I recently met with Ji-A Min, the head data scientist at the Toronto-based HR tech company Ideal (and a contributor to TLNT). The company is interesting because its product uses artificial intelligence in the candidate screening process.
Min took me through some of the nuts and bolts of the technology, but what really struck me is not what’s 
extraordinary about the new process, but what’s extraordinary about the old one.
The old manual process for screening resumes is extraordinary because:
We screen candidates this extraordinary way because we must create a shortlist somehow, and this is the best we could do (until now).
If we ask, “Can technology vendors build AI that is as smart as a human?” then the answer is no. If we ask the question, “Can AI do this miserable job at least as well as a human and a thousand times faster?” then the answer is yes.
Companies use this sort of tool because they want to cut time to fill, and that’s an outcome these new technologies can easily deliver on. Quality of hire will depend more on the final selection stage, and at that stage humans still dominate, for the moment.
