The field of hiring has been an art more than a science hsitorically, but that may be about to change as new technology enables companies to employ artificial intelligence (AI). There is a growing group of startups that are developing new AI applications to support recruiting and hiring. These machine-learning platforms scan for the attributes that make candidates suitable to become team members, and other functions that show startlingly powerful insights into workplace behavior.
AI can also spot the red flags that warn of personality traits and behaviors that might make an individual unsuitable for hiring. Artificial Intelligence promises to overcome hiring biases and provide more suitable candidates while avoiding those that exhibit disruptive behaviors.
Machines Learn To Read People
AI applications can search through vast volumes of content to find patterns and characteristics. Data scientists are applying AI to all aspects of business operations, which include hiring practices. AI can delve into data sets and find patterns in employee or job candidate behavior from the many sources that post data publicly on the Internet and through public records such as credit reporting agencies.
IBM’s Watson searches keywords for content and assigns positive and negative values; the startup Broad Listening goes further and analyzes the entire sentence structure and determines context more accurately. This technology analyzes written texts, social media postings, and other online behavior to draw conclusions; it learns behaviors from thousands of examples given by its software developers.
Broad Listening focuses specifically on improving communications in human resources departments. This AI platform draws from real world content sources, such as major job-posting sites, surveys, and job-interview transcripts. The result is a system that can determine if a candidate fits a job. The system also helps managers find the right tone in communications and what makes people suitable for jobs, and suggestion of changes in roles to give a better workplace fit.
The founder of TalentBin contends that conventional measures of performance are ineffective at determining the future value of a candidate to a prospective employer; GPAs, test scores, and surveys are of no value. He claims that this is the conclusion he draws from collecting and analyzing data with artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence offers hope that assessments will be more objective and accurate. It also shows promise in finding indications that warn of negative traits, such as hostility toward others and deviousness that would be easily concealed from an interviewer but would be destructive in the workplace.
Can AI Find The Perfect Hires?
The AI algorithm for Connectifier determines if candidates would be a good fit for a job or not. Connectifier has more than 400 million profiles based on social media and public records to study for patterns with AI. HireVue uses AI to deliver predictive analytics that scans videos from hiring interviews. It watches the facial expressions, the tone of voice and choice of words to determine whom their clients should engage.
AI is changing the role of recruiters and managers in the hiring process; once candidates have passed AI, hiring managers will review them for a final approval, just in case it misses something that would be obvious to a human. It may have significant impact issues in the workplace as employees hired in this way come to predominate, or some other problems will reveal themselves.
AI is making a mark behind the scenes in human resources and at the decision-making point, just as it is impacting the rest of business operations and development. Artificial Intelligence is not replacing hiring managers but helping them make better hiring choices by seeing deep into the data without biases, and finding the hidden patterns within it.
