Tips for Talent Teams Evaluating AI Tools

AI has the potential to make hiring more efficient, increase recruiter capacity, and improve the candidate experience. Currently, Lee Harding, Director of Talent Acquisition and Talent Intelligence at Join Talent, sees companies mainly leveraging AI for efficiency and the candidate experience. Companies are looking to improve the recruiter experience by freeing up recruiters to work more efficiently. If recruiters are more efficient, candidates have a better experience as a result, hiring outcomes improve, and companies see cost savings throughout their entire hiring process. 

To see these benefits though, talent teams need to consider several things to ensure their AI adoption is impactful and that they’re not just adding another tool to their tech stack. The following tips can help you navigate the risks of AI and successfully implement it in your organization. 

Do You Really Need AI?

AI is currently the shiny object that everyone is chasing after, and it’s easy to be distracted by it when you’re trying to figure out the problems that need to be solved. Before jumping into all the AI tools out there, it’s important for companies to have a strong foundation first. According to Cory Rose, Senior Vice President of People at The Aspen Group, this is because AI won’t be able to fix foundational issues in your hiring process — it will only amplify them. 

Michael Stopps, Vice President of Talent Acquisition at The Aspen Group, also warns that adding AI can result in a “Frankenstein” tech stack. You’ll have duplicate tools, since your existing tools are likely adding new AI features that can accomplish the same things as the new AI tools you bring in. To avoid this, companies need to keep in mind the problems they’re solving and be mindful about introducing AI. 

Risks of Adding AI to the Hiring Process

There are two main risks that companies should be aware of when leveraging AI for hiring and HR: bias and data security. 

Machines can only work off the historical data that they’ve been trained on, “so if as an organization, you have been making biased decisions for a very, very long time, AI is just going to replicate that,” said Harding. “It’s only as good as the data it’s trained on in the dataset.” 

While the industry hasn’t seen issues with data security and privacy yet, Harding said that it wouldn’t be surprising if something does happen in the near future. For example, a recruiter uploading a resume with personal information to ChatGPT. Additionally, most companies haven’t decided which part of the organization owns AI, including policies on AI adoption and usage and AI infrastructure. If responsibilities and security measures aren’t clearly defined, this increases risk and can make it difficult for talent teams to adopt AI.

Finding the Right Solution in a Crowded Market 

With so many vendors claiming AI capabilities, how can talent teams make sure they choose the right and most effective technologies? Aside from making sure the tool truly solves your problem, Harding said that you should question the vendor about their AI capabilities. For example, “When you say this is AI, what part does AI actually play in this technology?” Terms like AI and machine learning often get thrown around, so you want to understand what that actually means, what datasets are being used, how the AI model is learning, and what decisions are being made by the machine versus a human. 

You also need to consider whether the end-user will actually use the technology and know what to use it for. Hiring managers may not want to use any AI in the hiring process, or they may think that AI can’t do a better job of assessing candidates than they can. Education is key here, as you’ll need to address misconceptions about AI and show how AI can actually help end-users hire faster. 

Take a Holistic Approach

As you evaluate AI tools, Rose says that it’s important to remember there’s no silver bullet. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. To find the right AI solutions and figure out the best way to incorporate AI into your hiring process, organizations should take a holistic approach that includes making sure you have a strong foundation before adding AI, confirming that AI will truly solve your problems, and ensuring that the data the AI is trained on isn’t biased. Throughout the process, ask yourself and the vendor these questions:

• How great is your foundation?
• How do the AI models learn?
• What data is the model learning from?
• What are you going to do with the data you get back from the model?
• How is the AI going to speed up, enhance, automate, or drive what you’re trying to achieve? 
• How are you going to evaluate the AI over time to ensure it’s still doing what you want it to do? 

With these tips, you’re now better equipped to successfully integrate AI tools into your hiring process. There’s still much more to be aware of though, such as working with teams like legal and procurement to evaluate vendors and educating others in your organization to confidently work with AI. To learn about these additional considerations, watch our “How to Evaluate HR Tech in the Age of AI” webinar now.