AI and gut feeling can go hand in hand for talent acquisition

AI will play a significant role in the future of talent acquisition in the next three years through efficiency gains, better hires, and increased predictive capabilities, one expert told HR Leader.

After giving a talk in London, Deel’s head of talent acquisition, Alan Price (pictured), held an informal poll, finding that the majority of the crowd believed AI would have a more significant role in HR and recruiting in three years.

“If you’re not riding the wave, you’re underneath it …. and I think that if we all believe that change is happening, let’s ride the wave of change and lead it … lean into it as opposed to waiting for the wave to catch you,” Price told HR Leader.

In a recent HR Leader podcast, Price spoke about the future of talent acquisition and the impact that AI will have on increasing efficiency and improving the quality of hires.

Price noted that AI has enabled significant hiring efficiencies, with Deel currently at 23 days from knowing the candidate to hiring, including a week of offer negotiation.

On a process level, AI has been used by Deel for CV review, database search, automated outbound, and for writing interview focus areas and notes.

Through the introduction of a skills change amid demands for an AI-literate workforce, recruiters are forced to adapt in the ways that they assess hiring candidates, Price said.

AI is selecting better profiles than what recruiters would have selected, allowing HR teams to interview less, reap higher hiring manager satisfaction, and increase their hiring bar, Price added.

“It’s really interesting .... when we see like large-scale deployment of AI and the real impact … there’s definitely a lot of value here,” he said.

Prediction and trusting your gut

Price noted three categories of AI for talent acquisition: assistive AI (for writing better job descriptions, interview questions, and being able to record notes), selective AI (helping with CV review and making different selections), and predictive AI (using data points to be more predictive).

Out of these three categories, Price said the real value comes from data points – for example, in obtaining a transcript from an interview recording and organising questions into situational and behavioural categories.

“I think the prediction [AI] will start to be able to categorise applications and start to say this [candidate] is likely to do a lot better than this [candidate] ... then you’ve got a ton of software tooling systems that [will begin] to be rebuilt, quite frankly,” he said.

Price noted that results depend on the prompts given to an AI agent when programming it. He said that through well-developed AI agents, candidates can be sorted according to their details, such as their country of residence, and whether they meet the minimum level of experience.

“So being able to really understand and code the bots in order to put your right prompts in, it’s factual one or zero, there’s no interpretation there. So I think that’s really critical and key to doing that,” he said.

To approach creating the right instructions for AI agents, Deel established a new team called Bot Optimisation and Lead Targeting (BOLT).

The team works on prompt engineering for AI agents, implementing the technology for CV review and training them on database search for any candidates on the system with matching hiring criteria.

Price added that this team is important for outbound and automating CRM sequencing and campaigns so that these candidates can be tracked to the organisation.

In implementing AI, Price said trust is built over time with candidates, emphasising that decisions should never be outsourced to AI.

“I firmly believe you still need to be able to trust your gut instincts. Right? Because at the end, you’re going to be working with people in that organisation,” he added.

“I can imagine an example where the data says this person is great in terms of CV and they’ve passed all of these things, and there’s a hiring recommendation of X for this person, but it only takes one instance of a bad hire coming in and [they think to themselves] ‘I should have trusted my gut’ as [it] was [merely] a recommendation.”

Deel aims to raise hiring standards by adopting the RISE approach: recruit an inspired workforce that stays and excels.

“Find the best candidates that stay motivated and provide positive contributions to the business … Because you want to have a motivated workforce that comes in not just looking for a job,” he said.