HR Technology Week is well underway here at HR Daily Advisor and it doesn’t stop with this week’s Faces column.
Technology is driving the HR market right now, allowing HR professionals and organizations to work smarter, faster, and more efficiently than ever before. From cloud-based HR management systems to machine learning and data analytics, HR technology continues to transform and gain traction in the world of HR.
Despite optimism from many, there are some HR leaders and organizations who are on the fence of new technologies such as ChatGPT and AI. So, what does the future of AI in HR hold?
We recently connected with David Kaneda, Founder of Boo.ai, and Jono Luk, VP of Product Management, Webex at Cisco, to find out what implications these technologies will have not only on the hiring process and recruiting, but also the organizations that utilize them.
Here’s a heads up – Kaneda and Luk believe HR technology will change how much the HR industry functions, however, it won’t replace the human touch.
Will ChatGPT/AI have a positive effect on the HR industry?
JL: Yes, but to a point. If used correctly, ChatGPT could potentially improve the experience of how companies can interact with potential candidates during the recruitment process and after they’ve been onboarded. There is an element of scale that can be achieved through ChatGPT and conversational AI. There is, however, a potential “coldness” to interacting with a bot/machine. Unless candidates can pretend that ChatGPT is a human, candidates or employees may feel like they’re missing the human element from HR. However, ChatGPT could make business processes and workflows that guide an employee through a routine HR process seamless, such as providing answers to frequently asked questions.
DK: I think AI will help make HR professionals’ jobs a lot easier. On the hiring side, AI can take out a lot of the repetition of writing job postings. On the employee support side, AI can be trained on company data and immediately answer employee questions like “what’s our vacation policy” or “do we have 401k matching?” Going a step beyond, for employee requests that are more complex or require human support, AI can be used to automatically categorize requests and triage them to the right team/person.
How could the hiring process change with such AI technology?
JL: ChatGPT could be used to generate job postings based on rough criteria provided by the hiring manager. This could streamline the process of creating meaningful job descriptions. ChatGPT type technology could also be helpful in providing feedback to interviewees after an interview. For example, a ChatGPT system could ingest the feedback from a given candidate’s interview loop, and then provides the feedback in a consumable fashion.
DK: Currently, AI can be used to write things like job postings, offer letters, rejection letters — all of which can be fairly repetitious — saving recruiters’ time. It’s easy to envision a future in which AI can also help with pre-screening candidates, sorting applications by skill level, and other parts of the hiring pipeline.
Beyond writing and employee support, AI can also be incredibly useful to analytics — so users can simply request data with natural language. For HR, I could see HR teams valuing the ability to ask things like, “which category of tickets are taking the longest to resolve,” and “which articles should we improve in our knowledge base,” etc., of their current systems.
Can ChatGPT/AI help HR leaders draw top talent?
JL: I’m dubious whether ChatGPT can directly help a company to draw top talent. If the application of ChatGPT to generate JDs or other artifacts improves the quality of that content, then there could be value.