Decoding The AI-Powered Hiring Professional In Todays Smart Enterprise

Team Meeting

The hiring team is one of the most important teams in an enterprise that sits on the lifeline of any healthy and growing organization. They are nothing short of the unsung superheroes in any workplace.But even the superheroes need sidekicks and their tools of the trade. Let us try and decode the AI-powered hiring superstar today, one that is enabling your enterprise to look firmly into hiring and retaining the best.

Team Meeting

Before going to the AI-powered heroes, let us look at traditional hiring team members and where the process needs a serious hand. If you are one of those people who has applied for jobs using a corporate openings listing or a job website, you know that sending a resume to apply for a job is like a big gamble. There is roughly 85% chance that your resume just goes in and gets lost, this is popularly known as the hiring black hole. The flip side of this complicated equation is the fact that around 70% of employers say that they are unable to find the right candidates for jobs. So something is very seriously wrong if people are looking for jobs and employers are looking for people and they are not meeting each other. Where is the problem here? Are hiring teams not earnest enough? Are they not equipped to handle the current market? What is wrong?

The wiring of human nature and the traditional hiring methods hold the key to understanding the problem. We as humans are wired in a very complicated way when it comes to evaluating others, we have our view of things and people that are not always scientific or practical. This is more popularly called bias. Take the example of an autistic person applying for an opening in a company. The individual may not have the best interpersonal skills to take an interview, but it is very well known that autistic people have extraordinary skills in other areas, and one of those areas maybe where you need good resources for your company, but then the human bias that is inherent in humans will more often than not lead the autistic candidate to get rejected due to her/his challenge and not get into the skills area at all for discussion. This is example is more of an outlier than a common case. The more common case here will be like candidates who have employment gaps but are skilled enough and have the right disposition to deliver and engage on a long-term with an employer. The traditional system tends to overlook these candidates simply because they have gaps in employment.

There are also issues post-hiring in the traditional process of hiring. Since the fit is based on a few dictionary matches and a few rounds of interviews that at best last a few hours, there is a high possibility that there are errors in gauging the aspirations and growth expectations of a candidate. And an error in that department results in problems for the enterprise that is doing the hiring. It is a well documented fact that the cost of the loss of a resource is not just the cost of the resource but also the learning curve that was involved in orientation and the organizational effort in training and induction. So when the aspirations and growth expectations are not matched, resources end up leaving for better opportunities that they perceive as ones that are growth-wise in line with what they want. This is not desirable for either the enterprise or the employee.

There is also a third angle to the hiring scenario, one that many enterprises are grappling with and trying to sort out very fast, the issue of effective utilization of internally available resources. For example, you need a good designer for an important project and your hiring team is working overtime to find one for you. In your accounting team, there is someone who is a talented designer too and needs just a little bit of orientation to actually take up design as an additional task in a serious mode and deliver for the project. Normally this would go unnoticed. But in reality it would be a very good idea for the enterprise to re-purpose someone from the existing talent pool to fit the requirement. This is again something that traditional hiring teams would more often miss than spot. Given the fact that the internal resource already a part of the team and well indoctrinated into the organizational thought process and way of functioning, using the resource is a definite win for the enterprise.

There come times when every enterprise needs to scale up resourcing fast for critical projects. In such scenarios, the traditional hiring process would get stifled and loaded to the seams. The need to find the right internal and external resources at the right time as a project is ramping up is quite a challenge. The interview teams and the sourcing teams will also be dealing with excessive stress and fatigue when the traditional process in used for hiring. And when these two factors creep in you invariably end up making hiring mistakes.

So enter the AI-empowered Hiring Professional to solve all these issues. What your enterprise needs is a tenacious and adaptable hiring professional and an AI enabled hiring solution. AI will help in candidate engagement right from the shortlisting stage. Imagine an AI powered bot doing the initial rounds of talking to potential fits and then extrapolating the data that is obtained in the process, the hiring pro then just has to tabulate these and let the hiring tool analyze at a granular level to identify proper fits.

The system will also be able to harness data about the candidate from all possible online sources like online platforms, social media, blogs and prior employment history. Since it is based on context and machine learning, it is devoid of bias and fatigue. The fits are better matched.

Post hiring, the system continues to engage with the resource to manage growth, satisfaction and aspirations at the workplace. The candidate and the hiring professional are both active users of the system and the platform schedules, manages and records regular interactions to track growth and satisfaction at the workplace. Again the ability of the system to minutely manage and track data ensures that all the relevant signals are monitored and managed. This model of enabled and efficient hiring is the new norm and enterprises across the globe are opting to have their hiring professionals empowered by AI. In the long run, tools like Spire TalentSHIP bring context – the most important factor into hiring and no data is ever missed. Effectively making hiring smarter and the hiring professional more efficient.

 

About Shakthi

I am a Tech Blogger, Disability Activist, Keynote Speaker, Startup Mentor and Digital Branding Consultant. Also a McKinsey Executive Panel Member. Also known as @v_shakthi on twitter. Been around Tech for two decades now.

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