Bots, AI to fine tune hiring tech

Ketan Dewan

A lot has changed in India & the world in the last few months — Demonetisation, US Elections and BREXIT. The signal seems very clear — the US & UK are promoting protectionism, while India is raring to open its gates to be a true open economy. 

Owing to the global scenario, India will not only continue to attract reverse brain drain but also will be a hot destination for global talent. As they say — If you can work in India; you can adapt yourself to work anywhere; so, Indians will definitely have an upper hand on that count — perseverance and can-do attitude are a key criterion in making hiring decisions. 

On the other side, expatriate talent will bring along the most innovative technologies and understanding of processes that is critical for the fast growth that the country is experiencing. Job seekers and employers, need to positively ride on some of these mega-trends that the job scenario might have started experiencing already.

The Mega-trends are an outcome of various macro-economic factors, global/domestic shifts, challenges experienced by job seekers — associated issues faced by employers and innovative technologies impacting lives of both. 

The 10 Indian job ecosystem mega trends 2017 

that will shape how job-seekers & employers will find each other with ease and speed include: 

Bots, Interactive Voice Response (IVR)& non-real time messaging to shape conversations between job-seekers & employers: Conversations with their respective bots, IVR; during-the interview process will make for effective recruitment decisions. Currently, as candidates are more on mobile devices than on desktop/email, so it takes employers 8-10 calls to reach one candidate hence time to hire & cost per hire gets impacted.

Candidate experience will decide who will be ‘employer of choice’: Employers who deliver on equality and respect the time of job-seekers in the interview process will stand to gain while lip service on candidate experience will be condemned on social channels. Currently, either there are no candidates on a given drive or they are in large turnaround. On the other side, 1 full day and   Rs 300 of the job-seekers gets consumed and they are not sure if they will get that job or if they want to join on selection.

‘Recruitment biases' will be normalised with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning  interventions: Right candidate for the right job without recruiter biases will begin to gain importance for large volume hires owning to attrition becoming unacceptable to the CFO. Currently job-seekers need to feed into the ego of recruiters, who are mostly not qualified for or do not understand the job they are interviewing for.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be heavily deployed to match right candidate for right job: Technology driven approach to rate candidates based on their skills and knowledge will drive seamless expectation match of the employer and job-seeker. AI deployment in matching will be critical path as it's a big problem for both job-seekers and employers. While job-seekers have too many places to look for job opportunities so concentration is divided and time is multiplied and employers need to spend a lot of time in screening candidates from junk/irrelevant CVs.

Who will work where and for how long will be a very personal decision: Candidates will be selective of where they will work and for how long so working at the employer where one gets a job first will reduce dramatically. Also, desire for more cash in hand will up demand for contractual jobs.Also, passion for a given job type will drive past benefits of job stability. 

Video Analytics will enable culture match that will be core to formation of high performing teams: More thought and time will be invested by both parties before arriving at a decision to work together. Candidates want to know about their potential employers’ work environment/ culture before they apply for a position while employers do very little to market themselves as an ‘employer of choice’. 

On the other side, recruiters experience a lot of interview/offer back-outs and hence are not able to touch the sensitive chord and importance of culture, values, career path, and company vision that drives the job-seeker. 

Hence, both job-seekers and employers will want to know more about each other to arrive at a decision to engage in the interview process. 

— The writer is Co-founder & CEO: TalocityInstasolutions Private Limited