AI and IoT’s role in staffing industry

By Abhishek Agarwal

Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things are changing the face of recruitment and staffing industry by making the process highly social and cognitive! Tech-savvy recruiters make the best out of the available technological inventions to hire the right candidate for the right job role without wasting away their crucial time in the basic tasks and heavy paperwork. Apart from smart applications and hi-tech platforms, the next best thing recruiters wish for is some tool or software that frees up at least two hours a day so that they can sit with hiring managers and can strategise their way forward or work out any main concerns.

Searching through the extensive or outdated database for the candidates’ information, connecting with them and converting them into leads, scheduling interviews, and screening are most important yet repetitive tasks which eat up most of the time of recruiters. Where sourcing and recruiting skilled talent has always remained a sole responsibility for the hiring managers, the businesses leaders and C-level executives, too, are more particular and worried about whom and how they hire, a Deloitte 2017 survey found. Rightly putting it, there is a widespread war for talent going on and the ones armed with Artificial Intelligence and IoT increase their chances of securing the first position.

A Deloitte report 2017 underscores that 33 per cent of survey respondents incorporate AI technology, in one form or the other, during the hiring process, ultimately saving time and eliminating the potential risks of human bias. Clearly, AI and IoT provide the organisations with efficiency, productivity, time and speed, some of the most valuable assets for all-time.

Changing mode of interviewing
Recently, various HR technology companies introduced AI based recruiting video platforms such as HireVue bringing the recruiters and candidates together making an insightful interview and accurate screening happen. During the interviews, biometric and psychometric analysis not only asses the skills and abilities of a person, but also his voice quality, body language, and facial expressions that help recruiters understand his intent and confidence. In fact, it is the bots that usually take initial rounds of interviews collecting relevant data and predicting the candidate’s performance. This eventually helps the recruiters in making informed decisions during the recruitment process. The success of conversational application MYA is a better example of AI recruiting technology as L’Oreal harnesses the potential of the technology to minimize the turnaround time of hiring.

Simplifying the use of ATS systems
One of the many specialties of AI is that it can process huge volumes of unstructured data in a matter of few seconds. The recruitment database that has accurate information and data about the right fits for every posted job position vacant in the organisation is the need of the hour. In short, AI powered ATS system learns the needs, requirements, and preferences of an organization—the skills and experience it is looking for. And, accordingly refines the applications and resume that match or closely match the requirements of the organisation. Unlike the ordinary ATS system which might accumulate unnecessary and useless applications for the recruiter to go through, AI enables the recruiters to get only the relevant and highest qualified ones, automating the actions that need no human intervention, improving the productivity and reducing the turnaround time.

Reshaping the modern workplace
Recruiters, Marketers, and Entrepreneurs are always head over heels with data because more data means more insights, and more insights lead to intuitive approaches. As a matter of fact, the organizations are going tech-savvy as the traditional mode of data collection is replaced by IoT, in which they are readily investing. As Internet of Things extends the internet connectivity beyond laptops, smartphones, desktop to electronic appliances, lights, cars, etc., it lets the organisation to know about the employees’ performance, engagement, behavior and a lot more things to identify their motivation levels improve their experience at work and thus retain the top talent. The IoT wearables, sensors and systems monitor the conditions in real-time collecting information and data and sharing it with the system managers. And, this data automatically backed-up using cloud computing technology which means this can be remotely accessed with absolutely no risks of data loss or theft.

Over the years, the staffing industry of India has grown at a galloping rate and with the disruption that AI and IoT is triggering; it has the immense potential to grow manifold. In fact, the analysts are quite sanguine about the disruption converging of AI and IoT will bring. In the near future, the organisations will surely have integrated teams backed up by human intelligence and machine’s accuracy and never-ending capacity. It will also lead to job proliferation in the talent acquisition industry because of its changing role and will improve the job satisfaction levels due to the increased flexibility and productivity.

(The author is the Senior Vice President, The Judge Group)