When and for what purposes do you use AI?
Let’s start at the beginning. When do you use AI? You can use AI for complex questions or problems. To get the most complete answer, you provide a well-crafted “prompt.” A prompt can be described as the input for your data. It’s important that this input is as complete and specific as possible. Background information about the question is also crucial. AI generates an answer based on the data it receives. At first use, almost everyone is amazed: “Wow, this is unbelievable!”
When you delve into using this intelligent technology, you’ll likely also realize that AI isn’t the solution to everything. Can AI, for example, replace the work of recruiters? We asked ChatGPT itself:
“As an AI language model, I can confirm that AI technologies, such as advanced automation and machine learning, can enhance and simplify certain aspects of the recruitment process. However, fully replacing a human recruiter is not realistic at this time.”
Luckily! ChatGPT agrees with us, and linguistically, there’s still room for improvement. Let’s now dive into the “why.”
1. AI does not offer emotional intelligence
This is perhaps the most important reason in the recruitment field. AI is intelligent, but emotional intelligence is foreign to it. In other words, AI cannot empathize with people or adapt to situations.
AI can draft a job posting or an email, describe the ideal candidate, but it can never perceive what is so crucial in recruitment: the human aspect. Someone with outstanding skills might have written a less-than-stellar application. The reason could be that they don’t know how to sell themselves, aren’t strong with language, or perhaps personal circumstances play a role. As a recruiter, you can read through that effortlessly. Just starting out in recruitment? You will develop this skill more and more over time. Humans have the ability to develop skills—AI does not.
2. AI lacks creativity
AI works with inputted data—that is, the data we humans provide. The creative aspect inherent to the human brain is not built into AI. This means no new ideas or wild bursts of creativity emerge from AI-driven brainstorming.
That’s a bit of an oversimplification, because something that’s entirely new to you may already have been conceived by someone else. So AI can certainly assist in brainstorming sessions, but true out-of-the-box thinking? That’s better left to a team of recruiters, who consider multiple factors beyond just existing data.
3. AI cannot function without human input
Not entirely insignificant: AI cannot operate without us. AI is data-driven and guided by humans. It will never start your laptop in the morning, prioritize which tasks are on today’s agenda, or consider that the candidate from four weeks ago might be a fit for the position you received yesterday.
4. Increased productivity and better technology have never resulted in less work
This is not the first time we’ve increased our productivity. Today, corn is harvested with large tractors and machines, whereas in the past, farmers worked the fields by hand. And did the arrival of the typewriter, desktop, and laptop mean that office work disappeared? On the contrary. All of this technology has only led to higher productivity. We can do more, faster, and better.
The workforce keeps growing. CBS maps the Dutch workforce over the years, while Randstad, in their annual Employer Branding Research, shows the development of the global workforce. We are more numerous than ever! And this growth still has plenty of room to continue. So: let’s embrace technology instead of seeing it as a threat.
5. AI does not possess personal competencies
AI can do a lot, but it does not possess specific soft skills or competencies. Let’s go back to basics: look at your team—your colleagues around you. There’s a small chance that you all share the same competencies or excel at the same tasks. Fortunately, that’s not the case, because it means everyone has their own specializations and responsibilities. With those competencies, you flawlessly manage the process and find the right candidate.
And matching that candidate remains human work. You know exactly which competencies are needed to ensure a perfect match—just a bit more of this or a bit less of that. Something AI cannot achieve without you. That doesn’t mean you have to do it entirely on your own. By combining the human factor with the right technology and tools, you get the best of both worlds. This way, you get even closer to that perfect match. Curious? See what the AI-driven platform from Recrout can do for you.
At Randstad, they took the experiment quite literally. You can watch the experiment—with a little wink—in the video below.
