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Wendy Scott's avatar

Wow! She was a bit snippy about you asking about the AI process wasn't she. I'm assuming that this is in place of a phone screen or one of those scenarios where you answer questions on video, and not the final interview.

Also, if AI is taking all of our jobs, who will the AI interviewer interview? Other AIs?

Just kidding - it's important to keep up with innovations like this!

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Leanne Hughes's avatar

HAHAHA, nice one "Also, if AI is taking all of our jobs, who will the AI interviewer interview? Other AIs?"

And yeah, that was a little snippy segue back to the topic, right? Yes, suggest this is part of an overall recruiment process, def not the main event!

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Steph Clarke's avatar

I think the point you make about the job search process already being dehumanising is critical here. And you’re right that this isn’t really any different than having to turn your CV into some bland, ATS-friendly document that in no way represents your potential or brilliance. But we’ve just accepted that.

So yes, this type of tool might make that both better (for the ways you laid out) but also worse. Because it just gives a new shiny tech band-aid way for orgs to race to the bottom when it comes to candidate experience, rather than rethinking the whole process. This seems to be a trend with AI at the moment; use it to make the crap thing faster, rather than fixing / removing the crap thing.

As with most things, when you scale it, you’re probably making it shit.

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Leanne Hughes's avatar

I think you're bang on with this: "This seems to be a trend with AI at the moment; use it to make the crap thing faster, rather than fixing / removing the crap thing" - agree, it's only working at an incremental level now. It's almost like when we had to move to virtual meetings, and people just placed a virtual camera on top of a F2F workshop design, without rethinking the new medium.

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Tx us 987's avatar

I’m more irritated at the indignant tone of ai virtual assistants who is pretending to be their boss reminding me that I haven’t responded to a sales email that I have zero desire or obligation to respond to, as I didn’t request it

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Leanne Hughes's avatar

Oh gosh, hate those email follow-ups, when the initial reach-out was cold. Soooo annoying.

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Jade Miller's avatar

So interesting! Making great points about the existing recruitment processes people experience and I love how you are on the front foot experimenting with the new things.

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Leanne Hughes's avatar

Yeah! I see people defending the way things were.. but honestly, were they that great? Surely we can rethink recruitment and do it in a better way that serves both the candidate and the business. Thanks, Jade!

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Andrew Hollo's avatar

Brilliantly thoughtful piece Leanne.

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Leanne Hughes's avatar

Oh, thanks, Andrew! I appreciate that.

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Sally Porteous's avatar

Here for the dog photo ♡🐾

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Leanne Hughes's avatar

Aren't they gorgeous?!

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Colin Newlyn's avatar

I like the thoughtful application of AI that you'bve described here. I thinnk there also has to be a high level of transparency, which will include opening up the 'black box' so we can see what the AI is doing.

Sadly, I don't see much of the application of AI being as thoughtful as this. It's being used as a new hammer to hit the cost reduction nail with.

You were brought to my attention by someone who commented on my last post, where I also described the recruitment process as an example of something that's thoroughly broken. It was broken when I last wrangled with it 20 years ago and it's just got worse. I think it shows that, for all the rhetoric from organisations, employees are not really that important to them, just cogs to be replaced when needed. Preferably with an AI, which is cheaper and doesn't answer back.

CODA: I've just watched the interview and a) it is a bit creepy and b) I think the intro is fundamentally dishonest, it's not that person, it's an AI avatar of that person.

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