There’s been much discussion on the impact that AI will have on the future of work and, in particular, the effect it will have on recruiters and the staffing industry writ-large.
The binding thread across these conversations is that human processes around sourcing candidates, interviewing them, and matching them with jobs have the potential to be fundamentally disrupted by AI.
The ATS
Any survey of technology used in the recruiting process must start with the applicant tracking system (ATS). Applicant tracking systems were coded tools that would take information about hundreds of candidates being considered by a company and organize them to visually show where they were in the interview process.
In that way, these systems were so 20th-century. In my opinion, one of the best criticisms of these systems is that they just put too much of a burden on the applicant, to go in and fill out granular fields, with low-value information like the exact dates of college enrollment, etc. etc. – and the result was that people gave up!
Now, by contrast, you have smart automations crunching that data for you, and even interacting with workers directly. This kind of frictionless process has a lot of potential to relieve some of those issues that we’ve had with “digital job applications” and even interviews.
The Modern AI Interview
Have you ever been interviewed by a robot?
What about an AI entity over Zoom?
At the Imagination in Action Summit in Davos in January, we saw testimony from Brendan Foody, who is one of the founders of a startup called Mercor that is using automated AI to match up companies with talented career professionals.
The founding team consists of Harvard and Georgetown dropouts Brendan Foody (CEO), Adarsh Hiremath (CTO), and Surya Midha (COO).
Foody, Hiremath, and Midha recently each received the prestigious Thiel Fellowship, a $100,000 grant awarded by billionaire Peter Thiel that encourages young people to drop out of college and work on a company. This marks one of the only times in the fellowship’s history where an entire founding team has received the award.
With over 300,000 users from over 120 countries around the world, this company is growing – its founders got a $100,000 grant as part of the Thiel Fellowship, by creating a real-time interview experience where an AI grills you about your skills, credentials and more.
Hiremath, CTO, explains:
“(The AI interviewer) is an order of magnitude better than what a human can do. We’ve trained models to ask questions based on the full context of a candidate’s educational history, skills, and work experience.”
The interviewer has piqued the interest of thousands of people online across LinkedIn and other online forums frequented by job seekers. As one unnamed individual wrote on Geeks for Geeks:
“While AI interviews may present a unique set of challenges, they also offer valuable opportunities for growth and learning. By adequately preparing, maintaining clarity and focus in communication, and demonstrating a proactive attitude towards learning, candidates can navigate AI interviews successfully. My experience with Mercor AI has certainly provided me with valuable insights that I hope will benefit others preparing for similar encounters.”
The question, according to some who are looking at the viability of these types of services, is whether AI can convince people that its decisions are trustworthy.
Is AI Alone?
To that question, think about this – is the AI interviewer alone with the candidate in the virtual room, or are there humans involved, too?
At the Harvard Business Review, Jessica Kim-Schmid and Roshni Raveendhran talk about potential issues with automated talent management, including ‘low trust in AI-driven decisions’ and ‘erosion of employee privacy.’
However, AI has the potential to substantially improve the recruiting experience for candidates.
One of the largest benefits that these new AI tools bring is around efficiency and avoiding the type of burnout that happens when there are too many touch points in an interview or hiring process.
Most of us are familiar with the soul-crushing tedium of filling out ATS web forms, or even one of those old paper applications (shudder.)
Or we’ve seen these human-run interview processes where a job candidate goes to one, then two, then three hour-long sessions, covering a lot of tangential questions, and might even ultimately be ghosted.
AI tools can help with this and improve satisfaction with hiring processes. It’s also possible that they can play more precise matchmakers between a person and an open job. The key seems to be with transparency and oversight, and people targeting the machine’s results to the actual need. And in a way, that’s not surprising – so many of our experts stress that AI shouldn’t be replacing people – it should be assisting them!
Disclosure – Link Ventures where I am a Managing Director is an investor in Mercor
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