The role of AI and machine learning in recruiting technology continues to provoke both debate and confusion. What benefits do these technologies current bring and how much of the current narrative is just marketing spin? What will they make possible in the future, and what are the risks and dangers we need to be aware of right now?
To help answer these questions, in the next two episodes of the show I’ll be asking two genuine experts in AI for recruiting to share their knowledge.
First up is Megan Butler, a research analyst in AI for HR. Megan was part of my live panel back in episode 200, so it is brilliant to have the chance to talk to her in more depth.
- In the interview, we discuss:
- Is AI in recruiting what it is hyped up to be?
- How to get the benefits and mitigate the risks
- The fine line between analytics and machine learning
- Matching and assessment
- The importance of process
- Bias
Megan also shares her thoughts on the future of AI in recruiting and the importance of taking controlled risks.
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from ClickIQ. ClickIQ is an automated job advertising platform that uses the latest AI and programmatic technology to manage, track and optimize the performance of your recruitment. Advertising in real time spend is focused where it’s needed the most to reach both active and passive job seekers across indeed, Google, Facebook and an extensive network of job boards. To find out more about ClickIQ, please visit www.clickiq.co.uk. that’s www.clickiq.co.UK.
Matt Alder [00:01:01]:
This is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 207 of the Recruiting Future podcast. The role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in recruiting technology continues to provoke both debate and confusion. What benefits do these technologies actually bring us now? And how much of the narrative around them is just marketing spin at the moment? Also, what will they make possible in the future and what are the risks and dangers we need to be aware of right now? To help answer these questions, in the next two episodes of the show, I’ll be asking two genuine experts in AI for recruiting to share their knowledge. First up is Megan Butler, a research analyst in AI for HR. Megan was part of my live panel in episode 200, so it’s brilliant to have the chance to talk to her again in more depth. Hi Megan, and welcome back to the podcast.
Megan Butler [00:02:01]:
Thank you for having me today, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:02:03]:
An absolute pleasure to have you back on the show. Now, you were part of my panel for the 200th episode a few weeks ago, and you’ve kind of got some really fascinating insights, so I thought it would be really good to kind of invite you back and give you more time for discussion. So could you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Megan Butler [00:02:25]:
Perfect. So my name is Megan Marie Butler and I like to think of myself as a bit of a subject matter expert around the use of artificial intelligence within hr, with the focus of my research being the end goal of hoping to advance HR just a little bit and finding new ways to apply artificial intelligence to our processes and how we can change the function itself into a bit of a better future. So I do that both through industry research with Cognition X and also through my PhD work at the University of Leeds.
Matt Alder [00:03:01]:
So could you just tell us a little bit more about your PhD work and what exactly it is that you’re researching?
Megan Butler [00:03:09]:
That’s a great question. It’s really exploratory work and we’re seeing a phenomenon at the moment and that’s a new technology entering our lives and taking kind of the lens of this business function, human resources. And right now, human resources is in its own state that we need to understand. And a great way to think about it is like through what we do with engagement, where a few years ago we had engagement surveys with early technology. And then that changed. And as our technology changed, we were able to do pulse surveys. And now we’re even shifting that because of artificial intelligence. So HR is already primed for this shift. And it has always traditionally shift with new technologies, and now we have this new technology. And so some of the first questions, is AI really what it’s hyped up to be and is it not? And we know that in most circumstances, when we see the high end of the hype and the low end of the hype, you know, we’re going to fall somewhere within. Between the two, most likely. And that kind of suggests like, yes, this is an important technology. This is an important event to observe and to understand. So taking a retroinductive approach by applying models that we know are somewhat accurate. No model is perfect from different disciplines, so interdisciplinary disciplinary models and applying it to this moment in time, basically and trying to understand what’s happening and the just. And it’s so similar to kind of what’s happening with AI. The better we can understand the situation right now, and the more we can kind of triangulate using these different models, the better we can make predictions and the better we can understand what’s going on and the better we can make recommendations to hopefully improve the adoption. Which is really interesting, as we were kind of discussing earlier with what you do in your work when you’re helping businesses through this process. So very similar, just kind of coming up with a better understanding to help, to help people and help businesses understand what’s going on and how they can get the benefits of using artificial intelligence and ways we can mitigate the risk.
Matt Alder [00:05:10]:
I think there’s a really interesting kind of weird parallel conversation going on about AI in the HR industry at the moment. On the one hand, there’s a, there’s a piece where every single provider is claiming that they’re using AI and it’s blatantly obvious that a lot of them, a lot of them aren’t. So there’s a, there’s a kind of a. There’s almost like an AI denial movement going on about actually, well, you know, AR isn’t AI, is. Isn’t actually being used by these providers in HR at the same time, in A weird double think situation. There’s a huge debate about the ethical impact of AI into HR and bias and decision making and all that kind of stuff. And you know, it appears to be slightly contradictory. Where actually are we at the moment with AI in hr?
Megan Butler [00:06:01]:
Yeah, you’ve made a huge observation and that’s where my research, what I’m trying to do is all this noise that’s going on out there. There’s valid conversations happening, but what are the really valid questions and conversations? And there’s lots of narratives going on and it’s really fascinating to watch those narratives shift over the last few years. There is definitely a strong narrative in the last little while around that companies claiming that their AI are not AI. A lot of them do have smart tech where it is an interesting program, but it’s not, you can’t really traditionally classify it as AI. If we really kind of talk about advanced analytics, that’s where there’s a really kind of fine line, difficult to define line between what is analytics and what is starting to go into machine learning. And a lot of products ride those fine lines and lack of understanding. And a lot of them are trying to solve the problem and it’s on their roadmap, but they just haven’t made it yet. So I think that there is definitely a lot of a muddy market there, a lot of people claiming AI when there isn’t, and there really isn’t. But there are also a lot of companies doing very cool things that are using AI and doing game changing, have game changing ideas. And those ones tend to have a lot more challenges because they’re doing something different. A lot of what we see is traditional processes that just have some smart tech kind of layered on top of it versus a product that’s actually doing something very innovative and very different.
Matt Alder [00:07:43]:
If that makes sense, that makes, that makes perfect sense. And I think that kind of reflects, certainly reflects what I’m, what I’m seeing to sort of, I suppose drill down a bit and talk specifically about recruiting. How are you seeing AI machine learning being sort of used in recruiting at the moment?
Megan Butler [00:08:03]:
Recruiting, that’s a, it’s a very interesting space actually. I find it fascinating. The absolute number one way artificial intelligence is being applied in hr, straight across the board is matching algorithms. In talent acquisition, that is just the singular biggest use and it comes from multiple ways. And whether that’s using an assessment tool and then having developing a profile and trying to match through that or through a sourcing product that is looking at skills and profiles from different social media Sites to match ideal candidates. It’s that matching is the number one use. And it’s super interesting because how every company is doing it, there’s well over 200 companies doing something around that they all do it slightly differently. There is no one way to do this. And even between developers they will come up with different ways to do it. So it’s a very fascinating base to observe. And that’s also too where we get into a lot of these ethical questions. We also get up with the Amazon example that’s become very popular in the last little. Well, are these decisions being made, are biased, et cetera, et cetera. And there’s a bit of mud in that view as well because we need to remember some of the products are kind of being sold as that silver bullet. Always watch out when you’re being told that this is the be all end all of products. It’s like, you know, we’ve learned the lesson with the Titanic. Let’s keep that in mind. These aren’t the best tools out there aren’t making the decisions for hr, they’re helping them have more data points to make better decisions. Not as a zero sum game where it’s either a recruiter making the decision or the AI making a decision which we shouldn’t be doing, but it’s a mix and augmentation where recruiters are able to use a mix of information, including their experiences with the candidate, including their communication, plus what they’ve seen in the cv, plus what they’ve seen in an interview, plus what they’ve seen through an assessment tool, for example. And it’s just changing. It’s a way to improve our decision making process.
Matt Alder [00:10:05]:
So with that in mind, with AI sitting within a whole suite of tools around decision making in an ideal, I say in an ideal world, but in a world where it was kind of being utilized to its kind of current full potential. I want to talk about future future potential a little bit later. But its current full potential, what would that look like? What should it be able to do? What to be the advantages to recruiters of using that approach?
Megan Butler [00:10:35]:
Of the potential right now?
Matt Alder [00:10:37]:
Yeah, of its potential right now.
Megan Butler [00:10:38]:
Oh gosh. The products and the potential that’s available at the moment, we’re not even close to. There’s a huge leg, but that’s to be expected because it really needs to make us rethink. The best products are the ones that I’ve seen some amazing examples, but they’re few and far between, unfortunately. Where for example, the tools are available for candidates to use they can use it for job discovery, understanding themselves better. Then they are able to work with companies. They’re able to identify like hey, I match, I can see the match to this role. You’re able to use chatbots to have better communication so you can have ask questions that you may not feel comfortable to ask or may have difficulty finding or being a bit of a lazy candidate. Not lazy because always give your hardest task to the laziest person because they’ll come up with the smartest way to do it faster. But instead of scrolling through the job posting, just asking the chatbot the question and it’ll take you to the information you need. Easy assessments, quick turnaround. So a matching algorithm not only can help you help you identify candidates, like understand more about them, but you can also then kind of know these are the top 20 or top 40 that I want to contact right away very quickly because we have a hot market right now and in demand talents going quick. So you’re able to quickly respond to candidates. So you’re improving the recruitment process which you know, previously we’re talking about six, seven weeks plus you know, you can squeeze that down especially with some volume recruiting down to two weeks with quick with these processes you can use a chatbot then with skills matching to identify candidates that are high potential for matches but are missing a few points. And then you’re able to use the chatbot to interact with them, to fill in those missing gaps and to kind of do a pre screening. The list goes on and on. And just the tech that’s working is intelligently designed. We just need to intelligently design our processes around the tech and understanding it. But it means we need to do things slightly different and that takes time.
Matt Alder [00:12:48]:
That’s a, that’s a really interesting point I suppose because you know, for many organizations looking at this type of technology for the, for the first time, it’s kind of, it has an unknown impact on, you know, their processes and how recruiting works. What would your advice be to companies who are looking at this? I suppose over a few things, you know, your advice in terms of the sort of questions they should be asking, your advice in terms of likely impact and also your advice in terms of how they can make sure they’re not going down this bias route?
Megan Butler [00:13:24]:
Yeah, there’s lots of advice. It is a new technology, it is new processes. We are unsure and we’ve had. New technologies have always come in. Our most recent example comes a lot with machinery and we learn from machinery the hard way about people getting hurt. We need to Be very careful about that, particularly being hr, and really think things through. And what AI really is able to help us do is scale processes and reduce time in processes, which is amazing. But if you have a bad process, you are now going to scale that. And we can never look at technology as a fix to a bad process. We need to fix the process first before we throw technology at it. We also need to be very aware, as you say, about bias, but we need to be aware of the bias that we already have in our systems. There’s some amazing case studies where firms have discovered bias in their systems and it was human bias at certain stages that knocked out ideal candidates. So we need to be highly aware, especially if you’re a large organization that’s already doing volume recruiting, very aware about what’s already happening. Because with AI technology you’ll just scale those problems and asking the tough questions. Hr, we should be experts in the science around the people and around HR processes. We don’t need to be experts so much in the technology, but we need to ask the hard questions about the science we know. So when we are buying a new product and it’s working with automation and it’s able to scale, for example, pass the candidate sourcing, how is it evaluating candidates? What type of skills matching is it using? It’s really easy to match some skills, softer skills and more interactive skills. Some business skills, they’re really difficult to match. And people use a lot of different terminology around that. So how are they identifying that? Are they using just the resume? You’re going to be scaling the same bias in with that. We need to ask the tough questions constantly. And, and it’s difficult because as we said earlier, the AI market right now in general, not just for hr, but it’s very mucky. A lot of products claiming they can do things that they really can’t do or have things that they really don’t have, like artificial intelligence. So it is a bit of it is risky, but it’s a risk. If you’re looking for a competitive advantage, it’s a risk well worth navigating. And the best success, I think, is organizations at a really took a hard look at their processes and also had pinpoint solutions. So they were looking at fixing one thing. And once they did that, they understood what the situation was beforehand, they added a new tool, understood what the situation was afterwards, and then they built from there and continuously have built. And that seems to be the way that’s working right now for a lot of firms.
Matt Alder [00:16:21]:
Fantastic. That all makes perfect sense. So Final question and the one I’ve been dying to ask. What does the future look like? Where is all this likely to be taking us to?
Megan Butler [00:16:36]:
I think it’s, I love the imagery of like the factory floor. So we have a point in time where there was one big huge axle that ran down the center with machineries with belts that ran off of it. And the factory, when we had electric motors and we were able to have each machine had its own motor to run, it didn’t need to be attached to this one big central energy source. The way a factory worked changed and it’s changed now with robotics, it’s changing again. With more automation, it’s changing again. And we need to rethink how the factory floor works out. We as hr, we need to do the same thing with our organizations. We’ve switched from a very service and industry driven to much more of a knowledge economy. We’re still not putting full value in our knowledge economy and how much human capital really is worth in a knowledge economy. And the processes we do, we need to really think about. And with this new technology, we can think of new ways that business can operate to take advantage of it. So it’s a very exciting time to be within HR that things are changing and we get to change with them and we get a mold how it will change for the future. And hopefully within the industry, within the profession, we can have that altruistic view of let’s make the future of work one that we want for our children.
Matt Alder [00:18:01]:
Megan, thank you very much for talking to me.
Megan Butler [00:18:03]:
Thank you for having me.
Matt Alder [00:18:05]:
My thanks to Megan Butler and watch out for the next episode in this mini series which is coming up soon. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. The show also has its own dedicated app which you can find by searching for Recruiting Future in your App store. If you’re a Spotify or Pandora user, you can also find the show there. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com on that site you can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
