Why AI will never replace human recruiters

In 2017, Amazon famously fired its AI recruitment system for actively discriminating against women’s CVs. Although systems like ChatGPT have come a long way since then, using more advanced machine learning to determine what to look for, there are still huge concerns about bias, with disabilities, socio-economic status and foreign cultures all erroneously – and illegally – being misinterpreted as weaknesses.?

Nevertheless, many recruiters continue to accelerate further towards a dystopian future, with bots being used for a whole host of purposes, from scheduling meetings and evaluating CVs to onboarding new candidates. It’s understandable, really, considering the time and money AI can save you – especially when it comes to finding people who may be right for the role despite never having applied. It’s basically like granting instant access to an interminable pool of applicants, cutting corners on otherwise lengthy recruitment processes.?

But what if these processes exist for a reason? Qualifications and education history tend to indicate a person’s basic ability to do a job quite well – but they can’t tell you much about the person themselves. Soft skills are rarely pointed out directly on a CV and AI has a hard time differentiating between two seemingly fitting options when it comes to company culture and getting along smoothly with the rest of the team. Let’s not forget that recruitment is – and always will be – a human industry, for people and about people.?

It’s all about building a mutually beneficial database of employers and employees, bringing the right combinations together to create that spark – much like in our other relationships. It’s a question of quality over quantity – and only someone with years of experience in the industry, with unrivalled social and networking skills, truly knows how to coax out those qualities and make that connection.?

Some companies are even using AI to conduct personality tests and initial, ‘one-way’ video interviews. Not only is this absurd, since it is completely abstracted from the point of an interview in the first place – getting to know the person – but it’s also a sure-fire way to exclude vast numbers of potentially wonderful people from your team purely because the anxiety of interacting with a faceless machine got the better of them. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – a good interview is as much about the interviewer’s skills as it is about the interviewee’s – and this is not somewhere we should be taking shortcuts.

The same goes for chatbots, too. Whilst they’re a great idea in theory, providing a 24-hour response to potential queries, they simply can’t capture the nuances of human communication as well as a real recruiter could. You see, recruitment isn’t just about finding people a job. There’s also a nurturing aspect to it, too, guiding candidates through their worries and concerns to bring out the absolute best in them. Think about it. Changing jobs is perhaps one of the most major decisions you will make in your life – it’s not something you can boil down into a predefined box and turn into a soulless process that’s somehow expected to sell. How are candidates expected to take the leap and jump into your company’s arms if they can’t see any of the personality that the perfect recruiter would be able to paint?

So, let’s leave the technology where it belongs, perhaps helping with planning and organising our calendars – not taking complete control over our lives and dehumanising something that good recruitment services have spent years trying to perfect.?