific perspective, more than a thousand “lonely” students found that using Replika , a chatbot, positively impacted their mental health. See here.

So younger audiences are fine talking with AI if it helps them solve their problem.        

Students and candidates want guidance

They’re well instructed and warned about plagiarism in education - but not when it comes to AI in studying and applying. There is clearly a gap in guidance maturity right now amongst employers, educators, and careers leaders too. Careers Advisers and Teachers are the people supporting candidate applications and are less informed for several reasons.

So, we do need to consider how this guidance reaches those of influence too.

Students and candidates want clarity

Students are seeking authenticity and clarity where employers stand on social, political, ethical and in this case technological topics. AI is no different in this New Moral Age where employers don’t just have nowhere to hide – but are now expected (and increasingly going forwards) to have a stance. The view from the brilliant futurologist K D Adamson who shared such wisdom at our Breakfast News in December.

There’s a lot of talk about making our early in career talent more resilient and adaptable.

They are watching us now to see how we are adapting to AI.        

Stuck in the middle with you

Students are concerned that they are the cohort that is missing out on developing AI skills that they may need for employment.

If we hold students back from using it, we are holding back their development and potential you could argue.

AI in applications to jobs

Cibyl’s 2024 research data is not far from being launched and I’ve managed to get a sneak peek.

From over 65,000 undergraduate and graduate responses, it’s showing a surprising stat.

37% of students are not intending to use GenAI to help when applying to jobs.

This is higher than I had anticipated. They said the most popular use is CV tweaks and application forms.

Now where it gets really interesting is how it varies between diverse communities, by regions and by career sector preferences.

I can give everything away but - as a teaser –

·??????? Females are significantly less likely to use it vs males.

·??????? Asian and Black heritage students are significantly more likely to use AI.

Employers

Most are still finding their stance in terms of should they detect it’s use or embrace (and assess) in the process.

If they want to hire people who are and could be AI-savvy, they need to expose people to the tools they’ll use on the job. As Gen-AI becomes further integrated into workplaces, prompting skills will only become more vital.

Plagiarism

Universities well positioned plagiarism many decades ago but employers haven’t adopted the same tactic (yet) in recruitment.

Cheating

To aid CX and process management in our Group GTI ATS, risks scores can be calculated for each candidate to indicate the likelihood of that candidate having cheated. The methodology can be tailored to your processes and industry sector and summarised in an integrity dashboard.

The future of the CV

We discussed the future of the CV at our December's Breakfast News edition. If you're keen to hear more about all things

• Skills self-reflection
• Self-assessment activity post-placement and projects.
• Skills based micro-credentials
• Validating those skills

We'd love to hear from you as an employer and how this could be a way to accurately screen but proactively and smartly attract student talent in the near future.

Enhancing performance

As Tristan covered in December's Breakfast News, basic graduate-level tasks will become increasingly automatable, through the use of interacting AI Agents.

Skills priorities/reviewing

We’re seeing employers more highly prioritise human skills and a candidate’s ability to work with the help of Generative AI.

Skills for Skills is a free framework built by Cappfinity in partnership with Group GTI , that helps to define these skills and the idea that the future of work will be about always learning and adapting. There is a lessening need to know and use technical skills as we know them now. So, if technical skills are being disrupted, more emphasis should be on human skills and the need for a growth mindset.

Hiring AI Skills

Group GTI is supporting the Department for Industry, Innovation and Science (DSIT) and the Office for Artificial Intelligence (OAI), working with the Office for Students (OfS), to support diverse students to study AI and Data Science at postgraduate level. This will boost UK innovation and help to reduce the risk of bias in algorithms. If interested in hearing more, speak to Jonathan Nicholl or head here.

Educators

Careers advice and guidance, CVs, chatbots etc are all disrupting education sector. The education system must evolve to the changing landscape of technology, just like every other sector.

Students are seeking support from educational institutions to bridge the gap and encouraging themselves to choose more technical modules to help future proof.

Careers guidance

Providing tailored learning content or re-writing existing content in a more accessible format will clearly benefit Gen Z and their wish and expectation for personalised experiences and outcomes.

UK university collaboration

A new set of principles has been created to help universities ensure students and staff are ‘AI literate’. This is to shape institution and course-level work to support the ethical and responsible use of generative AI. Developed in partnership with AI and educational experts.

US – Arizona OpenAI partnership

First-of-its-kind alliance to bring GenAI tech into institutional processes. The partnership will begin with a “an open challenge” in February which will “[invite] faculty and staff to submit their ideas of best-use scenarios.” Plans include granting “full access” to ChatGPT for Enterprise tier to the university starting in February 2024 — though whether that’s to all students or staff or both is not clear. Read more here.

Skills taxonomy

Universities (and employers) can generate role and skill taxonomies. At our Breakfast News September 2023, Tristan Mathieson, from Group GTI's Data Team, showed how we are working with Leeds Arts University to analyse the creative and digital skills that employers are looking for.

Learning providers teaching AI now

When considering technical Data Science and AI skills, employers are starting to want higher levels of skills, as AI tools and APIs to them mean that less skills are needed to do the ‘basics’. This has implications for short courses and bootcamps.

Special thanks to Kyle Campbell , Antony Adams and Mark Woodward for your sound boarding and 3rd party referencing to relevant content last month.

If you missed last month's webinar facilitated by Arctic Shores and Robert Newry , with Hung Lee hosting and where I was joined by Claudia Nuttgens CPsychol - then click here. We discussed how to tackle candidate usage of GenAI head-on while maintaining efficacy and an equitable process.