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AI in HR. Between well-functioning software and real innovation

autor: Barbara Jastrzebska

HR is often mentioned as one of the most certain fields to see AI in action. With high expectations there come the doubts that it is all a little bit misleading. What are the “can” and “cant’s” of AI in Human Resources? Read our short summary. 

It's widely believed that AI will replace well-crafted software, which already exists in the industry but unfortunately isn’t deployed in many companies. Still, the same companies express a hope that somehow adoption of AI will magically fix the issues of their software or lack of thereof. 

Surely AI in HR can help in the following ways:

• Screen and source the candidates, look for the perfect match on both sides (employer and candidate)

• Reduce Bias. Although AI can be affected by our cultural biases, counter-measures are already in research and there are techniques that let us minimise it. For example we can use AI to score candidates to help your HR team make the screening decision.

• Improve the communication by use of the Chat / Email bots to speed it up and at the same time make it more human. The chatbots can provide answers to numerous daily questions regarding salaries, social benefits, and holiday leaves.

• Minimise the manual task through Robotic Process Automation. The long existing automation possibilities are now super-powered as they can make decisions and interact with real word documents more naturally.

• Make prediction of the key metrics in the HR process.. Like your churn, the time needed to get new candidates based on requirements etc. But this is being implemented in good software since some time already.

What all above statements have in common is the possibility of AI to learn based on data and then make recommendations and decisions, from simple conversational choices to these complex, based on values that they determine that are important for us. It is where the real breakthrough happens. Not in the simple automation and reducing administrative stuff which should be already solved at your organisation by well-crafted software. 

Going to the other side of our summary, the following applications of AI would be unnecessary, maybe too expensive to implement and instead - quickly done with software. 

• communicating candidate status and tracking the hiring process

• following the collection of all required new hire documents

• crafting and automatic sending of holiday requests

• tracking paper work to stay compliant

• etc

Above is just a cry for better and more automated software, which hopefully will be deployed along with the AI solutions. If you are looking to address such issues, good software may be just enough. There is no reason to wait for the AI.

This article was inspired by hopes and comments expressed in Forbes article from July 2018: 11 Ways AI Can Revolutionize Human Resources.