How Technology is Helping and Hurting the HR Recruitment Function

In the wake of Harver's successful raising of $8.1 M, everyone is talking about AI and its role in recruiting. The advantages of Harver are obvious: sophisticated tools measure candidates' characteristics while saving the cost of recruiter salaries spent on resume sorting. The disadvantages of Harver, and all other automated tools, however, are several. First, it's impersonal. Some recruiting firms like this; subscribing to the time=money rule, the time taken to actually talk with and interact with a candidate can be viewed as an unnecessary expense. But what is important to understand is that this impersonal quality places a burden on how this technology is used.  Some candidates will not fill out these sorts of questionnaires until they feel that the employer is serious about their candidacy. So if Harver is used too early in the recruiting cycle, these candidates may be insulted and their enthusiasm for the company's job may be lower than if they are asked to fill them out after they have developed a desire for that job. In this time of increasingly tight labor markets, candidates' enthusiasm may very well make the difference between getting and not getting a hire for a hard to fill job. So, what may be convenient for the recruiter, if used incorrectly, can negatively impact the effectiveness of recruiting. Harver is just one of many examples of this.  Additionally, there is some research that suggests that a when a candidate has a positive experience with a potential employer's recruiter, this makes them more likely to accept an offer from that company. This shows that human interaction between recruiter and candidate is influential on candidate decisions. And, of course, seasoned recruiters can get candidates to confess all sorts of things and discover inconsistencies in candidates' stories in other ways, both of which are very useful in understanding whether the candidate is a true fit with the company's job or not. Machines cannot do this, yet.  Harver sells itself as a replacement for a resume, which is interesting to consider as a possible natural progression in our ever changing world. But the Harver system falls short in that it asks nothing about the specifics of the job. Knowing that a candidate has done this or that task, and at what level of proficiency, is critical information in employee selection. However, combined with an old-fashioned behavioral interview, the candidate information gleaned from Harver creates a very powerful suite of information to guide a selection decision.  Last, effective prediction of on-the-job behavior (which is what we really are asking from the selection process) works like this: 1. You break the job and the work environment into measurable parts. 2. You create a way to measure each one of these parts and quantify the results. 3. You establish a target for how much proficiency you need in each of the parts of the job or the employee/culture relationship. 4. You measure how much a candidate has of the needed proficiency and score it on the scale you created. 5. You compare what you need to what the candidate has, part by part, and get a clear, vivid and relatively predictive score. (Example: You need someone to lift 25 lbs. to their waist. You set up a scale from 5 lbs. to 45 lbs. (5 lbs., 15, lbs., 25 lbs., 35 lbs., 45 lbs.) You ask the candidate to lift various weights. Now you know what they can do and if it's enough.) A big problem with tools like Harver is that you don't know what you need. So you get all sorts of scores for your candidate, but, absent goals or targets, you don't know if what the candidate has is enough. Until you have the statistical data to establish a bone fide correlation between candidate and position, using these tools as advisory is best. Yes, they can paint a good picture of the candidate, and this information is useful to recruiters, but the results should serve to augment a process based on personal interaction and attention paid to measuring up to a set of job skill criteria and fit to company culture.  So, although the resume may be a dying vestige of a bygone era, skills still need to be measured and nothing can replace the value of human to human interaction. John John Wentworth President Wentworth Recruiting 310.732.2301 | johnwentworth@wentco.com www.wentco.com