I caught up with my friend who’s a veteran recruiter. Our conversation led to (what else!) implications of AI for the recruiting industry. She was quite optimistic about it.
She said, when LinkedIn first came out and became prevalent, many people in her field worried recruiters would lose their jobs and be replaced by LinkedIn. But what happened was, LinkedIn became the best tool for recruiters as it made their job much easier and more efficient.
The story reminded me of Carta. The cap table management software could potentially replace some jobs at law firms. But it was the law firms that pushed using Carta to companies, as they knew managing cap tables for companies was a tedious, low-ROI job, while they wanted to focus more on high value jobs.
She also said recruiting is fundamentally a people business, with so many intangibles involved and data (e.g. resume) is only a small part of the story. I can relate to it – I’ve hired many people in the past and when you have 3 similar looking resumes, there’s no way you can make a decision unless you meet them (ideally in person) and feel “the vibe”. Maybe in the future AI might be able to pick up the vibe and other intangible signals as well, but not today.
Talking with her helped me get a little more positive outlook (at least for the short term) about AI developments, where business will remain a human centric activity and AI will augment humans’ capabilities as a very efficient tool. That’s the kind of future we all want!