By Ashish Mediratta
Human Resource (HR) departments in most organizations go through a constant talent-management crisis. It usually leaves most of them wondering where they are going wrong. Most HR recruiters will swear by their rulebooks of recruitment that they follow to the T. They churn through resumes and CVs, running the required numbers of interviews, tests, offering employee benefits. Signing bonuses and industry standard salary packages are all ticked off on their list. And yet, most of them are failing to attract the best available talent or keep their own best from moving out.
Most HR Tools Work In Silos
Organizations can no longer afford to be satisfied with having just an applicant tracking system and human resource information system on board. They can’t expect those systems to solely be responsible for holistic HR management. ATS and HRMS are useful tools, but they do not really identify the right talent. They may aid in processing recruitment and management activities, but they are not designed to improve diversity and inclusion by removing data that triggers biases, or know what most and least motivates a high-performing applicant to move companies.
This results simply because such systems are mostly designed to function independently, or in silos. A survey by Eightfold and Harris Interactive, the Talent Intelligence and Management Report how siloed ATS and HRIS systems are. Enterprises are finding their retention programs are ineffective; they don’t effectively keep individuals who want a new role and not a new company. Seventy-eight percent of CEOs and Chief Human Resource Officers say talent programs are important, but 56 percent say their current programs are ineffective. Fifty-seven percent of employees say diversity and inclusion initiatives aren’t working. Forty percent say their companies lack qualified diverse talent.
HR’s Complacency Can Be the Nail in The Coffin
Once they invest in an ATS or HRIS system, most organizations turn complacent. This is where the danger lies. A seasoned sales manager will agree that the sales process of a product or a service does not end with the client or customer making the complete payment; it continues with retaining the customer for future business, upselling, and getting references from them. Similarly, in HR, a recruitment journey does not end in closing the job requisition itself. It is about finding the right fit who will not only be an excellent performer, but one who will stick around and energize entire teams to excel. Having more of these advocates in the organization decides the fate of the business: whether it will survive and grow or stagnate. Yet, this does not stop talent from quitting within a short span of time for another opportunity that will enable them to grow and make the most of their potential.
Replace Siloed Apps with AI Platforms To Succeed
Business processes are changing faster than ever. Skill requirements change frequently, with the half-life of a skill now being just four years. Workers demand greater flexibility in their work arrangements, including shifting in and out of the full-time workforce, remote work, and contingent or contract work. Organizations hire for current skills matched to current needs, but these skills become obsolete quickly.
Organizations accumulate a great volume of data in their talent hunt, but that data is mostly left ignored or are not used to its potential. Through Artificial Intelligence (AI and machine learning), great insights can be gained that will help in freeing up HR departments, hiring managers, and senior management to focus on improving candidates’ and employees’ experiences.
An AI-based Talent Intelligence Platform relies on supervised and unsupervised machine learning to find the potential of each candidate. It helps companies to judge people by their capabilities, not on who they know, where they worked, or where they went to school. The AI has analyzed so many millions of data points, it knows what skills a candidate has that make them prime candidates for a job, even if they’re not in that actual job right now. AI helps companies through the whole employee lifecycle of sourcing, screening, retention, internal mobility, and succession planning. For example, regarding internal mobility, AI can help employees find internal jobs they may have never even considered, perhaps in a different department, based on their capabilities. Succession planning can identify replacements for people based on people’s capabilities, not more inequitable criteria. Screening with AI matches people based on capabilities, not based on a vague sense that someone is “passionate,” “enthusiastic,” a “go-getter,” and so on.
Conclusion
Recruitment and selection process is a complex one. Instead of scurrying through resumes and CVs in ATS and HRIS systems, machine learning and AI algorithms can find candidates with the right capabilities. AI Talent Intelligence Platforms offer HR, hiring managers, and senior management acuity of insight, intelligence, and speed across all of talent management. This leaves HR managers able to find more top candidates, and lower the cost of hire, all while removing bias from hiring decisions.
(The author is Vice President and Principal, Talent Transformation, Eightfold India and the views expressed in the article are his own)
