Will virtual work and AI hurt or help the recruitment industry?

Imagine this:

You’ve applied for a job, aced the phone interview, and now you’re waiting to hear the outcome of the in-person interview you had a few days ago. You receive an email instructing you to click on a link to review your application status. The link leads you to a video of someone you don’t recognize—who tells you that, regrettably, you weren’t selected for the job. The video isn’t personalized, nor does it make any mention of precisely which position it’s about. What’s more: you can see in the information bar below the video that it’s been viewed more than 1,100 times.

How do you think you’d feel? I don’t know about you, but I’d feel upset that the employer couldn’t even take the time to send me a personalized (or even a standard) rejection email. Because obviously, the video has been seen by more than 1,100 other people who also didn’t get a job.

As far-fetched as it might sound, this scenario actually happened. It was described in Ed Newman’s PhenomPeople article titled “Candidate Experience Worst Practice Alert: How NOT to Reject Applicants!” The employer in question was probably looking for a time-effective way to follow up with rejected applicants, and thought the video aspect used technology with a human touch. Outcome bad. Epic fail.

However, the story does flag some potential issues regarding leveraging technology to make a virtual organization more effective.

First of all, as the story above shows, it’s critical to never let technology take the human aspect out of recruiting—even if you never meet your candidates or clients in person. After all, recruiting is all about people: the people you work with, the people you’re recruiting, and the stakeholders you’re recruiting for. Streamlining communications is fine, but when it makes people feel like numbers, both your relationships and the employer’s value plummets. Granted, none of us enjoy picking up the phone and telling a candidate he or she didn’t get the job. But don’t you think that call to provide closure and meaningful feedback is a worthy investment? I do—because if your input helps that person interview better during the next opportunity, he or she will become a stronger and possibly more loyal candidate.

In addition, technological advancements like predictive tools and artificial intelligence (AI) are slowly but surely entering the virtual recruitment space. These innovations are already making an impact on how we assess talent. We want innovative, creative, and agile talent—and we’re letting applicant tracking systems make the first decision on whether or not a candidate possesses those qualities. But can technology truly become a foolproof way to assess talent in the long run? Will it become the new standard in evaluating what a “good” candidate is?

I don’t have the answer to those questions—but I do know this: when it comes to adopting new technologies, make sure to really think it through first. Figure out how these innovations could impact your interactions before committing to them. Because if you don’t, whatever you win in efficiency might be nothing in comparison to what you could lose in valuable relationships.

To view the original blog post: https://www.kellyocg.com/Blogs/Will_virtual_work_and_AI_hurt_or_help_the_recruitment_industry_/