Check Yourself, AI

Every day I get a list of Austin area “Director of Recruiting” roles from a big job search board. And every day, I get a good laugh at the roles that would be a good fit for me to pursue.

Today, the jobs that fall under my “Director of Recruiting” umbrella are:

A Child Care Director (actually three pre-school jobs)
Hotline Coordinator
Retail Supervisor at Party City
Director of Cardiovascular Services, Registered RN
VP of Design
Manager of Taco Bell (20 miles from my house)

In the past, I’ve also gotten listings for physicians, dishwashers, football coach and other jobs. Some, I guess, I could be qualified for (I do wash dishes every day), and others, like the doctor and nurse positions, would open up MAJOR liability if I was chosen. Even more, like the Taco Bell role, are not a fit for me since the last restaurant I worked at was in college about 20 years ago.

To the job board’s credit, all of these roles do involve recruiting in some way, and I do get recruiting and HR jobs in the mix. Still, in what world would you want me, who hasn’t taken biology since 9^th grade, to be your cardiovascular nurse?

Thanks, AI. We’ve got a DOA.

While recruiting and sourcing tools are fantastic in so many ways, we have to remember that we’re in the business of people. People with experiences, desires, goals, and skills. When we use AI to search for people, relying only on keywords, we end up with a recruiting consultant showing up in our nursing candidate list, and a salesperson showing up for our Head of Engineering job.

While so many tools, like the ones listed in this article, can produce lists of candidates that fit certain keywords, we add so much value to our AI counterparts by adding in our holistic knowledge of people’s skills and abilities.

Things that we humans can look at that bots can’t:

Career progression –Titles, responsibilities- have they moved around a company or do they stay in one place?
Patterns- Does a person leave a company every 1.4 years? Are their other repeatable events happening in their career?
Company choices- Do they chose good companies? How is their nose for success?
Nuances- In many jobs, people with the same or similar titles do vastly different things. For example, in sales, an Account Manager can be an inside sales person or an outside sales person- you have to read their profile to figure out whether or not they are out in the field closing deals, or in the office finding them.

Figuring out nuances of profiles is one of my favorite things about recruiting- uncovering the puzzle throughout the profile, internet footprint, and interview processes.

So no, I do not believe that sourcers and recruiters will be replaced by AI, but I do think that we have to use our brains, knowledge of our clients (inside or outside), industries and positions to use AI to our advantage. It’s up to us to not let AI tools replace us by being knowledgeable, creative and resourceful, but using them to make us more efficient and to reach more qualified people about the exciting opportunities we represent.