Why AI Can’t Replace Recruiters – Navigating the New Job Application Landscape with Vanessa Raath

AI tools rely on data that may already contain historical biases, such as favoring certain demographics or schools, and these biases can be amplified if unchecked. To prevent this:

• Diverse Training Data: Work with vendors who use datasets that are representative and regularly audited for fairness.
• Human Oversight: Don’t rely solely on AI. Ensure humans review and validate AI-generated recommendations to catch potential red flags.
• Bias Detection Tools: Utilize AI tools designed to detect and mitigate bias within the hiring process. For example, some tools analyze job descriptions to ensure inclusive language or evaluate candidate shortlists for unintended bias.

A poor candidate experience, like ghosting or poor communication, can tarnish your employer’s brand. After all, these are your potential customers as well! Here’s a few things to think about:

• Personalized Communication: While AI can streamline communication, it should not lead to generic, impersonal messages. Use AI to automate routine updates but include tailored touchpoints from a recruiter.
• Feedback Loops: Ensure all candidates, even those not selected, receive constructive feedback or acknowledgment of their application. AI tools can automate this process for scale.
• System Audits: Test your application process regularly by having internal staff apply for roles to identify bottlenecks or glitches caused by AI.

Blockchain offers a transformative approach to verifying skills and experience, reducing the inefficiencies of traditional resumes:

• Authenticity: Blockchain provides a tamper-proof record of a candidate’s education, certifications, and work history, ensuring that the information presented is accurate and trustworthy.
• Efficiency: By using blockchain, recruiters can instantly verify credentials without the need for lengthy background checks or reference calls.
• Future-Proofing: Blockchain credentials are interoperable across platforms, meaning candidates can update their profiles in real-time and companies can easily access verified data, making it ideal for an increasingly remote and global workforce.

[00:00:00] Debbie Goodman: Welcome to On Work and Revolution, where we talk about what’s shaking up in the world of work. I’m your host, Debbie Goodman. I’m CEO of Jack Hammer Global, a global group of executive search and leadership coaching companies. We help find great leaders and we help develop them into even better ones. My main mission with all of my work is to help companies and leaders to create amazing workplaces where people and ideas flourish.

And one of the core strategies for creating amazing workplaces is to help companies to hire great leaders, which Jack Hammer Global has been doing for years, exclusively using a proactive headhunting approach, meaning we do not advertise job openings. Instead, we identify and then approach top candidates for the roles we’re looking to fill.

And our clients often ask us, so how do you find the people? And well, that’s where our amazing research and talent sourcing team comes into play. That’s what they do all day, every day. Of course, they use all the technology resources available to us, but with a very high human touch. And this is where my guest today comes into the picture.

To ensure that our team is on the cutting edge of all the technology innovation in the talent sourcing landscape. We have Vanessa Raath to help guide and train our team. Vanessa is a powerhouse in the global talent sourcing community. She’s known for her game changing training and insightful keynotes, which she delivers all over the world.

Since launching her talent sourcing training business in early 2019, Vanessa has trained teams from Auckland to Seattle, from the UK to Cape Town, many, many more in between. She’s considered an authority on all things recruitment with a focus on the latest technology innovation in the sourcing landscape. She has an online academy, she’s founder of the Talent Hunters global sourcing community, and her library of YouTube videos is really exceptional.

And today we’re going to speak to Vanessa about what the heck is happening in the recruitment and job application process with the AI explosion that’s taking place right now. Welcome Vanessa.

[00:02:11] Vanessa Raath: What an intro. That’s amazing. Hey Deb, good to be here. Thank you for inviting me to be a guest. That’s one of those intros that I kind of need to, you know, just kind of ring fence and listen to the next time I’m about to give a presentation overseas somewhere. Yes.

[00:02:24] Debbie Goodman: great. Well, you can re. replay that one for as much as you like. All right. So let’s kick off. So the promise of generative AI was to reduce the drag admin work of, well, everybody, but recruiters in particular, to make it faster and easier to source candidates, and then to improve the candidate experience in the job application process. Now, based on the feedback you receive from recruiters globally,

where is AI meeting expectations on this front or not?

[00:02:59] Vanessa Raath: Well, let’s start where it’s not, because I think the one that I want to touch on is actually the third example that you gave me, which is candidate experience. I think that that’s something that we need to be very mindful of, is that there’s a lot of candidates out there who are now getting incredibly spammed with messages, you know, from recruiters, because it’s easier to send messages these days, because ChatGPT, Generative AI, just generates emails for us.

So that’s one place where it’s falling down, but another place where it’s doing exceptionally well is the people who are using it correctly, and that’s not letting it replace them, but using a generative AI to augment their processes. So they actually, it’s doing a lot of their admin. And by doing its admin, it’s freeing up people to spend more time with human beings.

So I think that that’s two, extremes of the coin there of generative AI. And the common denominator of those two examples is the user. So it all comes down to how effectively the user is using generative AI.

[00:04:01] Debbie Goodman: Okay, this is a more interesting, um, slant, thinking about things from the candidate perspective, who’s receiving advances, outreach Emails from either in house recruiters or third party recruiters, an influx of, direct approaches in a message lands in one’s LinkedIn inbox or, general inbox and, and you’re hearing that candidates are saying there’s just so much of this and it looks blah, or it’s not good, or why is their candidate experience poor?

Because it’s

[00:04:34] Vanessa Raath: generic. So I think that what we have moved away or too far from is the personalization. So if you think about it, we’re using a ChatGPT of sorts and there’s lots of them out there Is you can generate an email in 10 seconds. Then a lot of people are sending that email or that in mail and whatever format But they’re not taking the time to personalize it. So kind of the angle that I’ll go with, with my training is, is that, use ChatGPT, but only use it for like 70%, you’ve got to personalize 30 percent of your message because your aim, when you’re reaching out to a complete stranger is for them to sit up and say, wow, this recruiter has really done their homework on me.

They listened to my guest appearance on a podcast. They read my book. They saw I presented at this conference, et cetera, et cetera. So this couldn’t have been sent out to 80 of my peers. And when a recruiter does that, they almost guaranteed to get a response.

[00:05:30] Debbie Goodman: Aha. Okay. Listen up recruiters. I mean, everybody’s using the technology and I guess the differentiator now is how to personalize. So on that note of personalization, let’s talk about the job application process. Because nowadays, like right now, there is mass personalized auto apply capability for candidates.

So whereas you would need to write your CV and a motivating letter to take ages. Um, it’s a pain in the butt and just be exhausting for one. Now, in a matter of seconds, you can not just generate hundreds, but you can also use personalized AI tools to personalize, your resume, cover letter, whatever it is specific to the job that you’re applying to.

And as a result, there’s just a ton, ton, ton of CVs that are being received or applications that are being received by recruiters. So share with the listeners, what’s happening here.

[00:06:33] Vanessa Raath: That’s a really interesting point cause I read some articles this morning in preparation for this discussion and I’ve always known that there were AI tools that were fixing up people’s CVs, making them look better, applying on their behalf. But what us recruiters have kind of harped on about for years and years now is you need to angle all of your CVs and all of your outreach messages to the company and the person that you’re applying to. But what I found out this morning is that generative AI is actually doing that on behalf of people. So, I mean there’s lots of tools out there.

And basically what’s happening now is that the applications have been In some cases, double, tripled, quadrupled. And now what we’re having is a situation of recruiters being completely inundated just because some kind of gen AI has picked up the same keyword. for example, they’re looking for someone who’s, let’s say Java skills, but you’ve got someone who spoke about, in their break, they’d like to go and have a cup of Java or, they worked at a place called the Java cafe.

So, there’s no human insight over there, but the CV still gets submitted regardless. And these are the things that’s happening because now you’ve got the recruiters on the other side of the coin. And I mean, it’s really interesting because with me being in South Africa, we’ve always have loads and loads of applications when people put out job adverts.

It’s the nature of, the high unemployment rates we have here. But now when I see, my colleagues and clients in the US complaining about, actually, we put out a job advert and we inundated with responses, we don’t know what to do. We don’t know when to hire more people to actually go through all of the ad responses.

We don’t know now whether to, you know, use technology in order to be able to parse the CVS. And what’s really interesting is what I’m seeing now a lot of companies doing, is that the recruiters are using AI technology to actually go through the CVS and rank them according to, what is the best ability.

So, it’s really interesting for me because if you take a step back and you look at it, you’ve now got kind of generative AI from the candidate side talking to generative AI from the, the company side. And it’s like, well, you know, where does the human fit in? Where’s the interpretation of the culture fits, the human elements.

So what’s going on here? It’s like the world’s gone mad.

[00:08:40] Debbie Goodman: Well, I think that’s where we’re at. We’re at this, AI explosion. A lot of people saying that the CV or resume is dead because of the huge influx of CVs for every job application. You just can’t spot the good talent. All CVs are AI augmented. They all look good. and so what we’re seeing right now, and of course there are, the solutions will emerge.

 But, the CV as a flag, that used to be a signal around, okay, we got a hundred applications, 10 of them were good. Who should we invite for an interview? All of that, all of a sudden using that CV as a signal to determine that next round has been eroded, and now companies are needing to put in another layer

of testing or assessment, so to speak, in order to ensure that the candidate is capable of the things they say they are capable of before they can even get into a first round interview. And so the, um,

[00:09:36] Vanessa Raath: interesting because the thinking behind that, I’m just going to stop you there because it’s super interesting, is that the CV is actually going to change format. And the CV now with things like Web3 and Blockchain, is that is the new, what the CV format is going to be. Because then you have, You know your skills that are on there.

They’ve been verified other people can vouch for them and that’s really important. So it will move away from the paper based CV that we know which I mean I know people have been using CV writers for years now, but it seems like everyone’s using generative AI to make that really good looking CV So that will still be part of an interview process, but it’s not going to be the piece of paper that gets your foot through the door. That’s going to be something that’s more believable and can be verified, which is where the blockchain technologies come into play.

[00:10:25] Debbie Goodman: I am also seeing that Web3 is the solution for verifiable credentials, um, and that is going to be the next wave of how, blockchain actually integrates with the job application process, certainly, and perhaps the skills assessment process as well. Right now, how are recruiters responding to the massive influx of resumes?

Um, what I’m hearing is that they’re taking a job ad down within 24 hours because they’re just like 800 applications and most do have, or most that are in big companies have got tools to do the AI parsing. So these days, a resume has to be capable of being screened both by a human and by a robot.

 But do you have any insight into what’s happening right now with recruiters who are advertising for jobs and are seeing this deluge of resumes coming in, and are previously would either have a human go through the resumes or now using an ATS, what is the general feeling about what’s happening in the industry?

[00:11:33] Vanessa Raath: So it’s actually really interesting because I remember when LinkedIn said that you can only buy one advert slots and park an advert there. And then when you wanted to advertise a second position organization, then you had to remove that job advert and put another one in. So what I’m hearing is for the first time ever, you know, that probably wasn’t a bad move by LinkedIn because people are literally posting adverts for 12 hours, 24 hours or whatever it may be, and then replacing it with something else.

But, but the sad reality is what this is actually doing is it’s adding so much extra pressure and strain to a really stretched recruitment departments. So there’s a lot of um, recruiters, talent acquisition specialists, talent sources, whatever you want to call them, actually being laid off at the moment because a lot of companies aren’t hiring.

There’s so much going on in the world. So the few people who are left behind are now, actually, if they can’t afford the technologies in order to parse those CVs, are doing it themselves. So there’s a lot of just open the CV control F, let me go and look for a keyword. If it’s not there, then we completely moving on.

So we’re, we always heard that recruiters take five seconds to make a call. I think that’s being dropped down to, you know, 2. 2 seconds. So basically what it’s doing is it’s forcing recruiters into quite a difficult position because they now are under so much pressure. They’ve got so much more data and content to go through that it’s actually, we’re seeing a move away from people in the recruitment industry because they just can’t cope with it.

[00:12:55] Debbie Goodman: Wow. Um, and so back to the first question around the promise of AI, which was intended to improve and reduce the massive amounts of admin that we know recruiters are, sitting with on a daily basis in any event. It sounds like that’s in the muddy phase right now. I mean, I have no doubt that solutions will emerge

to deal with this particular situation. I think web three might still be a little bit far ahead. Um, as it’s certainly one option and it’s already happening, but I think massive uptake is still going to be quite delayed. But with regard to the now now problem, I’m curious to hear, I haven’t yet seen, but I just sensed that some smart person’s going to be, uh, cultivating a solution to address this particular problem, beyond just another AI tool to parse data the 827 CVs that came in over 12 hours for one particular job. Now this, and these AI tools to screen resumes is nothing new. I mean, it’s an ATS, they’ve been going on for years and years already, but it’s really in full force now. There are many people who actually believe that there’s, less bias

if you use an AI tool, which looks at many different data points, as opposed to an exhausted recruiter, who’s just so frustrated and tired by CV 221, that, um, if it’s not perfect, it’s hitting the bin. So some people say, great, let’s use these AI tools. There’s less bias. They certainly don’t get as tired.

 And others think, Oh no, there’s hold on a second, these tools have been programmed with bias. So what’s your take on that?

[00:14:40] Vanessa Raath: So for me to answer your first question about, how is GenAI, working to help us and take away the admin, what you, what are you actually seeing coming out in the marketplace is what I refer to as like mega GenAI tools. So for example, there’s a tool out of the UK called Poetry. And what it does is literally will sit in the meeting with the hiring manager, will record that 30 minute call from there, will do everything from putting the role description together to writing a job advert to writing the candidate outreach to, posting the ads wherever it is, getting the results and parsing the CVS and literally does everything.

Everything up until, you get onto a call with that individual. So, it can do end to end. So it’s not just a GenAI tool now that can parse the CVs and have a look and see, okay, you’re good. You’re not so good. You’re going in the bin kind of thing. It’s literally end to end recruitment solutions.

 I’ve been reading articles today from Workday and, Talent Connect’s going on at the moment and how they’re trying to. LinkedIn’s creating a hiring assistant to actually give the hiring manager the skills and the ability to directly go and hire without the recruiter input.

I can’t wait to see how that one works out anyways because we all know that hiring managers don’t always know what they’re looking for in the first place and that’s why you need the human being to actually interpret what he’s looking for or she. Um, so, so for me, it’s. There are pockets of excellence.

And what I can say, remember ChatGPT open AI was released in November 2022. It’s getting better. It’s machine learning tool. It’s learning and it is getting there. For me, it’s about not trying to solve everything is trying to figure out, what is it as you and as an individual, as a recruiter or a TA professional.

What do you want to solve? What do you want to get better at? And then find the corresponding AI tool because people who try and understand everything and try and fix everything using AI are actually going to come unstuck very, very quickly.

[00:16:36] Debbie Goodman: Yeah. No, it’s totally overwhelming. Just want to touch again on the point. So yeah, absolutely nobody ever needs to write a job description from scratch ever again in their

[00:16:44] Vanessa Raath: Well, praise the Lord. That’s amazing.

[00:16:47] Debbie Goodman: so that’s great. Um, so they’re definitely parts of the process that we are so happy to have this amazing technology for, but just to get back to the point of bias.

What is your take on that? I know you’re very on top of what’s happening in the

[00:17:01] Vanessa Raath: So.

[00:17:01] Debbie Goodman: and just what are the safeguards and protections around that?

[00:17:04] Vanessa Raath: So the EU Act has come into play now. It’s only going to be enforced by 1 Jan 2025, but, there are some rulings and some things around bias and you’re 100 percent correct. You see these large language modules are all trained by humans. Humans come with inherent bias, whether they perceive themselves to be the most happy go lucky, unbiased person in the world, have no bias whatsoever.

There is still bias and that’s just a product of, our upbringing and our life experiences. So it is a real worry. It is a concern. And I think that, you know, for a long time, you could even check that yourself. I mean, go into Dall-E or MidJourney and ask her to generate a picture of a CEO.

And it often comes up with a white male. These are all the things that we need to get around. But what’s really interesting in that act is, is that, and this could cause a lot of issues, is the absolute requirement for there to be transparency. So if any agency or company is actually using AI and they’re using that to parse the CVs, the candidates have the right to know about it.

Now, bearing in mind candidates now are applying to, I saw stat the other day, 200 jobs a week, because that’s what it takes to find a job these days. How many of them are going to go back and say, wait, hold on. I know your company, you use AI to parse the CVs do your short listing. I want to actually challenge you on that.

So, it all comes down to time and presence, but. For me, I still believe that human insight is needed on a lot of CVs because there’s so many things on a CV or an application which you actually cannot pick up. Like I really find it difficult to pick up someone’s personality by what something that is written on a piece of paper.

And even though there are tools that will now go and crawl the internet and have a look at people’s social presences or their digital footprint, Personality is also very difficult to pick up. And sometimes, especially in a world today when tools are changing so progressively as you want to hire for attitude, you want to hire for a personality fit or a culture fit, and then you want to actually train the skills and that’s just not what’s going to be happening with all of this technology in place.

[00:19:09] Debbie Goodman: Okay. let’s talk then about candidate experience because one of the things that employers have been working on for years is certainly an awareness that their brand is associated with the impact that they have through the recruitment process, the hiring process with all the candidates they touch, whether the person has just sent in a resume or whether they have come in for a first interview. I am seeing lots of candidates being very Annoyed, frustrated, irate about how they’re ghosted through the process.

They get no feedback And that seems like such a weird thing to do Of all the things that should have been simplified and made a lot easier is keeping a record of who applied and then being able to communicate with those candidates in order to do the very basic minimum of upholding your brand as a respectful brand to all the people you are in contact with.

I mean, they’re also customers potentially. So what needs to change? What’s happening? Why is it so? Why is the candidate experience on the application side so poor?

[00:20:17] Vanessa Raath: So that’s really interesting because employer branding, goes through waves and it’s really, really important. And then it’s not so important. Then we forget about candidate experience and then we get back onto the whole branding bus and then it becomes a bit of an issue.

I think that what you see happening is that the bigger corporates, you know, the fangs don’t feel like they need to work as hard because it’s easy for their recruiters to phone up and say, Hey, do you want to work for Meta, that’s a much easier sell than, Hey, do you want to work on this startup,

 we looking at some AI technology to do some funky stuff, would you be keen? And I think that that’s, Actually become a little bit of laziness, a little bit of arrogance that’s come into play that, maybe the candidate experience is not that important because we are the almighty, brand X, whatever it might be.

 You’re a hundred percent correct. There’s a lot of brand damage happening out there. And again, technology is glitchy. So even if you had a record of who had applied, when they had applied, have they stayed in contact with them? All you need is for an email, not to be fired off.

And then suddenly there’s no contact. And then what’s happening is, is that your systems are actually ghosting people. It’s not your recruiters that are ghosting people. And again, this is where human insight comes into play. One of the things I still encourage people to do, and even more so now, especially if you’re using AI, is get someone within your organization to go and apply for their own job.

And just see, do they make it through the parsing process? What is the experience like? And, uh, these are all things that we need to look at because often what’s happening is that companies are working in silos. So you’ve got TA as an addition to HR, but you’ve actually got the IT team that are building the systems out.

But then you’ve also got marketing trying to advertise the roles and talking about like the brand image and all of those things. Too many moving parts, too many people in different buildings in different cities all over the world. It’s not always going to work.

[00:22:03] Debbie Goodman: Right. Okay. So what else should HR teams and recruiters, particularly in house in employers. We’re not talking about third party recruiters, specifically here, although, that’s part of the conversation, nevertheless. What do the in house professionals, the talent acquisition people, the recruiting teams, what do they need to focus on developing at this point to stay relevant in an AI driven world. If you could say these are the three things guys that you need to be focusing on, what would you say?

[00:22:39] Vanessa Raath: That’s really interesting because this is exactly what I did the keynote on in Sourcing Summit in Amsterdam three weeks ago. Three things, exactly that. First one would be to build their own brands. Because people are attracted to other human beings and people want to deal with human beings. So I’ve hopped on about recruiters building a brand for years now, but it is now becoming essential because chatbots are out there trying to recruit people, trying to make content.

People are being bombarded. They want to deal with someone who’s real authentic and someone that they can relate to. So that’s point number one. Second one is start thinking very differently about what we used to refer to as talent pipelining and kind of convert that into community building. So if you are a company that is recruiting for electrical engineers, how can you start building a community in that space?

So even with it, you’re an internal TA team or you’re an agency that specializes in, let’s say, finance recruitment or whatever it is. Start building your network and community in that space because that is going to be your talent pipeline. People will know you, you will know them, and that is literally going to be candidates at your fingertips.

But remember to run a community, it’s all about constant engagement and giving back and earning trust. Which is not always something that recruiters think about because it has been very transactional historically. And then the final thing, that I’d like to mention in this one, which, is always something that’s really interesting in the way that people, take it on board is networking, like get out there, get back to in person events. And what’s happened during COVID is that people got very comfortable at home. They don’t really want to go out and meet with people and interact. And we all believe we can do our jobs. But the problem is, is that when you’re not interacting with people, you’re not building an in person network.

Someone else is going to be there building a strong in person network and building relationships. And us as recruiters. That’s what recruitment boils down to is you are a relationship builder and the bottom line is that is done better in person. So we need to really need to change our mindsets because a lot of recruiters don’t want to get out there.

A

[00:24:47] Debbie Goodman: I kind of love how things are in some respects going super old school. Um, so well, not super old school. I mean, I know we used to recruit using the phone book, but actually making sure that we are out there, that we are cultivating a network that we are, and I think internal talent acquisition teams in particular have not felt the need to do that but if they are going to be doing outreach to the candidates and to the talent that they want, then that is a critical part of the process to be known as the recruiter for X company who is going to engage with them, going to treat them well, going to treat them respectfully, going to give them the information they need when they need it.

 I mean, obviously we see this at leadership levels, which is very high touch and so that sort of white glove service and process is just second nature to us. But further down the chain, and even at leadership levels, we’re just hearing that the candidates are feeling like, somewhat despondent, is a mild way of putting it when it comes to their interactions with the hiring process.

Okay, last question, Vanessa. Looking ahead, what major changes do you predict in recruiting over let’s say the next year, cause I don’t think any of us can even see longer than that. So let’s just talk about what major do you think might occur that we need to be thinking about in the next year?

[00:26:07] Vanessa Raath: I was reading an article earlier this week, and it was about how, at the moment recruitment is difficult from a global perspective. I mean, global economic downturn, all of these countries with elections this year, it hasn’t been the easiest year in TA. But if you go and study, the first three months of COVID, if you go and have a look during global recessions, recruitment’s always the first industry to struggle and be hit.

But what always follows that trough is a high of really, really, awesomeness that comes out of it. So being the eternal optimist, I choose to focus on the positives. And I do believe that we are going to come out of this stronger. I don’t believe it’s actually going to happen in 2024. I think we’re going to be strong out of the gates in 2025

 and when things have settled down, I do however, feel that the industry is going to have quite a hard turnover. There’s going to be a lot of people that are going to find recruiting very difficult. It’s not what they signed up for. And those people are going to leave the industry. And I do think generative AI is going to replace a lot of people.

And some recruiters are pretty shocking and lazy out there, so yeah, let the AI replace them, let them go and leave, a core of strong, TA folk who are passionate about helping others who are here to weather the storm. They are using GenAI to augment their processes, not to, replace themselves.

 And I think that’s, It’s going to be more positive. I mean, the whole AI thing is, yes, we still talk about it. It’s very much still a thing, but people are embracing it. We’ve all become prompt engineers. So as soon as the world sorts itself out, as I say, from an economical, political kind of perspective, I think that we’re going to be very well positioned to kind of have a good charge in 2025.

A

[00:27:49] Debbie Goodman: Okay. Well, on that note of wholehearted enthusiasm and optimism, I’m going to say thank you so much for this fabulous session, for your pearls of insight and wisdom. And absolutely let’s hope the world just sorts itself out so that we can have a great

[00:28:05] Vanessa Raath: percent. Yeah, exactly.

[00:28:07] Debbie Goodman: so much, Vanessa.

[00:28:08] Vanessa Raath: Absolute pleasure. Thank you.

[00:28:10] Debbie Goodman: Bye now.