AI and Strategic Talent Management: 3 Impactful Ways AI Will Make Hiring Human Again

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Truth be told, today, the talent acquisition function in organizations is reactive. Talent professionals are not at fault. Post and pray, go for volume sourcing strategies are nearly ubiquitous, and have years of momentum behind them. At current rates of turnover and growth, it’s hard for recruiting teams to find the time to take a step back and reevaluate their processes.

The disruption across recruiting processes that adoption of AI brings will make better aligning talent acquisition with companies’ strategic needs far more achievable. AI helps recruiters make smarter hiring decisions faster so that their calendars can be reclaimed and devoted to what recruiters do best, building relationships with the right candidates and selling their companies as great places to work.

What will this AI-enabled new era of talent acquisition look like? Experts in the intelligence field know that AI will make hiring more human than ever. Here’s how:

Values and Culture Hiring

Every company has a culture, but not every company can articulate the values and beliefs that unite and motivate their employees. Moreover, as Netflix shrewdly notes in its (in)famous culture deck, documenting culture is one thing, but living it is another: “Many companies have value statements, but often these written values are vague and ignored. The real values of a firm are shown by who gets rewarded or let go.” We’d add who joins the company to that statement. Each and every new hire alters a company’s culture, and culture has an immense impact on employee retention. As talent acquisition professionals’ jobs change because of AI, they’ll get to pay more attention to company culture and values. Strategic talent acquisition means talent professionals playing a key role in defining or refining company culture and driving alignment between culture and hiring practices.

Candidates as Consumers

The concept of “candidates as consumers,” treating potential employees as well as customers and potential customers are treated, is extremely prevalent in the industry consciousness right now, and rightfully so. Hiring in the information age is painful for recruiters and job seekers alike. A company’s brand as an employer, of which candidate experience is a big driver, is extremely valuable. AI will allow strategic talent acquisition professionals to address candidate experience and employer branding more mindfully, even from scratch, as Graeme Johnson did at Virgin Media. Recruiters might start building relationships with passive candidates before they’re even ready to move, create programs that elevate current employees into becoming a company’s best employer brand advocates, or even just get around to letting candidates know they aren’t moving forward in the process instead of leaving them to wonder.

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) on the Job

The vast majority of recruiters do what they do because they are obsessed with people, just like us. With the rise of recruiting AI, recruiters will finally get to put those people skills to use. It may be counterintuitive, but when the top of the recruiting funnel is handled by technology, EQ-driven activities like interviewing will become recruiters’ main focus, and as a result, a more important requirement than ever before. That shift shouldn’t sound daunting, though. We know talent professionals have plenty of EQ to begin with, and the best ones will welcome the challenge of deploying those skills.

The future of talent acquisition has never been brighter. People are what makes every organization tick, and AI solutions like Censia’s are poised to make hiring the most people-centric it’s ever been.

Joanna Riley

The CEO and Co-Founder of Censia, is an entrepreneur and advocate for diversity in technology.