When AI decides who to hire

ChatGPT has passed programming tests at Google and Amazon, has been employed as a communications consultant and has helped candidates in all stages of the job search from writing CVs, LinkedIn profiles, preparing for job interviews and writing tests. Employers are also using AI to find, screen, and hire candidates, from writing job ads to filtering resumes to analyzing job interviews. AI tools are increasingly used in job search and recruitment processes, and as they optimize them, human intuition and judgment are also removed from the equation, for better or for worse.

Recruiting has been changing with the integration of new technologies and the use of AI tools, long before ChatGPT was launched. Today, AI software is already being used to review resumes, sort candidates based on past experience, and even conduct and analyze candidate interviews. However, technological advances have revolutionized the profession itself. According to a survey conducted by HRD Israel among 300 organizations, 70% of employers have already used ChatGPT for work purposes, mainly for content creation such as writing job ads and social media posts.

“There is no doubt that the real revolution in the world of recruitment and HR is happening right now. Tools like ChatGPT or BARD enable a significant leap forward,” says Vicky Groner, recruitment and employer branding consultant and lecturer at HRD. “First, they can serve as a source of knowledge. While in the past we relied on organizational encyclopedias that defined specific roles, now we can get a job description at the click of a button. The description can be accessed and customized. In addition, ChatGPT can create content for us, can write articles for us, draft job descriptions and even offer job requirements. It can create Excel functions, recommend behavioral interview questions, and even generate an applicant screening engine.”

AI systems are able to analyze information quickly and accurately so that organizations can focus on the most suitable candidates. In addition, AI tools help organizations to brand employers, manage recruiting systems and the candidate experience.

“As a recruiter at AppsFlyer, not a day goes by that I don’t use artificial intelligence for my work needs. In terms of my day-to-day work, ChatGPT is a complete game changer,” says Tal Bar Menashe, Talent Acquisition Specialist at AppsFlyer.

“You can use prompts to write as an experienced recruiter, as a junior product manager, or as a senior developer and chat about the job, which is how I actually create an accurate and readable job description. Job characteristics generated by ChatGPT with proper direction come out extremely accurate. I also use it to write LinkedIn posts about open positions and to make internal messages clearer.

“Also, I use ChatGPT to conduct market research, which also helps me in the recruitment process. I use it to find out how many SaaS B2B companies exist in the market, what are the best AI solutions in the market, and even to build foundations for long-term projects, such as updating the way we approve and find a position in our ATS system, which is HR software that serves as a database of job details, suitable candidates and much more.”

Assaf Jacobi, head of global talent strategy at Amdocs, says AI tools are being used at every stage of recruitment and screening. “You no longer need to look for a job in our career portal. The candidate uploads their resume and the AI ​​maps the candidate’s skills and suggests suitable open positions. The recruiting and sourcing team uses AI tools to find suitable potential candidates, with advanced calibration capabilities. In addition, we acquired an AI-based internal career management platform where an employee can receive recommendations for open positions within the organization based on their skills and professional aspirations. The system not only provides a significantly better candidate experience on the career website, but also offers options for calibration (match between needs and candidates), thereby streamlining the process.”

One of the main benefits of using AI tools is streamlining the recruitment process by automating various tasks. “At Nayax, we take care to integrate AI tools that will help us at various stages of the recruitment process. We use a smart recruiting system that builds filtering questionnaires for candidates to answer when they submit their resumes. Using the system allows us and the hiring managers to get more information about the candidate’s professional experience and also focus on tasks that require broader human diagnostic abilities. Another example of how we use AI tools is an intelligent system to build test simulations that simulate a real work environment,” says Daniel Davidovitch, head of talent acquisition at Israeli fintech company Nayax.

Objective decision or perpetuating bias?

AI systems learn by identifying patterns in existing data. Therefore, if AI tools are trained on data that contains outliers, the results may also be outliers. For example, if an organization has in the past recruited mostly men from a certain background, the software may continue to recommend candidates from that same group in the future. In addition, the use of AI in selection and hiring raises questions about privacy and ethics – to what extent can an AI system really replace human intuition, human experience and understand complex dynamics?

“Today, almost all products and services in this field use AI in one way or another,” says Yoni Friedman, vice president of product management at Gloat. “Artificial intelligence is tasked with identifying suitable candidates for a specific position and is expected to do so quickly and with a high level of accuracy. As a result, most applications are based on historical data, and artificial intelligence finds candidates similar to previous hires for such roles. When it works this way, the system not only identifies the reasons why the employee was hired, but also the negative biases that may have occurred in that process. For example, if a company gives preference knowingly or unknowingly to men or people under a certain age, artificial intelligence will identify this and give the same preference. In fact, it may even increase this bias more than before.”

Finding candidates through artificial intelligence based on past recruitments also stifles creativity in the workflow. Artificial intelligence is designed to identify recurring patterns in recruiting, so it can overlook new or less common parameters that might make a candidate a good fit for a position. In other words, AI tends to identify the most common candidate profile and only search for it. It is programmed not to consider exceptional cases where atypical candidates have been hired, thereby preventing individuals who do not meet the immediate criteria from developing into the role.

On the other hand, because AI models do not include human considerations, they are able to “see” things that human recruiters might miss. “Artificial intelligence has the ability to identify similar skills that can help a candidate learn a new role. As a result, AI can present recruiters with candidates they may not have previously considered. AI can also explain to people why they are suitable for a particular role or why a candidate is suitable for the position, allowing the recruiter to make a more informed decision and accurately define the criteria for success,” says Friedman.

It can also cause recruiters to miss suitable candidates and reject deserving candidates. “In many cases, models are trained on existing databases, which may contain biases. For example, a model trained on Google’s employee list can overproduce potential candidates who look like the employees on that list,” says Liran Paul Hasson, co-founder and CEO of Aporia, a company that developed a platform to monitor and track issues in AI-based systems.

According to him, models have no personal awareness and are unable to discern tone, body language or think outside the box, which are important aspects of job interviews. They also lack an understanding of the human context. Artificial intelligence is unable to grasp the feelings, intonation, nuances and humor of the candidate. There are also AI models that analyze audio and video, which can lead to candidates being rejected based on their clothing or accent.

Another issue that can arise when using AI tools in recruitment processes is privacy. These are sensitive processes that affect very personal details and ultimately a person’s livelihood. “Misuse of AI can be devastating,” says Groner. “You should be very careful about information security and avoid uploading candidate details on platforms like ChatGPT. When I train recruiting teams, I emphasize this all the time and always mention how snippets of code that Amazon developers put into chat have become public domain. Additionally, ChatGPT responses should be viewed with a critical eye. It is recommended to check the information with additional AI tools and make sure that the chat uses real sources of information, because we have all heard about the lawyer who came to court with precedents invented by ChatGPT. None of us want to be in that situation.”

Along with the dangers and issues, AI tools allow recruiters an edge in skill-based recruiting over experience-based recruiting. “I believe an AI tool can identify skills and know how to score. He knows how to filter not only the ‘classic’ recruitment profile, but also to identify candidates whose experience may be interesting for the job offered.”