Will AI take our job?

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February 9th, 2023

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is still in its infancy; while the image Hollywood gives us of robots roaming our cities and becoming smarter than humans seems a long while off (if it ever happens) AI is still here, mostly in the form of Machine Learning.

One question that seems to arise the most around AI is will it take our jobs?

Some industries probably come straight to mind when you think about robotics and machines taking the jobs of humans – think about how the manufacturing process has changed in the past 20 years – but we want to look at one role which would change everything we do. The role of the recruitment consultant.

We’re starting to see a rise in companies offering ‘AI Recruitment’, automating the recruitment process. This AI aims to take the time out of sourcing the right candidate, or even sifting through job applications.

By simply putting in the job specification and the desired skills and experiences of a candidate, the AI will then create an algorithm to search job boards and databases to find any candidates that match. Once the AI finds this ‘perfect’ candidate it will send them an automated message to gauge their interest.

We may be biased but we think that while machines and algorithms may be able to pick out key skills, grades and experience, you still need a human element to analyse the ‘soft skills’ of a candidate. While the skills of the candidate the machine chooses may be perfect (we run some pretty in depth searches ourselves with various synonyms and variations on key words built into our searches already, (think of these as our hand built algorithms!)), they may not have the personality to suit a team. This is where we believe a recruitment consultant can really show their worth and what we believe a machine will never be able to learn.

Part of a recruiter’s job is not just finding the right candidate for the job, it is also finding the right job for the candidate. This is where personal relationships and truly understanding the needs and wants of the candidate comes in. Again, AI would be able to match up the hard facts such as salary, location and job title but won’t be able to work out if someone would be a good cultural fit for a company.

While we don’t believe AI and Machine Learning will completely take over the job of a recruitment consultant, we do believe it can aid them in the search for the ‘perfect’ candidate. With the mix of algorithms and personality the role of a recruitment consultant may change but it certainly won’t disappear.