It is now a growing trend among several organizations to make use of artificial intelligence during their recruitment. It is a very beneficial endeavour, but whatever has an advantage is most likely bound to have a disadvantage. The use of artificial intelligence can have a lot of benefits, such as, ensuring a free and fair selection process (everyone’s application is marked using the same metrics). It will also help the recruiter run a seamless process where everyone’s application is categorised based on their qualifications. This means that they don’t have to go through the rigorous process of checking all the applicants who don not meetup with the criteria. It is also likely to bring drawbacks to the recruitment process because AI is way too straightforward for the complexity involved during recruitment.
A lot of times, it is difficult to stay impartial as humans when judging or during decision making. This is also very much applicable during recritment. It is not uncommon for recruiters to judge an applicant based on wrong and sometimes petty reasons. The use of artificial intelligence will help eliminate unfairness. I was once tasked with the selection process for a job opening at a restaurant. We worked as a team, and this encounter opened my eyes to the unfairness that can sometimes reside in things like this. A lot of people were disqualified because of their names, pictures, and other irrelevant criteria. This wouldn’t have happened if we had an artificial intelligence to help make sure we followed a specific set of rules.
In addition, it will help the recruiter make faster decision as they don’t have to go through all the applications. Statistics have shown that once a company puts a job opening, they tend to get a lot of applications from unqualified individuals. Using artificial intelligence will help eliminate all those applicants that are not qualified thereby saving time and resources.
But even with all these potential benefits, it is important to note that artificial intelligence is prone to errors. They are some complex situations which it cannot carry out because it is not programmed to do so. For instance, when my company wanted to select a group of young people for a campaign on autism, the system was programmed to focus on applicants who had an autistic child or siblings. But it was later brought to our notice that a lot of people have autistic friends, co-workers, and even neighbours. Their encounters with them had indirectly equipped them to be part of what we wanted to achieve.
In conclusion, I would say that the benefits out weighs the down side and although we can not factor every variable during programming, continous trial and rework will get us to near perfection.