How to Avoid the Pitfalls of AI in Recruiting

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard how AI is changing just about everything in the world today. Predictive analytics is becoming more and more prevalent in marketing. And earlier this year, Microsoft and Alphabet announced their plans to introduce AI features into their search engines. Yes, AI seems to have its virtual fingers in everything now.

In fact, the global artificial intelligence market size was estimated at $119.78 billion in 2022. According to Precedence Research, we can expect this number to hit a mind-boggling $1.6 trillion (that’s trillion with a T!) by 2030.

At this rate, it’s likely AI will leave nothing untouched, including recruitment. But with great power comes great responsibility. So let’s take a closer look at some of the most common pitfalls you’ll want to avoid when searching for AI tools you can trust.

Perpetuating Bias 

As an emerging technology, AI is just as biased and discriminatory as the humans who created its learning algorithms. By relying on data of the past to fuel insights into the future, AI can inadvertently perpetuate existing biases and discriminatory practices. In the case of AI used for talent acquisition, an AI’s training data may contain unconscious biases or rely heavily on demographic data. 

Therefore, it is crucial to continually monitor and update AI to ensure that it does not limit your candidate pool based on factors such as age, race, and gender. One great way to do just that is to assess your hiring process for adverse impact using this calculator. In other cases, you may need to undergo formal independent audits regarding your use of AI in the hiring process. This is especially true if you’re impacted by legislation such as the New York City AI law that went into effect earlier this year.

Not Striking a Balance 

Adding cream and sugar to coffee is delicious (fight me, black coffee drinkers!), but drinking an entire cup of cream and sugar would be insane.

So it's absolutely critical to remember that while AI can streamline the recruitment process, automate tedious and repetitive tasks, and should absolutely be used as a tool to support recruiters, it should not under any circumstances replace them wholesale. 

Maintaining the human touch is still essential in building relationships with candidates, and AI should be used to improve the candidate experience, not diminish it. For instance, using AI to quickly screen candidates and schedule interviews can reduce the time between application and interview, contributing to a more positive candidate experience. 

Failure to Understand the Limitations of AI

Okay, okay, I don’t think you’d be reading this if you weren’t already somewhat aware of this risk. 

But AI is going to continue to advance, rapidly and ceaselessly. In fact, investing in your team’s AI know-how could prove to be invaluable sooner than you think. It will be necessary to adapt alongside it, remember that it’s never going to be infallible, and develop ways to improve transparency and accountability throughout the hiring process. 

Stay vigilant, friends!