Keeping Humans in Human Resources

I started my work shift yesterday 5 minutes before I had to attend a meeting. One of the many perks of working from home these days.

It was the usual updates from Management, HR, and daily task assignments. I was half-listening while reading an email, answering a DM, and eating a bowl of oatmeal.

I looked at my calendar and I had several interviews lined up for the day. I mostly enjoy my line of work. Talking to different people every day, helping them find a job amidst this pandemic and providing them feedback if they get rejected.

It is both fulfilling as well as haunting when you provide them with good news and bad news respectively.

The recent movement in Human Resources is automating sorting through resumes, candidates recording their answers on specific questions online and machine learning to assess the rate of speech, work, and educational background as well skill and knowledge checks.

Speed is one advantage of Artificial Intelligence in resume screening.

Machine algorithms can go through a submitted resume in a fraction of a second and assess if a candidate has all the necessary requirements. A human recruiter will take 10-15 seconds to scroll through the same resume and may even take longer for more complex roles.

Supporters of using AI to do interviews through a series of chatbots and automated standardized questions that could assess a candidate on being a good match for the job. It would make use of keywords, profile matching and algorithms entered by learning how a human recruiter would assess the situation.

I remember being in a project where I would pass or fail a candidate given their answer on a specific question. This would be used in Machine Learning to understand the context.

Context can be a good learning tool but it can also be bad as it can learn human biases.

Let us face it humans will always have biases. Biases on gender, age, race, educational attainment and social standing. Unfortunately, it was found machines learn this and incorporate it on their assessments.

    *From Unsplash by Amy Hirschi*

This is where training comes in. Human recruiters need to take and understand Removing Biases courses.

I took one and it showed me that no matter how I perceived myself as fair I had some inherent biases on gender and education. I have to still unlearn some bad habits that I have picked up growing up.

Linkedin provided a lot of free training that addressed this inherent problem with Human Recruiters. It knows that we need to get better humans so that we can put the human back in Human Resources.

Do you think that Human Resources should be replaced by machines?