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 of public access, that is to say, programs capable of giving automatic responses to any user, even if he is from the sofa at home.

This is due to the fact that the initial theoretical objectives of Artificial Intelligence have mutated into others rather practical, enabling the programming of software capable of providing services or responding to problems concrete. One of the areas that this discipline has reached is that of Human Resources, allowing to automate and speed up 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.

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How is Artificial Intelligence used in HR?

As we previously anticipated, 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 a machine with these qualities, made of silicon circuits and whose functions complex could be explained in the language of zeros and ones, be able to determine something as significant for a person as the candidacy for a employment. This objection is valid and 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 the 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 decide to use AI programs in the HR areaTherefore, they must have certain advantages that make them profitable for many organizations.

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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 personnel selection processes, but there tends to be a professional team behind. In some cases, these programs operate as "filters" to determine which are the most suitable candidates. to access a job position before reaching the hands of a human interviewer, making a collection of the resumes of the candidates according to the criteria established by a professional based on a position specific. In other words, AI serves to save time: it replaces the task of gathering information about the candidates, since it is about of a repetitive, automatable activity, and, above all, that would require many hours for a professional who could evoke 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 the need for human action, as long as it feeds on more and more information. This is where the benefit of saving time 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 brings with it a high monetary cost, a risk that companies are not willing to take. These softwares could not only collect information about the applicants to find the right candidates according to different sources (for example, some programs are linked to job search web pages), but also to carry out predictions of future behavior thanks to the enormous amount of information that recover. In this way, the benefit is not reduced to the personnel selection process. They could also anticipate issues such as job churn depending on the time of year, so professionals could know when more staff will need to be hired; Or it could even be useful to promote the development of the potential of employees, so that AI could also be applied to talent retention.

Finally, AI can also be used to carry out fairer and more accurate selection and hiring processes. By relying exclusively on the candidate's information, this could mean that the selection is focused on the candidate's experience and their professional profile, minimizing the biases and prejudices, conscious or not, that a professional might have when carrying out this task.

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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 of 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 arrange an initial interview with the candidates and choose a few who will later agree to an interview with a person. However, these AI programs are not yet able to vividly detect variables such as the candidate's emotions at the time of being interviewed, whether they are expressions of nervousness, anxiety or security. Perhaps at some point they will be able to. Meanwhile, the fact that emotional aspects are exempted from an interview poses a risk to the organization.

Besides, other undetectable variables for an AI such as sense of humor could be decisive for some jobs 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 of solving tasks, they would have their limitations. There are some innovative personnel selection strategies such as escape room that try to assess the skills of a person in a real situation, in which they are exposed to unforeseen events, being something that an AI could not do by using only verbal language.

In short, although the use of Artificial Intelligence carries certain risks, it in no way invalidates its usefulness in the human resources area of ​​a company or organization.

Do you want to train in the world of HR?

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