For some time now the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been advocated as part of the recruitment process in saving both time and cost in hiring a new member of staff or a temporary contract resource.
However, there are now growing concerns that solely focusing on this approach can lead to the best potential candidates for a role falling at the first hurdle, and not even being selected for interview.
When AI Doesn’t Help
Using AI tools to help with both defining the role and the selection process can lead to some of the most qualified applicants being discounted purely because the software algorithms decide they are not suitable for the role.
The situation has become more complex with numerous AI tools now available to help write your CV.
So, when there’s a combination of AI in the generation and analysis of CVs being used in applications for a job specification created by an AI tool, where does that leave us?
If you ask ChatGPT why you should use it to write a CV it provides some interesting points:
Clarity and Conciseness – Many people struggle to describe their experience in a concise and clear manner. ChatGPT can help you avoid unnecessary jargon and present your skills and achievements in a way that hiring managers can quickly understand and appreciate.
Covering Gaps or Shifts in Career – If you have gaps in employment or are making a career switch, ChatGPT can suggest ways to address these in a positive manner, highlighting transferable skills and experiences.
This raises a couple of interesting observations:
The act of removing what ChatGPT may interpret as “jargon” could well be the key aspects in terms of acronyms commonly used to describe someone’s technical experience.
If ChatGPT is proposing words to add to remove gaps in say their employment history, is this providing an accurate CV for these candidates?
The AI Vicious Circle
This poses a major problem:
If there is now a higher proportion of candidates using tools like ChatGPT to help generate their CV content, how can you confidently discern one candidate from another?
As a result of these developments, we now have a scenario where AI is writing CV content which is then analysed by AI.
And this may have compounded an even worse situation where some candidates are being selected based upon inaccurate CVs, while others are being removed from the selection process as their experience has been dumbed down by removing key information on their technical experience.
Honing Job Descriptions without AI
Similarly, AI tools are also being used to write the role descriptions against which candidate CVs are being submitted.
Such tools will often result in boilerplate descriptions which lack the nuance of the specifics a hirer is looking for in candidates and can define some skills as ‘must have’ which may not even be relevant!
Unless recruiters take time to hone job descriptions and make them reflect the actual role the hirer needs to fulfil, the subsequent AI analysis of applicants can leave you some way off from what you were originally looking for in a resource.
Using AI for What It’s Best At
AI tools can be useful, offering advantages such as removing the time-consuming elements of the recruitment process; keeping communications on track and arranging suitable interview times.
However, given the challenges the technology also presents, successful recruitment still requires real people to be involved in the process.
Otherwise, how can you validate their experience if AI is re-writing that experience and ensure you are not inadvertently de-selecting candidates who may be ideal for the role?
At Flint Technology Services, whilst we utilise tools to assist with our selection processes, it’s not to the detriment of human interaction.
We listen to our customers so we can define their specific role requirements.
And we spend time with candidates to better understand their experience, their ambitions and suitable cultural fit for our customers and the services we offer.
It’s only by taking time that we can ensure that subject matter experts understand your role and have skills specific to your needs, whilst also avoiding erroneous de-selection of relevant skilled candidates.