To better understand the vast changes in technology within the recruitment industry, you must first understand the differences between Automation and Artificial Intelligence.
Automation is described as “the technique of making an apparatus, a process, or a system operate automatically.” Automation requires human interaction to build logic around a specific process or system. In recruitment, you can start your automation journey on things like candidate engagement, on-boarding, payroll/time keeping, or sales enablement. There are multiple sets of pre-programmed rules that individuals build as “steps” to follow in a process e.g. “if this, then that.” Though this may be dating some, think about when you were a child and brought home a Choose Your Own Adventure book from the library. As you read, you were given a choice at the end of the page; to Slay the Dragon go to page 123, to Run away go to page 205. This writing style follows the automation process – what you choose is already written in that book, but your answer dictates the next step you take.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is software designed to simulate human thinking. Often, by taking historical data coupled with current data, AI can start to train a program to learn and expand. This learning and expanding is referred to as Machine Learning. A perfect example of AI would be Amazon’s Alexa. Every time you ask Alexa a question or command it continues to learn from you; your likes and dislikes, habits, time you set your alarm to go to sleep, turn off your lights and so on. As Alexa continues to learn, it can start some predictive behaviors based on your interactions. Say you always turn off the hallway light at 9:00pm before going to sleep. As you continue to perform this task, Alexa will see a repeated pattern, and pretty soon a little voice will come on and ask, “Would you like to turn the Hallway light off?” right at that 9:00pm mark.
Back to the recruiting industry.
In May of this year, Staffing Hub released their State of Staffing report summarizing everything and anything that relates to the Staffing Industry. There was a focus on two significant take-aways: the Great Resignation and Technology. 60% of the respondents agreed that technology provides a competitive advantage and plan to significantly increase in their tech spend for 2022. Additionally, 51% of Fast-growth staffing firms agree that recruiting automation is going to transform the staffing industry, and 37% of them feel as though their business is leading in the digital transformation. Leveraged technologies have focused on Time Sheet Automation, Recruiting Automation, Automated Job Matching and Data Mining. These are all key areas in which companies can continue to grow and eliminate repetitive tasks from their high performing team members.
Not all reviews of technology and automation have been thought of as positive. A September 2021 article from The Verge discusses the issues with Automated hiring software that has been automatically rejecting candidates based on predetermined qualifications in a resume. The positive to this is, it is based on automation. Just like recruiters build Boolean searches to find candidates on job boards, some automation can utilize those same Booleans to screen out candidates based on those qualifications. Like any great recruiter, when your Boolean search is not turning up the results you desire; you change the search parameters. This solidifies the fact that, no matter how much technology you deploy, recruiting will always need some type of human interaction to make it truly successful.
In September 2021, ESPO Corporation continued to embark on its technology implementation journey, with a focus on our candidates and clients. Providing advancements like a new and improved job portal/job board, a fully integrated candidate engagement program, a referral management platform, and our first ever Mobile App – ESPO Engage. Our goal is not to replace recruiters with technology but provide a cutting-edge technology stack that assists the recruiters in matching the right candidates to the right employment opportunities, quickly and efficiently, with a robust candidate and client engagement experience. If you or anyone you know is interested in learning more about ESPO Corporation, our current employment opportunities, or our technology journey, feel free to check us out by downloading our app ESPO Engage or giving us a call at (630)789-2525!