The current AI landscape for employers

More and more employers are using text generating AI tools like ChatGPT for myriad purposes like creating job advertisements, blog posts, interview questions and employer branding. According to Hays one in five of UK employers are currently using AI tools, with 27% investing in upskilling their employees in these new technologies.

Companies are using AI to organise their unstructured HR and recruitment data. AI may be able to reduce bias in your recruitment screening processes (to an extent). This is helpful to recruiters, who are ‘always trying to automate processes’ as well as improve their quality. 

What about for candidates? It’s clear that jobseeker confidence has been steadily falling this year while job postings decrease. As a result, candidates might increasingly turn to AI tools to help them write more convincing applications, particularly if their writing skills or understanding of keyword usage is lacking.

But on the other hand, there has been a ‘decline in applicants making use of ChatGPT’, due to a lack of understanding as to how to create good outputs. This might mean that AI and ChatGPT is more useful to employers than candidates at this point in time — they simply know how to use the technology better.

When it comes to the tools currently available, it can seem daunting to choose the right one. Let’s look at what the future of AI in recruitment might be. 

Where is the future of AI headed?

When it comes to the future of AI, employers and candidates alike are excited and concerned for the potential implications of using AI. But where are things currently at, and where can we potentially progress from there? Let’s explore.

AI as intervention, but not a replacement for human decision-making

Firstly, how far can we currently go when it comes to letting AI make key decisions during the recruitment process? We’re at a point where we can use ‘AI as intervention’ but it’s currently not a replacement for human input, thought, and observation.

The obvious endgame is intervention. So to what extent do we allow the machine to tell us whether someone should be hired? Looking at behaviours in application processes, behaviours in interviews.

This means that, for the time being, it’s preferable for HR and management to make that decision themselves. Employers shouldn’t necessarily jump the gun and start looking at using AI in this way now. But in the future, it’s entirely possible that AI could become more and more involved in key decision making. This makes it something to consider as a potential outcome of the way that AI is evolving in the recruitment industry.

You might be wondering why this is an important consideration for employers. One such issue, is where the information that you input into these AI tools is going to. At the moment, we don’t know how this information is being used after it is inputted, making it a potential data privacy risk.

We found that employees who are inputting confidential data into ChatGPT and similar AI tools may be running foul of data compliance regulations in the UK. Therefore, employers can look at building their own AI to make data-driven decisions without running the risk of their confidential data being harvested by large AI platforms. 

Learning to use AI effectively is key to recruiters

While the future of AI has a lot of unknowns, we can predict that the tools available on the market to recruiters will consolidate down to a few major players. However, companies can take initiative and build their own AI tools, which they can use to make better data-driven decisions about recruitment processes. Remember that the ‘people’ element of recruitment should ideally be at the forefront of your strategy regardless of whether AI becomes a part of this process. That way, employers can give a more human, more accurate reflection of what it’s like to work for them as an employee.