Companies are relying on AI to help them treat their current and prospective employees more like their customers.
Despite layoffs in some sectors, there is still a labor shortage, and employers continue to feel the aftershocks of the pandemic and the Great Resignation.
Businesses realize that mishandling or mistreating applicants during the hiring process can end up damaging their brand’s reputation.
After being ghosted following a job interview, 16% of candidates didn’t recommend that company to others, 2% left a negative online review and 93% decided against applying for another job at that company, according to a recent survey by nonprofit think tank The Conference Board.
“AI is the right tool [for] everything from hiring to employee satisfaction,” said Ram Ramamoorthy, head of labs and AI research at the Indian software development company Zoho.
The majority (92%) of HR leaders say they intend to increase their use of AI in at least one area of HR within the next 12 to 18 months, as per a 2022 report from Eightfold AI.
Cut through the noise
Automation can make it easier for recruiters to track applications, communicate with candidates and build a more diverse talent pipeline. For instance, AI can flag biased language in job ads and search résumés for certain keywords.
Zoho Recruit, one of Zoho’s software applications, uses AI to match résumés to job openings and “nurture the candidate the same way we nurture a lead in CRM,” Ramamoorthy said.
A candidate’s lifecycle begins when they start the job application process, not unlike how a customer’s lifecycle begins when they start looking for a product.
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Digital marketing agency Wpromote uses AI to power Lever, its applicant tracking system, and automate the outreach process. For example, the program has a function to send a series of automated emails to passive candidates to encourage them to continue applying.
If a candidate responds to an automated message, the system pings the recruiter, who can set up a time to chat. If candidates are consistently unresponsive, the recruiter can add them to a different outreach campaign or archive them.
If a candidate doesn’t get the job, they receive a survey in which they can give feedback about their experience. Jackie Leung, Wpromote’s director of talent acquisition, shares the results every month with her team.
“We can see what they rated us,” Leung said, and gain insight into how to improve the process in terms of speed, communication or recruiter tactics.
A declined candidate’s perspective is uniquely helpful to the talent acquisition team.
“When you get onboarded as a new hire, you’re going to have glowing things to say, right? You got the job,” Leung said.
But rejected candidates are “very honest” about what their experience was like and whether they’d refer Wpromote to others, she said. After all, they have nothing to lose.
A rising AI tide lifts all boats?
Businesses, however, do have something to lose if they’ve invested in an employee and that person leaves the company because they feel overworked.
As staff numbers dwindle, more work has piled up at many companies – agencies in particular. AI could make people’s jobs easier and increase staff retention.
“Clients and procurement departments have pushed down costs relentlessly for 10, 20 years,” said Matthew Kershaw, VP of commercial strategy at generative AI company D-ID. “Agencies are running on empty to a large degree.”
Younger talent is often saddled with grunt work, such as technical design documentation or taking meeting notes.
Budgeting limited focus time more wisely can lead to gains not only in efficiency but also in employee experience, said Ted Wallace-Williams, associate creative tech director at digital agency R/GA.
Of course, AI could have the opposite effect and amp up the pressure on employees. Dating back at least to the Industrial Revolution, new technological advances have pushed employees to produce more work faster.
When the steam-powered loom was invented, hand-loom operators still had to work 10-hour days, Wallace-Williams pointed out, and the required output was five times as high.
“There’s a risk that agencies will expect their copywriters to produce 10 times the work in the same timeframe,” he said.
Agencies should reject this unhealthy attitude and use any time they save to “do something more human,” Wallace-Williams said, “like building relationships or thinking more deeply about the good we’re trying to do on a project.”
A divide is forming between what Kershaw called “really low-level, boring jobs that will be done by machines” and higher-order jobs that require creative problem-solving and critical thinking – which remain the purview of humans.
Personal growth
Getting and keeping people in higher-level roles that only a human can do demands a high level of personalization. AI can help develop tailored, one-size-fits-one learning and development plans for employees at scale.
The competitive labor market in Bangalore spurred Publicis-owned agency Epsilon to try an approach “where we do a little bit of candidate attraction, onboarding and training all in one,” said Mike Dixon, Epsilon’s SVP of HR, global learning and development.
All hired candidates receive a personalized training plan from AI-driven technology training tool Pluralsight. Publicis is starting to integrate the Pluralsight training into Marcel.ai, the holding company’s custom AI talent development platform.
Using the “declared data” from its employee profiles, Publicis can “find the Japanese-speaking SEO expert who’s worked in retail” when they need that person’s expertise, said Emmanuel André, chief talent officer at Publicis Groupe.
Sounds a bit like ad targeting.
Marcel has been trained on more than 100 million data points, said Marcel President Arpit Jain, which Publicis has tapped into to develop a personalized growth dashboard for every Publicis employee.
Each dashboard includes employee-specific recommendations, including skills to develop, classes to take, other employees to connect with and open Publicis jobs. Managers can also see activity feeds for their direct reports, which helps them coach their teams.
“The challenge has always been getting the opportunities in front of people at the right time and in the right place,” Dixon said.
Although it’s up to the employee to take action, AI-driven tools can help spur them along their career path.
“AI has achieved escape velocity,” Zoho’s Ramamoorthy said, “and AI is going to be more and more present in our daily lives from now on.”
