Good evening Readers!
Welcome back for another thrilling Novus Opus post! I hope you enjoyed Séamus’ brilliant post on the effect LinkedIn is having on the recruitment industry.
Both Devin and Séamus’ posts had me thinking, is it the case that using technology and AI in recruiting results in the hiring of clones of current employees. Devin has previously mentioned the gender bias incorporated in Amazon’s AI recruitment. This is an easily noticed bias, however, some more subtle personality trait and attitude biases may be harder to spot. It is the case that some organisations are looking for similarly skilled individuals and those who can communicate and negotiate well. Although, those who have very similar mindsets or even political views may not challenge each other, question proceedings in the workplace or bring new ideas to the business they are in.
The traditional interview process offers candidates the opportunity to communicate and convince an individual of how they would go about and complete a given task. Answers may not be the ones expected or they may not even have been thought about before. That being said, they may very well be logical and well thought out answers all the same. With regards to AI only the predictable, anticipated and expected answers will be accepted or scored highly. I believe eliminating the opportunity for alternative and creative, but altogether reasonable and logical answers, could be detrimental to organisations. Business thrives on harnessing initiative and unique ways of solving problems. If only those who think and process information in a pre-determined way are accepted through online tests this could be damaging to businesses in the future.
Effective communication is also a huge part of any successful application to most big firms. If candidates are solely tested using online logical or verbal reasoning tests how are these communication skills tested? I would be interested to see how results would vary if the same candidates were tested in verbal interviews as opposed to online assessments. I think understanding the characteristics of those individuals who are successful in the online assessment process but would have failed in a traditional interview setting would be particularly interesting.
The debate surrounding the benefits of online, compared to face to face, assessment is an interesting and also complicated one which I am sure many HR companies are regularly engaged in. I agree that online tests are a good indicator of a candidate’s suitability and a significant development in the reduction of time and money spent on interviewing large numbers of candidates. However a problem arises when they completely overrule and replace not only the reading of CVs but also the interview process which I believe some alternative thinking, clever and communicative candidates thrive in. With current technology and AI recruitment methods I believe, as is the case with many of today’s industry problems, the balance between technology and human input is key!
Conor Wallace
Novus Opus
Novus Opus 