The Power of Human Intelligence: We're Better Together

If I asked you to think of a business process that requires input from many people, it’s hard to think of a better example than “employee hiring and onboarding.” The horizontal nature of this process is what makes applicant tracking systems (ATSs) so attractive: they provide a seamless way to automate hiring across disparate departments.

Unfortunately, ATSs also decrease meaningful human interaction at each point in the process.

Google and MIT have each conducted research showing why this decreased interaction matters. After surveying hundreds of low-, mid- and high-performing teams, researchers determined that the best-performing teams had the highest “collective intelligence.” This was expected.

What researchers didn’t expect was that collective intelligence was relatively uncorrelated with the average intelligence—or even the maximum individual intelligence—of group members. In other words, brain power wasn’t driving a team’s collective intelligence.

So, what was driving a team’s collective intelligence?

The answers lay in how these teams interacted. The highest-performing teams demonstrated “high average social sensitivity” among group members. This sensitivity was reflected in characteristics like equal talk time and psychological safety during discussions. These teams asked questions, listened, and engaged each other on both a professional and personal level.

Google and MIT’s studies revealed there is something about how we relate to and interact with each other as human beings that drives the collective intelligence of high-performing teams.

The ATS Chilling Effect

Google’s research established that “collective intelligence” depends on meaningful team interactions. Unfortunately, increased reliance on process automation and AI reduces the types of interactions associated with social sensitivity.

Some of this is so basic it feels silly.

For example, I recently spoke with a hiring manager who was doing a search for an open position but the job description for the role was misaligned with his actual needs, resulting in unqualified submissions. When I asked why the job description was inaccurate, he explained that ATS coding limitations prevented an accurate description. When I asked why he didn’t just add a new code, he explained it would require too many conversations. Equally shocking was that HR and TA agreed! Everyone preferred an inaccurate job description over having the internal and—more importantly—external vendor conversations it would take to update the ATS.?

This example reflects a key risk of automating business processes: the chilling effect. For any individual person in the hiring chain, asking for an update or exception to an automated or AI-driven workflow can be more trouble than it’s worth. So, people stop talking to each other. Meanwhile, the automated system is doing its work, prioritizing check boxes and sign offs over meaningful in-person interactions. And as important conversations stop occurring, suboptimal processes take root.

If AI-powered ATSs and recruiting tools were perfect—or, at least, near perfect—this chilling effect would be less concerning. But we know they’re not. AI tools are limited by the context and biases of their programming and the size and accuracy of their data. It’s been over 50 years since IBM programmer George Fueschell popularized “garbage in, garbage out,” but those words are as true today as ever.

Building Bridges

A good recruiter can mitigate the chilling effect described above—in fact, it’s an important part of their job. As outsiders, recruiters can ask questions and take action that might be uncomfortable internally. And because they take nothing for granted, their recruiting process often highlights and solves pitfalls in the hiring process. Perhaps most importantly, they can bridge the gap between HR, TA, Legal, Compliance and hiring managers.

At first, some companies ask their recruiters to work within the ATS model. But good employers eventually understand how this undermines the impact of external recruiters. As time passes, most companies come to value a partner who can think outside the ATS box and build bridges.

It's hard to overstate the value of this “bridge building.” By serving as a conduit between teams and departments, recruiters often suss out misunderstandings, false assumptions, and misalignments. In other words, recruiters revitalize the human interaction that is lost with overreliance on AI. The end result is a better hiring process and decision.

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