With the advent of Artificial Intelligence no longer being a fictional concept, and machines with the ability to scrap billions of pieces of information in no time, is transactional recruitment dead?
Fundamentally yes. The recruitment industry as we know it will be replaced by highly efficient machines that learn by their mistakes (statistics) and will, in essence, do more than 60 percent of the current day recruiters’ job function. In anticipation of this inevitable happening, how is the recruitment industry preparing?
I have not investigated this, however my experience would suggest that, with the exception of the very enlightened, the rest of the industry is carrying on as if it’s not even there. Reality is that AI has arrived, there are companies in the market that are investing in and experimenting with technology as we speak. Surprisingly these are not trendy, start-ups but the very large listed companies. One of which has set up an Innovation Fund of 50m Euros to source the latest and the best innovations in HR and recruitment. Technology has no boundaries and there are some very smart people all over the globe looking for the “disruption”.
Where does this leave the recruiter and the recruitment industry? Well, it’s the quality game. Machines will not be taking over the human element of the recruiters’ role entirely. What they will do is make sure that the good recruiter becomes even better at their job. The quality of the information that you collect from your client and candidate will be infinitely better and therefore you will be more likely to close a deal. The recruiter of the future will not have the excuse of “they did not give me enough information”, the recruiter of the future will be extremely well-informed and the skill that will be prized over any other will be their EQ. Their ability to interact with people and generate trust, understand people and emotionally aware will be the difference in the market.
As long as the recruiter evolves alongside the emerging AI technologies, they retain skills that science cannot replicate and offer services beyond the realms of robotics. The call to action is clear; to be ahead of this game, those with refined and honed EQ will emerge triumphantly and will advance in tandem with the developments of the age.
Written by Abid Hamid, CEO of Recruitment Entrepreneur
