Is your HR tech stack working for you?
All too many staffing firms in the post-pandemic job market embrace automation in talent acquisition. Human Resources (HR) and recruitment automation trends also tend to plow through the general move of hiring managers and staffing firms to practice more inclusivity and diversity in the workplace.
This is what the intermarriage between HR and AI aims to solve. Finally, finding out how to reduce bias in the hiring process would be the goal that the latest HR tech and automation intend to achieve.
But can it pave the way toward inclusive hiring?
Let’s run down the pros and cons of hiring automation and get a better glimpse of how the future of HR looks insofar as inclusivity and diversity are concerned.
Performance Management Trends 2022: Advantages of Automated Hiring
1. More Efficient Sourcing and Selection of Candidates
Recruitment automation enables you and your team to efficiently modify your job posts and ads from templates more seamlessly. This allows you to focus more swiftly on the actual vacancies, corresponding qualifications, and relevant experience.
Your HR software landscape should feature automated tools to screen applicants, expediting the selection process.
2. Maximizes Your Internal Hiring Pool
Automating your hiring process also allows you to maximize your internal hiring pool. This will enable you to be more proactive in your hiring process because you can create a pipeline of past candidates who are qualified, already screened, and can take on the job in just a short time.
This diminished your reliance on job boards and ads – and waiting on job candidates to reply to your ad.
3. Fast-Tracking the Application Process
It is undeniable that hiring managers and job candidates alike find the application process tedious and even unwieldy. The process can be long as the waiting times tend to go on and on. By automating your recruitment, you get a more thorough view of each candidate and where they are in the application process.
Your recruitment software may also automatically place qualified candidates for an interview via a pre-built scheduling module. Once they pass the job interview, the software should be able to send the candidate a job offer.
This is indeed time-saving!
4. More Seamless Onboarding
You can also create a better first-day impression on your new hire by seamlessly onboarding them. Onboarding an employee usually involves:
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- Giving them company access credentials,
- Sending the new hires pertinent introductory emails,
- The general induction and training process. All of these can be automated.
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5. Promotes Diversity and Inclusion in the Hiring Process
HR tech such as Applicant Tracking Solutions (ATS) can remove information that can cause bias, consciously or unconsciously. These include data on age, ethnicity, and gender. This means that your tech stack can focus solely on employment history and skills – giving every job candidate a fair shot at landing the role.
Read more: As Automation Rises, so Does the Need for Human Talent
AI for Recruiting: Dangers and Possible Perils
Artificial intelligence in recruitment aims to reduce bias by enlisting machine-based decisions. However, using AI for recruiting may harm your organization’s DEI (Diversity Equality Inclusivity) efforts. Here’s how:
1. Historical Data Does Not Support DEI Initiatives.
When you use artificial intelligence for hiring, you will use its historical data to build your hiring system. This historical data – predominantly within the male and white demographic – already possess an inherent bias.
In the absence of historical data sets to train AI algorithms, hiring tools utilizing AI become very likely to carry the same biases your organization has wanted to eradicate for decades.
2. AI Hiring Algorithms May End Up Perpetuating Biases, Instead of Removing Them.
HR tech tools that analyze people’s facial expressions, tone, expressions, and other aspects of their personality are rooted in “how normal or desirable they are culturally.” This is a loaded statement!
By measuring how “culturally desirable” a job candidate is, you can end up excluding candidates with disabilities or any job seeker whose profile does not fit with what the algorithm has determined as a typical candidate. This puts many job candidates, such as disabled job seekers, in an awkward position.
3. AI in Recruiting May Conflict with Data Privacy Issues.
There are also valid concerns about the amount of data that can collect on a particular job seeker while analyzing their video interviews, CVs, online assessments, and social media profiles. For one, candidates may not even know that they are being examined and may need help understanding how AI tools are studying them.
Still, a lack of regulation on automated hiring processes continues – both from the private sector and the government.
Read more: 2023 Compliance Checklist: Biometrics, Paid Time Off and Other Regulatory Updates
4. Automated HR Hiring Systems May Exclude Those Who Are Not Yet Tech Savvy.
While this may be too far from left field for tech people and white-collar workers, automating your hiring process can be very uncomfortable, if not entirely unrelatable, for those who have not yet migrated to digital technology. However, addressing socioeconomic considerations when using AI for recruitment is a must.
Aside from this, some professionals have become accustomed to just one tech provider and feel lost if they switch during the application process. For instance, an Apple user may feel lost during the interview if they use Microsoft technologies instead and vice versa.
Similarly, some HR tech tools work optimally on one provider only. Losing a competent command of the technology one has to use in the application process can spell disaster for any job seeker.
Read more: Employers Who See Potential Over Experience Win
5. AI in Recruiting Cannot Provide a Holistic Assessment of a Candidate.
Can HR software tools like facial recognition assess the emotional state of the job candidate during an interview? Can it accurately measure a job candidate’s disposition, confidence, and general well-being when the labor market comprises diverse individuals from different social backgrounds?
Undeniably, this can make your HR tech stack prone to false positives or false negatives, so to speak.
Success Through Technology: Being Strategic is Key!
Hiring managers and staffing firms must be more strategic in utilizing AI for recruiting if they are serious about diversity and inclusive hiring.
One, consider focusing on skills-based hiring. Use HR tech tools to assess competence in a particular skill set.
Moreover, hiring managers and staffing firms are encouraged to keep a salient human component in the hiring process. The strategy of depending solely on AI to determine suitable candidates is not yet a foolproof strategy for the time being.
Finally, there is wisdom in partnering with a staffing firm that has a tried and tested process that supports diversity and inclusive hiring for your company.
Collaborate with the Fox Search Group to make diversity and inclusive hiring a cornerstone of your company. With a reputable HR tech stack that is seamless and efficient, you also have a pool of expert recruiters from the Fox Search Group to complement their world-class hiring tech stack. Lock in top talent for your company while also forwarding your DEI initiatives.
Reach out to us today!