With recent advances, artificial intelligence has come of age as a powerful tool that is set to revolutionise every industry. The HR sector is no different, and there are diverse use cases for AI in streamlining business and recruitment processes, reducing error and increasing efficiency.
This is likely to be disruptive, as the landscape for employers and employees is expected to change dramatically. The first signs of this are already appearing. Last month, for example, telecoms giant BT announced it would be shedding 55,000 jobs by the end of the decade – some 40% of its workforce – with a fifth of the cuts coming from customer service, as AI replaces those roles.
What Is AI Good At?
AI is particularly well-suited to processing very large amounts of information quickly and efficiently, parsing it to uncover patterns, trends, and insights that humans are poorly equipped to spot. Additionally, AI can perform repetitive tasks with a high degree of accuracy and consistency, making it ideal for automation and optimisation.
AI algorithms can learn from their source data and improve their performance over time, allowing them to evolve predictive models and personalised recommendations. Furthermore, advances in natural language processing, image recognition and problem-solving are making AI a valuable tool in fields such as healthcare, finance, customer service, scientific research and, as the BT case study demonstrates, customer service.
How AI Will Change HR
AI has already proven to be an incredibly versatile set of technologies with almost unlimited use cases. Many of the ways in which it will change the face of employment cannot be anticipated, but some of the broad themes are already emerging.
Recruitment
The recruitment process can involve crunching a very large amount of data, especially for popular and low-skilled positions – something AI excels at, and which is tedious and time-consuming for humans.
The initial stages of recruiting are particularly well-suited to being handled by AI: screening resumes, scoring them and selecting the most suitable candidates; contacting potential employees; scheduling initial interviews (which may be a basic check by an AI chatbot to assess relevant skills and experience), and so on. Given the widespread problem of candidates lying on their CVs, there will likely be a role for AI in fact-checking applications and discarding those where skills are exaggerated or falsified. On the employee side, AI is already increasingly being used by candidates to create CVs, cover letters and personal websites quickly and accurately.
A more interesting and exciting use case is for AI to match candidates to jobs, searching through CVs on file to find patterns in people’s capabilities, to put them forward for roles they might never have expected to be offered.
Onboarding
Once an employee has been offered a job, a significant investment of time and effort is typically required to onboard them – familiarising them with the business, people, processes, and the nature of the work expected of them.
This is often carried out by other employees, taking them away from their main work. AI-powered chatbots can reduce the burden on the organisation and individuals by providing accurate answers to common questions, supplying relevant training materials, and setting up new hires with the accounts and information they need. This not only helps HR teams to automate such repetitive tasks, but ensures that everyone receives the same consistent and effective treatment when they join the organisation.
Professional Development
AI thrives on having access to large volumes of reliable data. The more information that can be provided, the better, more useful, and more granular the insights it can provide.
For existing employees, AI can be used to create customised training programs to address gaps in their skills and experience, enabling them to do their current jobs more effectively, and preparing them for promotion within the organisation. It can provide a way of targeting investment in employees’ professional development. Constant feedback from ongoing training will help maximise return on the time, effort and money spent on it. AI will not only be used to establish what competencies an employee needs, and not just what to teach them, but how they learn most effectively.
Evaluation
Finally, AI can provide detailed, impartial employee evaluations by parsing a wide range of data, including sales records and customer feedback. These can be analysed by machine learning algorithms to provide useful insights and targets, and to suggest training programs to improve current performance and chances of promotion.
Chrono.tech And AI
As a company that specialises in blockchain-based human resources solutions and that has launched several crypto-powered services, Chrono.tech has access to a huge amount of data, both on- and off-chain. AI presents a huge opportunity to optimise these platforms, streamlining the user experience and providing efficiencies that were previously impossible.
For example, Chrono.tech’s decentralised freelance work platform, LaborX, has already established a partnership with SingularityNET to use AI to help match freelancers with employers. Some popular jobs can attract as many as 100 applicants, many of them unsuitable for the role, and sifting these is a time-consuming job for a recruiter. AI can check all of the freelancers’ histories and experience, and select the most qualified candidate in less than a second – removing a major source of friction and cost.
In the future, Chrono.tech will integrate further AI solutions, and the team is actively researching use cases where the greatest benefit will be gained. One area of current interest is in filtering job advertisements, preventing fraudsters from uploading scam employment opportunities – which not only put customers at risk, but must currently be removed manually.
AI offers the most significant productivity gains in a generation. Watch this space for updates about how Chrono.tech will integrate this incredible technology into its suite of blockchain products.