
The best recruitment event in history?
How do you judge whether a Recruitment event is a success or not?
Different people will value different things. For me, it combines three valuable outcomes.
Learning—just a few fresh ideas, new tactics, or good advice can make an event worthwhile and possibly game-changing.
People – to learn from, to share with, to collaborate with, and even become friends with.
Fun—relax, laugh, step away from the ‘day-to-day’, and have a laugh or two.
If these criteria were applied to the Evolve summit in the Czech Republic last week, we would have to give it 10 out of 10 stars.
Evolve is a unique experience.
In one day, you see 25 speakers, demos from suppliers, a comedian, poker tables, a marching drum band, an outrageous Slovakian rock group, mountains of quality food, significant opportunities to imbibe, regular limbering-up stretching sessions, and an extraordinary DJ who not only danced on top of his turntable – but also to my great enjoyment managed to intersperse his ‘doof doof‘ music with AC/DC, for the more mature amongst us.
Rocking ‘Highway to Hell’ in Brno with Slovakian twins born six years apart is not an everyday experience! (I know, you had to have been there)
And if it is all too much, just take a rest in the underground chill-out zone.
(By the way, I spoke at the very first version of this event 9 years ago. It was a blast even then. Read the summary here)
The presentations were across three floors and included my keynote address in the primary auditorium, one of the premier rock venues in the Czech Republic. Numerous breakout sessions and seminars were also held in the building’s car park! I kid you not! But it all worked.
Below, you see a picture of me (greatly relieved by the happy audience) at the end of my session.
My topic was
The Future of Recruitment.
A marriage between art and science.
It has been years since I’ve prepared so thoroughly for a presentation. I needed to understand and form an opinion of how automation will impact our Industry and the current situation with AI in recruitment.
My conclusions do not always agree with those of the ‘experts‘ and ‘Tech bros‘.
I am delighted to say that the Keynote was exceptionally well received. I am also pleased to announce that you can see a live webinar of the presentation for free next week, on November 21st. Enrol here.
I told the audience that many people are too binary in their opinions on AI. There is a group that says AI will destroy agency Recruitment (They are wrong). Then there’s the opposite pitch: recruitment is a ‘people business only‘, and technology is not helpful and cannot enhance it. That’s not accurate, either.
Recruitment is where science meets art. That is where the magic happens.
The big problem with AI is that it does not have very much “I”. It’s just not that smart yet. It is often poor quality, makes mistakes, replicates bias, is too literal, does not know right from wrong, depends on vast data sets, and has no context. It can’t detect nuance or outliers.
Many recruitment companies and in-house teams implement untested AI as a knee-jerk reaction to the hype. The research tells us that most AI is not being used as intended. No one in the company understands what they have bought, people are not trained, and there are few controls or guard rails. It is a shit show, to be frank.
Meanwhile, AI and automation are slowing recruitment down. It’s making the process more cumbersome and creating awful outcomes for candidates and recruiters. This will improve over time, but the claim that AI makes recruitment more efficient and less painful is far from reality.
Candidates are gaming the system and using AI-prepared resumes and cover letters, sometimes creating applications that border on fantasy. They also use AI tools to scam the VC interview process, causing deep flaws in decision-making.
Copilot is a Chrome extension that runs on the candidate’s device during an interview on Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, and Webex. In one panel, it transcribes the interviewer’s spoken questions in real time. The next panel gives the applicant the answers to those questions in real time.
The candidate’s resume, cover letter, job title, and details of the potential employer are all uploaded to the application before the interview to give the algorithm added context.
At RCSA’s SHAPE 2024 Conference recently, SEEK’s group executive of artificial intelligence, Grant Wright, said that SEEK’s technology was currently detecting the use of AI in around 20% of resumes submitted for vacancies posted on SEEK. Wright predicted this percentage would rapidly accelerate to around 50% within six months.
And then, and this is deeply ironic, some recruiters are using AI detection tools to assess whether candidates are using AI.
And those detection tools are profoundly flawed and often get it wrong, sometimes, for example, assessing a person who has applied using a second language or maybe someone who is neurodivergent as an ‘application cheat’. They get swept up in the ‘detection tool blacklist’ sometimes.
So it is BS AI jousting with BS AI!
Understand me however please; I am no ‘dinosaur AI denier‘. (My training Academy has just released a new fully AI-enhanced platform and exponentially better.) I use AI myself, and I see its incredible potential. The technology will improve, and I encourage everyone to beware of the ‘early rejector’ trap. We must engage with AI, understand it, and use it strategically.
However, the critical question of any tech solution is, “What problem of ours does this solve?” I ask this about every tech pitch I get (which is dozens a year). So often, even the product owner stumbles to answer. “Er, well, it’s AI, you know,” is what I frequently hear! That is not enough. What does it do for the stakeholders—candidates, employers, and recruiters?
Evaluate that first.
Then, make sure you automate the part of the job that AI does better than humans. And by ‘better’, I mean faster, more accurate, and cheaper than people. But also where it enhances the stakeholder experience. The last four words of that sentence are the critical ones.
But never automate the parts of the process that humans do better through sophisticated influencing skills.
AI already has some positive impacts, especially at the top end of the recruiting funnel. It screens, matches, and shortlists very effectively in some cases, especially in high-volume transactional roles – often much more efficiently than human beings.
However, the key is to understand which part of the recruiting process should be done by technology and which part should be done by humans.
There are still many vital steps in the recruitment process where influencing the outcome is the differentiator. I call these “Moments of Truth”.
And so, it’s true that the Recruiter’s real value. is selling…listening…advising…consulting… insights… influencing
So, AI will not destroy recruitment.
However, it may take many recruiters’ jobs because so many recruiters lack influencing skills and hide behind digital.
In recruitment, it is still true that the ‘soft skills’ are hard. And AI is nowhere near dealing with that.
So, it would be best if you had a plan for tech. As a recruiter and as a leader
AI will not replace agency recruitment.
But it may replace you.
Hear the full Keynote, which will be delivered as a webinar. Free
This blog is just a tiny taste of an in-depth one-hour session
If you can’t make the time, sign up anyway, as you will get sent the recording
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- Posted by Greg Savage
- On November 13, 2024
- 0 Comment