Cheating or calculator: How talent and people leaders view AI recruiting tools today

4 mins, 15 secs read time

It’s been over a year since artificial intelligence (AI) became widely available to the public and disrupted the world of work, especially when it comes to talent acquisition (TA). If you’ve been wondering how to evaluate the hundreds of AI recruiting tools on the market, what should be your first steps to get started with AI or whether it’s even possible to use AI in a way that’s strategic, thoughtful and equitable (spoiler: yes, but it’s complicated), you’re not alone.

Greenhouse recently partnered with BrightHire to discuss these topics (and many more). During a webinar titled “AI in TA: Most valuable use cases 1 year later,” Teddy Chestnut, Co-founder of BrightHire, moderated a discussion between Lynne Oldham, Chief People Officer at Stash, Mendy Slaton, People and Talent Operations Leader at Lattice and Ariana Moon, Vice President of Talent Planning and Acquisition at Greenhouse. We’ll cover a few highlights below, or you can tune in to the on-demand recording for the full conversation.

AI in practice: Panelists share their favorite use cases

One of the biggest questions when it comes to AI in hiring is: How do you actually use it? Here are the panelists’ favorite practical use cases:

• Filtering candidates through smart searches: At Greenhouse, the recruiting team relies on smart searches (available within Greenhouse Recruiting) to better filter and conduct app reviews by keywords and key skills. “This is a game-changer because there are so many inbound applications right now,” said Ariana.

• Creating interview insights and summaries: Ariana also cited using BrightHire’s Interview Assistant to provide interview summaries and highlights.

• Generating action items from meetings: Mendy said Lattice built a recap wizard that pulls transcripts from Zoom and creates summaries with lists of next steps and the people who are responsible.

• Editing and simplifying complex documents: While there are many tools that can do this, Mendy said they’ve created a custom bot at Lattice that will take lengthy documents like project plans, roadmaps, playbooks or internal communication and format themso they are concise and skimmable.

• Mapping out organizational efficiency: Lynne said she’s currently evaluating tools that will allow her to look at the organization as a whole, see which skills are necessary and create better reskilling and career pathing based on what she learns.
  

Is AI cheating – or like using a calculator?

TA leaders are clearly finding ways they feel comfortable using AI recruiting tools to work smarter, not harder. But what do they believe is acceptable when it comes to candidates?

Lynne’s answer? It depends: “If a candidate is using AI in a way that obscures or enhances their abilities beyond a skill set they actually have, that’s probably cheating. But if they’re using it to prep, to learn more about the company, that’s more like a calculator.”

You want the candidate to bring their unique perspective and experience and showcase those during the hiring process. You don’t want AI to be what you’re hearing from.
– Lynne Oldham, Chief People Officer, Stash

Mendy shared a similar sentiment: “I can imagine 20 years ago people would say the internet was cheating because you didn’t have to go to the library and check out a book.” However, she added that we’ll have to get smarter on the interviewing side to make sure we’re truly testing what people are capable of and if it’s a good, mutual fit.

Ariana said the Greenhouse TA team has created detailed guidelines on the use of AI in our interviewing process, which include the idea that we want to know “the authentic, not artificial you.” Ariana also made a distinction between using AI recruiting tools to prepare vs. perform. While candidates are invited to use whatever tools they’d like to prepare for an interview, the expectation is that when it comes time to perform, they will use the opportunity to showcase their own skills.

We design our interview processes to get to know the candidate’s own intelligence, skills and experience, because we’re most interested in their independent ability to think and perform in real-world settings and how that applies to the job we’re trying to hire them for.
– Ariana Moon, VP Talent Planning and Acquisition, Greenhouse

If you’ve been on the fence about trying out AI recruiting tools, you’re not alone. You may have heard of FOMO (the fear of missing out), but Mendy mentioned that many people are experiencing FOJI (the fear of jumping in). At Lattice, they’ve tried to overcome this by creating one-minute video tutorials about universal use cases. Starting a cross-functional AI committee can also help identify safe ways to experiment with AI in your company. You might not be ready to fully jump in, but these are a few ways you can begin to test the water.

Tune in to the on-demand webinar to hear more from the panelists, including their advice for assessing new AI recruiting tools, achieving organization-wide adoption and engagement and navigating ethical concerns.

Watch now