Artificial Intelligence And Its Impact On Human Resources
Although this discipline is several decades old, Artificial Intelligence has become all the rage in recent years thanks to the development of chatbots public access, that is, programs capable of giving automatic responses to any user, even if they are from the sofa at home.
This is because the initial theoretical objectives of Artificial Intelligence have mutated into more practical ones, making it possible to program software capable of providing services or providing answers to specific problems. One of the areas that this discipline has reached is Human Resources, allowing the automation and streamlining of certain processes concerning such as the selection and management of personnel. Next, we will see what is the impact of the use of Artificial Intelligence in HR and what are the risks and benefits that arise from its application.
As we previously mentioned, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a branch of Computer Science whose purpose is the creation of programs that, using the combination of algorithms, are capable of performing efficient tasks to the extent that they collect information. At first glance, it seems strange and even aggressive to think that machinery with these qualities, made of silicon circuits and whose complex functions could be explained in the language of zeros and ones, is capable of determining something as significant for a person as the candidacy. to a job. This objection is valid and to be expected.
Let’s just do a quick review of what should be considered during the personnel selection process: assess the specific knowledge that the candidate has expressed in his resume, previous experience, academic training, interests and motivations of the candidate, personality, affinity with values of the organization, ability to adapt to the new job… From this perspective, it seems that this set of tasks could hardly be carried out by a non-human, right?
Nevertheless, More and more companies are deciding to use AI programs in the HR area so these must have certain advantages that make them profitable for many organizations.
The advantages of using AI programs in HR
First of all, we must consider that, at least for now, companies and organizations that use AI software do not usually use them exclusively for recruitment and selection processes, but rather there tends to be a professional team behind it. In some cases, these programs operate as “filters” to determine which are the most suitable candidates to access a job before reaching the hands of a human interviewer, collecting the resumes of the candidates according to the criteria established by a professional based on a specific position. In other words, AI serves to save time: it replaces the task of collecting information about candidates, since it is a repetitive, automatable activity, and, above all, it would require many hours for a professional who could be summoned to other tasks.
Another advantage of AI programs for HR is that some of them can, in addition to processing information quickly, learn automatically by identifying trends or patterns among billions of data, improving themselves without requiring the action of a human, as long as he feeds on more and more information. This is where the benefit of time savings appears again; but also the fact that the use of AI could provide certain security and economic savings to the company or organization.
Hiring the wrong candidate comes with a high monetary cost, a risk that companies are not willing to take. These software could not only collect information about applicants to find suitable candidates according to different sources (for example, some programs are linked to job search websites), but also make predictions of future behavior thanks to the huge amount of information they recover. In this way, the benefit is not reduced to the personnel selection process. They could also anticipate issues such as job abandonment depending on the time of year, so professionals could know when it will be necessary to hire more staff; or it could even be useful to boost the development of employees’ potential, so AI could also be applied to talent retention.
Finally, AI can also be used to carry out more fair and accurate selection and hiring processes By using exclusively the candidate’s information, this could mean that the selection focuses on the candidate’s experience and professional profile, reducing to a minimum the biases and prejudices, conscious or not, that a professional could have when carrying out carry out this task.
Risks of using AI in HR
The benefits of Artificial Intelligence in this discipline are undeniable. However, there are also certain risks that could make some companies skeptical about using this type of program. The first of them is linked to the interview. We said that AI can make predictions about candidates, but the curious thing is that there is even software capable of carrying out an initial interview with candidates and choosing a few who will later agree to an interview with a person. However, These AI programs are not yet capable of vividly detecting variables such as the candidate’s emotions at the time of being interviewed, whether they are expressions of nervousness, anxiety or security. Maybe at some point they will be able to do it. Meanwhile, the fact that emotional aspects are exempt from an interview poses a risk for the organization.
Besides, other variables undetectable for an AI such as sense of humor could be decisive for some jobs such as those that involve attention to the public.
Finally, another point against these software is that, although they could expose the applicant to hypothetical situations for solving tasks, they would have their limitations. There are some innovative personnel selection strategies such as escape rooms that try to evaluate the skills of a person in a real situation, in which they are exposed to unforeseen events, something that an AI could not do when using only verbal language.
In short, although the use of Artificial Intelligence entails certain risks, it in no way invalidates its usefulness in the human resources area of a company or organization.
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