According to a survey by Talent500, 87.9% of recruiters from Global Capability Centres (GCCs) now use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to source candidates. Across the globe, AI is on an undeniable rise in the recruitment sector in more ways than one.
With every passing day, AI’s capabilities keep increasing by leaps and bounds, making even the most mundane tasks more efficient and less time-consuming. For companies looking to hire quality candidates, employing the technology has become an obvious progression.
In many ways, the face of the recruitment industry has changed massively since the inclusion of AI. This technology allows recruiters to parse significantly larger amounts of data and identify key factors for finding the right candidate.
Shashank Vagale, the Product Manager of Multi Recruit and Co-Founder of Insource India, is a proponent of using AI for mass recruitment. As someone with well over two decades of experience in the HR industry, Shashank has seen the rise of AI in the recruitment process. He is keenly aware of how the technology has changed everything that was once known about hiring.
“Since a few years, AI has revolutionized recruitment by automating repetitive tasks such as Applications acceptance & resume parsing, enabling data-driven decision-making, and has helped improve candidate-job matching through various predictive analytics,” Shashank stated.
“It [AI] has also brought efficiency, scalability, and objectivity to processes that were previously manual and very time-consuming. AI also helps enhance the candidate journey & experience by personalizing engagements at scale.”
Within India, AI has offered practical solutions to the unique challenges in the country’s job market, making the technology indispensable for companies of varying sizes.
AI and the Indian Job Market
Whether screening candidates or providing them with accurate assessments, today’s AI technology has a solution for each step that makes the process more efficient. With Genpact’s IMatch and EY’s TalentMiner, AI is quickly becoming the norm for recruitment within the country.
Through its extensive data analysis, AI helps make statistically sound predictions and decisions that often lead to better results. It also helps automate some of the administrative tasks within the hiring process that can increase the pace with which companies source and screen their candidates.
The various application tracking systems (ATS) now in India use AI to highlight the most suitable candidates, all to ensure that recruiters can find the perfect fit.
A key advantage that AI has started to offer recruiters in India is its ability to analyze large amounts of data and provide actionable insights. This is crucial, considering that one of India’s most prominent hiring methods is mass recruitment or bulk hiring.
“In India, where high-volume hiring is common, AI has been instrumental in reducing time-to-hire and improving the hiring outcome. Well, for instance, AI-powered tools gauge, filter, shortlist, and streamline the screening of large applicant pools, ensuring that only the most qualified candidates are shortlisted,” Shashank explained.
The long-time Multi Recruit member went on to add how chatbots enhance candidate communication with candidates while machine learning models predict their success and their suitability for a given role.
It is essential to understand just how vital a suitable recruitment process is for companies in India, especially in the case of bulk hiring. The investment in the recruitment process, with or without AI, is never a tiny sum.
As such, it is natural for companies to aim for near-perfect selection to reduce attrition while bridging the gap between available talent and performance goals.
The pitfalls of AI
The core principle of AI’s use in recruitment is its ability to learn from a company’s past recruitment trends and then form an algorithm that suits its needs. This has led many to consider AI as an impartial judge of candidates, though this is not necessarily true in every case.
In fact, AI is just as vulnerable to bias as humans if not appropriately trained. “AI models can inherit and amplify biases present in their training data. Garbage in means garbage out,” Shashank explains when discussing possible bias in AI.
In 2018, Amazon captured the headlines when it was revealed that the company had to scrap an AI recruitment model. The model was trained on the company’s recruitment data from the previous 10 years to learn more about the company’s process.
Through its parsing of past data, Amazon’s recruitment model noticed the dominance of men in the tech industry. As such, it taught itself that male candidates were “preferable” and started to downgrade resumes that contained terms like “women.”
The model was put to the test in 2014, and its suggestions were indeed given importance by the recruiters within the company until 2015, when the bias was finally noticed. The case highlighted just how important it is to train an AI model with proper data in order to utilize its capabilities fully.
For companies looking forward to using AI in their recruitment process, the integration of the technology within their existing model can also serve as a significant hindrance. Similarly, for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in India, measuring the cost-effectiveness of the technology is highly important.
Recruiting with AI in SMEs
The assimilation of AI in the recruitment industry can only be called a success in India if the technology benefits various SMEs. While the advantages provided by AI can be endless, integration and cost of the technology serve as significant barriers to proper AI adoption.
These challenges can be tackled with proper planning and a thorough evaluation of the company’s needs. Shashank agrees to these and has advice for SMEs across the country.
“My advice to SME’s in India would be to:
- Identify Pain Points: Determine specific challenges faced by talent acquisition or recruitment teams, such as resume screening or interview scheduling.
- Adopt Cost-Effective Solutions: Choose affordable, SaaS-based AI tools designed to address these pain points.
- Train TA Teams: Equip your TA & HR professionals with the skills & knowledge to use AI tools effectively.
- Measure ROI: Evaluate the impact of AI by tracking metrics like time saved and the quality of hires to ensure the investment is worthwhile.”
Shashank’s words highlight the importance of proper planning when it comes to the use of AI. The suggestions, while geared towards recruitment, can also apply to the use of AI in other areas within a company.
Human and AI partnership in recruitment
Proper human supervision of AI’s recruitment operations is not just about retaining the human touch. It is also about ensuring that the technology can be used most effectively.
Using AI for recruitment requires a proper strategy that needs recruiters to be active participants in the process. Even with AI-based sourcing and screening, the recruiters need to ensure that the suggestions provided by the model are indeed the best fit.
There is no doubt about how much AI has transformed the recruitment process in India. In a country with a talent pool as large as India, AI allows for a proper screening and sourcing of candidates, providing both employers and employees with an increased number of opportunities.
Ultimately, recruiters must become well-versed in using the technology for maximum utilization of AI. It is also crucial not to rely entirely on the insights of AI models and to ensure that the strategies surrounding the process use AI as the tool it is meant to be.
