AI isn't just a tool, it's an essential member of staff

When Amazon launched, nobody thought they would ever compete or replace bookstores. They were only seen as a site selling books, more similar to a newspaper advertising book titles than to a digital shop selling books. This initial view - not only of Amazon but of digital businesses in general - led to costly misunderstandings both in terms of opportunities and in terms of threats.

And being humans, have we learned from it? No. We are doing it again. When focusing on artificial intelligence-driven applications, we see just another tech play. Instead, we would benefit if we’d classified and treated them as an additional member of staff and colleague.  

Let’s take Pocket Recruiter, a self-learning search and selection tool. You could view Pocket Recruiter as another tech play that saves recruiters’ time by searching candidate sources simultaneously and by fine-tuning the searches through learning from all activities and interactions along the hiring funnel.

Or you could see Pocket Recruiter as an additional member of staff, another sourcer and/or recruiter on your team. Pocket Recruiter has been based on actual recruiter behaviours: understanding the activity of a job, taking into account the must-haves in all its facets and using the "yay" and "nays" from hiring managers to present further candidates that on first sight might not appear perfect, but when truly understanding them are spot on.

Let’s take Job Pal, a recruitment chatbot. You could view Job Pal as another tech play that saves recruiters time by answering initial questions of candidates and asking initial questions of candidates.

Or you could see Job Pal as an additional member of staff. Job Pal communicates with your candidates, whenever they want to, pre-qualifies candidates at the same time and - if relevant - suggests better opportunities for the job seeker.

If we take the colleague/member of staff perspective, we would onboard, we would train, we would support them, we would upgrade their skills, we would care. Or as Simon Welch, Advanced Resource Managers’ trainer and Pocket Recruiter superuser put it “Tell, teach, evolve.”

It is the same with AI-driven applications: at the beginning, they require training, not months, not even weeks, but a couple of days. The difference to a human is that the self-learning kicks in faster, the AI doesn’t ever forget anything it has learned, it can deal with thousands of jobs and candidates at the same time, it works 24/7, never gets ill and never leaves.

AI won’t replace recruiters, it creates “AI-supported recruiters” and completely new roles like “AI trainers”. But let’s not get sidetracked and drawn into partisan debates. Instead, let’s explore different perspectives. Let’s embrace the newbie for what they are, unlock their true potential and explore the opportunities for deploying businesses and industries. Give it a try.