By Peter Weddle, Founder & CEO TAtech
According to the American Psychological Association, 40 percent of workers worry about AI taking over some or all of their job. I’d wager the figure is significantly higher among recruiters.
This “AI anxiety” has been around for years, but the rapidly escalating capabilities of generative AI have pushed it to epidemic levels. It now affects employers’ buying decisions, the introduction of government regulations and even recruiters’ willingness to use the technology once it’s acquired. These impacts add friction to the sales process and disrupt user adoption, both of which hurt the business prospects of solution providers.
So, what’s to be done?
I believe AI-based TA products have to be introduced differently than products based on other technologies. I call this alternative approach a “complementary sales strategy.” It recognizes that AI solutions work best when they are effectively integrated not only with an employer’s tech stack, but with the individual recruiter-user as well.
Moreover, these two integrations are equally important to both a successful sale and customer experience. Indeed, an AI solution can be effectively integrated with the tech stack and still not achieve the improvement in KPI’s for which it was acquired if the user integration is not also effectively addressed. In the case of recruiters, this can happen in any of several ways:
- Inadequate user training
- Unremedied user resistance
- Failure to optimize user performance.
Historically, it’s been the solution provider’s job to deal with the first problem, and the employer’s job to deal with the second. The third problem, however, often goes unrecognized and therefore gets no attention even though it is frequently what drives the c-suite perception that an AI solution is not delivering the expected ROI.
The TAtech Leadership Summit on Recruitment Marketing is designed for HR/TA leaders and senior professionals at enterprise employers and their counterparts among TA solution providers. To be held at the newly renovated Le Méridien Tampa, The Courthouse, the conference opens with a welcome reception on the evening of February 26 and then runs all day February 27. The agenda is still in development, but the focus will be on showcasing the latest technology and most innovative practices for moving to full-funnel recruitment marketing. Seating is limited at the conference venue, so register today to make sure you have a spot.
Optimizing User Performance
AI solutions are typically sold as a means of freeing up recruiters – eliminating their admin and process chores – so they have the time to do what they do best. But here’s the rub. If recruiters have been unable to do the things they do best because of their chores, freeing them up doesn’t mean they’ll suddenly be able to excel at their performance. The skills involved are likely to have atrophied from lack of use or even disappeared altogether.
What are we talking about here?
According to the futurist Lisa Bodell, what recruiters do best (and AI solutions can’t do at all) is the application of “power skills.” These include “curiosity, agility, resilience, nuanced feedback [or what many people call empathy], and creative problem-solving.”
Having these skills enables recruiters to make fine-grained distinctions among candidates, suss out their hidden strengths and weaknesses, and convince them to do the one thing we humans most hate to do: change – go from the devil they know, their current employer, to the devil they don’t know, a new employer and a different boss.
These skills complement the power of the AI solution and, when appropriately applied to optimize individual performance, provide the employer with the expected ROI. Ironically, when recruiters can actually do what recruiters do best, the perception of the AI solution’s value goes up. It’s in the interest of AI solution providers, therefore, to wrap power skill remediation into their solution.
This ancillary (though no less important) component of the AI solution can take any of several forms. It might be a self-paced instructional manual built into the software or a stand-alone “refresher” training program run in conjunction with user training. Whatever the approach, recruiters have to see it as an investment in them that is beneficial to them, rather than as a not-so-subtle dig at their competency by a bunch of technophiles.
Spend any time on social media these days and you’ll see AI solutions described as a human-technology partnership. While not explicitly stated, what such a relationship actually means is that the value of the solution is determined by the partnership’s ability to deliver improvements in KPIs, where the “P” in that acronym stands for the performance of the integrated whole. As with any complex system, however, when one part underperforms, the entire system does so as well. For that reason, it’s important that AI solution providers adopt a “complementary sales strategy” that offers to optimize the performance of both the recruiter and the technology.
Food for Thought,
Peter
Peter Weddle has authored or edited over two dozen books and been a columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He is the founder and CEO of TAtech: The Association for Talent Acquisition Solutions.