AI in Recruiting: A Tool for Efficiency, Not a Replacement

Artificial intelligence is everywhere. Recruiting is no exception. Everyday I am bombarded by vendors boasting AI powered tools claiming to reduce time to fill, revolutionize the recruiting process, enhance the candidate experience, create robust candidate pipelines, assist with volume screening, or bolster DEI efforts by removing human bias from the recruiting process. There is no bigger hot button topic right now than AI. Surely, AI will play a major part in our collective future and inevitably will play a role in how we recruit top talent, but what does that even look like in 2024?

From my point of view, the major pro of utilizing AI is its capacity to reduce time spent on administrative work. In doing research for this blog, this seems to be the primary way in which both corporate and agency recruiters are utilizing AI currently. Day-to-day tasks like creating job descriptions, conducting client and market research, producing screening questions, etc. are made easy with tools like ChatGPT, which can really save recruiter’s time. This will only become more prevalent as tools and familiarity with AI increase and it isn’t going anywhere.

With regards to claims around reducing time to fill, revolutionizing process, assisting with high volume screening, and bolstering DEI, I am not convinced that we are there yet. For one, recruiting is and always will be a people business. The recruiter plays a pivotal part in building relationships with candidates and shepherding them through the interview process. Outsourcing that human touch for uber efficiency has its drawbacks that AI alone has not solved for. Could it help with high volume screening, yes. Could it potentially reduce time to fill metrics, maybe? Enhance the candidate experience? I’m a little skeptical. Diversify your talent pool by removing human bias? I’d like to see more information/studies before commenting… Either way, any utilization of AI will require balancing with the human-centric recruiting we all love. At the cost/investment required for certain AI tools, I don’t think we’re there yet.

In summary… AI is inevitable. As time moves on, we will only be utilizing and relying on artificial intelligence more than we do now, but we are not there yet. There is no all-inclusive, catch-all AI solution revolutionizing recruiting, and there likely won’t be for some time. Recruiting is a people business, and any utilization of AI will likely require human balancing. That said, all recruiters should use AI as a tool to make their workflow more efficient, allowing for more time for what matters... connecting with candidates.

Written by Jake Harris , Vice President, Engineering, Operations & Supply Chain and Director, National HR