On the 23rd March it will have been 2 years since Boris Johnson ushered UK knowledge workers into a new era of doing businesses when he asked the UK public to stay home to ‘flatten the curve’. Much has changed since then, including how we recruit and onboard new staff. In July 2020 Dr Linda Kaye (a senior lecturer in CyberPsychology) wrote an interesting article about how future AI may help HR with new staff recruitment, using psychometric competency profiling, based on our online activities and purchasing behaviour.
This is a futuristic piece, with a focus on the recruitment process. Dr Kaye makes some really good points around the direction and potential positives of future recruitment using online behaviour as a psychometric tool to evaluate a candidate’s potential for the role. However, there are a number of concerns I have around using AI & Algorithms to select potential candidates:
* AI doesn’t pick up the subtle nuances that make us human.
* Big Tech have agendas and profit models that go outside of our individual and business interests
* A number of people either don’t have social media accounts or choose to not engage on social media and tend to do all their shopping locally
* Those pulling together job profiles competencies have their own set of biases around what type of person they would like in the role – and potentially reducing diversity and ability
Personally, I’m not sure I want an AI bot or the algorithms of Big Tech to skew my chances of landing my dream job. But, saying that, we do need to consider how dramatically work has shifted over the past 24 months, and how we are going to need to continually (physically and psychologically) adapt to a more tech-driven workplace and recruitment process.
