Recruiting is an age-old of practice that has been going on since the dawn of time; in fact, it can be traced back to Ancient Egypt and Rome, where soldiers were recruited for their armies!

Today, the game has changed significantly, as cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools coming to bear on the recruiting and hiring market. With the costs of an empty seat getting higher and higher, many hiring officials are turning to AI solutions…but what works and what doesn’t?  

While AI has brought on a multitude of possibilities in many fields, sometimes AI brings about some concerns when dealing with a topic as objective and as human as hiring. For all intents and purposes, my stance is simple: recruiting is a very personal business. It is a relationship-driven decision on both sides. People want to work for people they like and who they feel like them.

That being said, candidates also want to work for exciting companies. While AI tools claim to find candidates faster, cheaper, and more efficiently, is that all you need to make a great hire?

Here are the pros and cons of using AI for recruiting and hiring:

Pro: Automated Response Times

The artificial intelligence software on the market can be programmed to solve a big recruitment flaw: It can provide timely, painless feedback to candidates. This means hiring managers, HR teams and candidates alike can all rejoice, as these AI platforms take the human element of empathy out of the equation – leading to greater efficiency and a significant improvement in the candidate experience.

Con: Limited Results

AI severely limits your candidate pool. Although the candidate may receive automated notifications about where they are at in the process, most AI systems filter through candidates that apply to the software directly. That is efficient, but it also severely limits the candidate pool when you consider that 80% of the candidate pool is not actively looking for a new position and would most likely never wind up applying.

Pro: No Resume Missed

Sometimes, when hiring managers or recruiters get inundated with resumes, it can be easy to miss a perfect fit while looking for a literal needle in a haystack. The average number of applicants per job posting varies, but in today’s market with layoffs happening all around us, it is higher than ever. AI is great at providing consistent results without making mistakes, which can be critical at times, especially in hiring.

Con: Bias and Lack of Human Touch

Artificial intelligence is only as good as the information it is given. It will not think outside of the box or listen to an applicant’s intellect and ability to grow. It can become biased over time and definitely cannot make its own decisions. AI-based systems learn the behaviors of the decision-makers over time and make a decision based on that. It is black and white. It sounds great, but at some point, it is going to keep saying yes to one type of profile only; in fact, there have been some cases where the AI starts to only select applicants of a certain race or gender after developing a bias.  

While AI has the potential to be a great tool for someone who may struggle to match skill sets, nothing can replace the human touch that good old people to people conversations provide. For now, humans are making the decisions. The bottom line is the technology is not quite ready to replace recruiting and HR functions completely; however, in the meantime, it might be a good supplement.

To determine if AI is the right tool for your organization, it is crucial to pinpoint where the bottleneck is and decide if AI supplementation will make a difference.