Will technology take over Talent Acquisition jobs?

A similar question has started arising in recent years in almost all industries. What is the future looking like? Will we lose our jobs if we adopt this technology? Will it reduce our pay?

Before we dive into recruitment, let's go a few years back and evaluate a few jobs that got disrupted by the introduction of technology.

Some jobs that faded away with technology

• Factory workers - monitoring machine outputs, transferring the output of one machine to another, shutting machines on and off, preparing raw materials, etc are now managed by technology instead of requiring dedicated personnel
• Data entry professionals - Copying information from one place to another for further analysis. A lot of parsers have made this process lot more accurate and fast
• Cashiers - Cash-heavy businesses used to have cashiers do the accounting and match the books with the actual cash in hand. Most of these businesses have cash counter machines and have also moved to digital payment modes that already give rich information about accounting needs.
• And more...

Now let's see if the Talent Acquisition jobs are going to be affected by the introduction of various recruitment platforms that we see today in the market.

How about the Talent Acquisition?

Recruitment is a huge industry with various domains in itself that need to be considered. We know that any Talent Acquisition specialist currently handles sourcing, stakeholder management, offer rollout, and post-offer engagement (some companies do have separate teams for each of these aspects too). Any technology that wants to replace Talent Acquisition jobs, will have to provide a solution that addresses all of the above.

Let's evaluate each of these separately and the involvement of human capital in each.

Sourcing

This is the most important task for any Talent Acquisition person. Inbound applications will only take you so far based on your employer branding but headhunting the right talent according to the hiring manager's requirements is the core skill that they bring to the table. Some aspects include -

• Evaluating previous companies' reputation, pedigree, projects, etc.
• Finding candidates with Google X-Ray search.
• Validating the number of switches from the resume or over the call.
• Coming up with strategies to attract a specific segment of applicants.
• Finding the right job portals where the relevant candidates would be hanging out.
• Organizing hiring/educational/networking events that can attract quality candidates.

Stakeholder management

• Requisition management - Preparing the right job description according to requirements, publishing to the relevant job boards, coming up with a budget that suits the company's pocket as well as caters to the candidate's expectations, etc
• Scheduling & interview evaluations - Some of these aspects can definitely be automated. In an ideal scenario - every stakeholder gets the notification at the right time of what they need to do. Select the availability slot, complete the interview, submit-feedback reminders, auto transition the candidate to the next stage, or send a rejection email. Along with this automation, we still need someone to oversee this - How to handle a lot of reschedules from either side? How to ensure the panel submits feedback on time? How to handle transitions if feedback is not a binary decision of proceed/reject?

Offer rollout

• Discussing with the finance team/directors/founders about the salary structure, figuring out the right benefits for the employee (joining bonus, ESOPs, notice period, etc) based on the negotiation, etc.
• Offer negotiation is something that definitely needs to happen by a human unless companies try giving a fixed salary for a specific designation (Unlikely to happen industry-wide anytime soon).

Post offer engagement

• To make sure a candidate joins after the offer rollout, a lot of companies are coming up with creative ways to keep the candidate excited - schedule calls with the hiring manager/co-founder, plan an in-person visit to the office, send goodies, involve them in team activities before they officially join, etc.
• Understanding the pulse of the candidate if they are really passionate about joining or looking for an offer to shop around later. If they get a sense that the candidate is going to drop off, they can start preparing for a backup candidate as soon as possible which won't be possible if no human is interacting with the candidate until they join.

As we can see from the above, almost all the tasks that Talent Acquisition performs are not completely replaceable by technology. Technology can definitely ease some aspects of it so that they don't have to repeat mundane tasks across various requisitions/applications.

Advise for Recruiters

A huge task force of entrepreneurs is behind solving inefficient processes, so if your day job just looks like repeating a particular task 100 times - it is really prone to going away anytime. Not just because of technology, but also because it is easily replaceable. If another person shows up at the desk and can do the same task in less time or cost, your management might consider replacing you. In the case of technology, it will reduce time as well as cost.

What you should do is to up-skill yourself in various aspects of recruitment that are not (easily) replaceable. To focus on these aspects, you should make yourself productive in every aspect that can be automated so that you really can focus on sourcing and strategizing your recruitment funnel.

Conclusion

The talent acquisition jobs are here to stay and will definitely need Talent Acquisition specialists to really ensure a smooth recruitment process. What technology will do is it will make sure that it provides the right tools for Talent Acquisition teams to handle the scale and experience of everyone involved in the process. If you're interested in offloading your tactical work to become more efficient, schedule a demo now.

Happy recruiting! 🎉

‍