Soon job seekers will be sifted by algorithms and  exercises that test problem-solving skills, creativity and how people respond to stress

For years, the biggest challenge in the recruiting industry was manually testing applicants. Now, thankfully, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a reality and its use for recruitment is rapidly evolving. Soon, the days of reading endless resumes and covering letters, then holding interviews, will give way to AI-led candidate assessment. Job seekers will be sifted by algorithms and exercises that test everything, from problem-solving skills and creativity, to how they respond to stress. AI will enable Human Resource (HR) professionals to reach the right candidate in the least possible time, with low-cost inclusion.

 According to a recent study, 52 per cent of talent acquisition leaders say the hardest part of recruitment is identifying the right candidates from a large applicant pool. While, 56 per cent say their hiring volume will increase this year, 66 per cent of recruiting teams will either stay the same size or contract. This means that recruiters are being tasked to do more with lesser resources.

Business leaders looking to hire or HR managers should consider fast-rising employment solutions that provide AI-enhanced recruitment. It is crucial for any company to not merely hire employees but recruit the most qualified person.

In today’s business climate, firms with first-mover advantage usually lead the way and soon, talent acquisition in India will undergo a paradigm shift. So, to keep up with advancements in the industry, HR professionals should become part of the AI revolution as the benefits of doing so are many. AI-enhanced HR solutions are becoming the backbone of the industry, especially for companies that need to recruit thousands of employees in a short time.

 A recruitment system based on AI is capable of screening candidates in a more systematic way while looking out for a particular skill set, without any human intervention. It has algorithmic power to conclude the performance of job applicants.

It can even track online interviews on a real time basis and if an applicant faces difficulties in a particular sphere, then the AI will ask similar questions, repeatedly, to gauge how the candidate reacts to pressure. The only thing left for the recruiter is to provide the AI with a database to work on and to check the final list of the candidates before the recruitment system sends out emails for an interview. AI recruiting systems are designed to tremendously improve the recruiter’s efficiency to ensure that companies don’t miss the best candidates and they are the first ones to be selected for the interview.

Today’s business leaders are always looking for people who perfectly fit the skill set they are looking for and there is tremendous pressure on recruiters to match and hire the candidates who can meet the management’s expectations. AI-optimised hiring helps recruiters match the right employees with the right company. Plus, the AI recruitment software delivers solutions at a low cost so that it reduces a firm’s cost per hire. Companies have to invest in the AI system once unlike the recurring costs of recruitment agencies that charge firms per employee hired.

However, there are many challenges to leveraging AI’s full potential. First is competence, as the AI ecosystem, like its most important subfield, machine learning (ML), is still very small. It’s difficult to find and hire good talent. The simple way to solve it is to hire an agency which has highly-skilled professionals familiar with AI technologies that will give HR teams training on fixed intervals. Non-adoption is another major risk. Any challenge in the world and especially in business, is an opportunity for AI. Adopting AI will require patience and a willingness to learn and will be complex and lengthy, so firms need to start now. Between the ongoing development of AI to recruit applicants and the understandable lag in implementation at this early stage, many of the features that it can bring to the hiring process are still to be completely implemented.

Like every new computing technology, AI still has a long way to go and there are some serious concerns which need to be addressed. As is obvious, AI has been invented to replace the human workforce and if it is adopted on a large scale, this will result in huge unemployment. There is no doubt that adopting AI will enhance the work culture and productivity, but it will also create economical unbalance in most sectors.

The second big concern is privacy, as we have seen various AI-infused web platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp lacking in this sphere. So along with adopting AI, organisations should equally give importance to the protection of the privacy of their staff and prospective employees.

To conclude, AI is a very new and unexplored segment and it will require major infrastructure to educate people about it before we let it come into our lives in a major way.

(The writer is MD of a talent consulting firm.)