Traditionally, the human resources department was in charge of recruiting and onboarding for most organizations. These days, automation and technology are taking over those tasks. What will HR’s role be in the changing recruiting landscape? Recruiting and onboarding is changing all around us. What was once an aspect of talent recruiting and development by HR is now turning into a world of machine learning, advanced Artificial Intelligence, and other more automated ways of separating the wheat from the chaff. Part of the reason for this is the workforce is shifting. People are moving around more, changing companies every three or four years. Younger employees want different things when they join an organization. With unemployment levels very low in many places across the United States, companies have to compete with each other more to attract top talent. These factors, along with better available technology for recruiting and onboarding tasks, are causing a shift in how companies find talent that fits with their corporate culture and help the organization grow.
A New Role for HR in Recruiting and Onboarding
HR still has a vital role in finding the perfect candidates for organizations, and that’s unlikely to change, even with new technology coming out. But HR needs to collaborate with new technologies and efforts to be effective. Many organizations are using algorithms and tests to quantify the ideal candidate and find matches for their open positions. More than ever, companies are putting their automated systems to the test to find candidates and avoid wasting time with interviews and more human approaches on candidates who won’t fit within a company culture or work scheme anyway. However, algorithms and automated tests for candidates is only the start of the process. HR still needs to add a human brain to the equation and make decisions about particular candidates and their roles in their organization.
Working Together with Automation
Companies know that hiring the right person will save them money in the long run. Hiring great talent that fits is an invaluable function that all growing companies need to have. In times past, the recruiting and onboarding process was always risky and imperfect. Candidates who showed enough experience on their resumes were interviewed, sometimes several times, then they were hired and onboarded. The guesswork comes from the fact that no one really knows how a new-hire will fare at his or her position until they’ve been there for some time. Today, AI is helping eliminate the guesswork by further narrowing down the list of candidates based on factors other than the ability to show their experience on a resume. Now candidates are being interviewed after they pass personality tests and some aptitude tests. There’s still a human element in the recruiting and onboarding process, and that’s where HR comes in.
“The Eye Test”
There’s a sports term that is relevant in this situation. In football, when a coach is evaluating a player, they’ll say the player “passes the eye test” if they believe the player not only has the raw talent to be successful on the field for their team, but the player also seems confident and ready to perform in stressful, in-game situations. AI can help provide the basic determination of whether or not a new candidate has the skills to be successful in a given role, and provide some insight into the “eye test.” HR can then come in see for themselves if a candidate passes the “eye test” when they meet with them face-to-face. The future of recruiting and onboarding is this marriage of personal, human intuition and the more precise but less nuanced automation.
