July 12, 2024 – More than 75 percent of CEOs predict that AI will transform their companies in the next 36 months, meaning the structure of organizations and their future talent needs will face massive upheaval.
In addition, the overarching question is: What changes will recruiters and talent acquisition leaders face when AI is fully integrated into talent acquisition?
Drew Seaman, managing director of Hunt Scanlon Ventures, turned to Katrina Cheverton, managing director of the Savannah Group, a London-based executive search and leadership consulting firm, with this puzzling question.
AI is changing the talent equation
Ms. Cheverton and her partners were early adopters of AI. Several years ago, they began developing an AI-powered talent discovery and analytics platform called MapX.
Given the vast amount of data that talent professionals must sift through, improving process efficiency allows more high-quality work to be done. “We’ve found that executive acquisition results can be improved by applying data-driven insights into candidate pools and trends,” said Ms. Cheverton.
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The idea behind the customized technology, says Cheverton, “was to increase the speed and effectiveness of the talent acquisition process.” Developed by leadership experts, data scientists and engineers, the MapX tools are designed to enable the identification of high-quality, hard-to-find candidate groups at the touch of a button.
needle in a haystack
Ms Cheverton describes MapX as “revolutionary” because it aims to find “needles in a haystack” that are significantly more skilled and diverse. MapX uses natural language processing and machine learning to categorize information and understand seniority, function and diversity.
The human side of AI in the workplace
AI, including generative AI, will automate tasks performed by humans today. This will give us the opportunity to focus on strategic and creative tasks that only humans can perform—tasks that require intuition, experience, empathy, and other traits that even the “smartest” people will continue to lack. While AI is indeed changing the way businesses operate, the core of the organization will continue to be people—and managing them will still be more important than managing the technology, says a recent report from Korn Ferry.
According to the Korn Ferry report, AI in the workplace is experiencing rapid growth due to the meteoric rise of generative AI. Thanks to the widespread availability of easy-to-use tools, rich data and sophisticated algorithms, computers are doing more work in real time, freeing up humans to spend their time on more demanding tasks. “The combination of these factors means that at the heart of almost every modern enterprise in the future will be an AI factory, a construct of networks and algorithms that will power much of the work we do,” said Vinay Menon, Korn Ferry Senior Client Partner and Global Lead, AI Practice.
“Recruitment, like other professional services categories, has been done fundamentally the same way for over 60 years,” Seaman said. By using the latest technology, he noted, HR leaders can look at talent from a new perspective.
“AI offers a huge opportunity for executive search and talent consulting more broadly to be more consistent, valuable and flexible in addressing leadership and skills gaps,” agreed Ms Cheverton.
Enabling high-quality expertise
“While generative AI continues to generate excitement across the human capital industry, it is important to remember that it is not a tool to replace humans,” Seaman said, but rather to free experts from the time-intensive work of data processing.
“Ultimately, AI will free up recruiters and researchers’ time to do the valuable work of targeting and evaluating candidates,” says Alex Martin, managing partner at Savannah Group, who leads talent analytics for the company.
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Successful use of AI will make it possible to find and retain the perfect talent in the ongoing war for talent. “Used correctly, companies will be the big beneficiaries of AI’s predictive talent analytics capabilities,” he said.
“By analyzing historical data and trends, talent managers can better anticipate future hiring needs and proactively seek out candidates with the right skills and expertise,” Martin said. “This strategic approach not only streamlines future search processes, but also ensures that companies are well positioned to meet evolving business needs,” he noted.
Reprinted with permission from ExitUp!
Contribution by Scott A. Scanlon, Co-CEO, and Drew Seaman, Managing Director – Hunt Scanlon Ventures
