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Artificial Intelligence: Say Bye-Bye to Your Job?

By Joe Stubblebine, CRO Lensa.com

I’m sure by now, you’ve heard the buzz around OpenAI’s chatbot called ChatGPT, created by OpenAI LP. ChatGPT (GPT is short for Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is an AI chatbot that understands and interprets human language and provides text responses.

OpenAI LP is a nonprofit that boasts a who’s who of investors, educators, politicians, including Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, Former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), Microsoft, and others. OpenAI’s mission, according to their web site, is to “ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work—benefits all of humanity.”

What Are the Capabilities of ChatGPT?

ChatGPT understands mostly all human languages, is capable of consuming large amounts of text and producing bite-sized summaries. It can create fully functional program code in every language, as well as identify mistakes in code and repair or improve it and solve complex math queries in seconds.

It can write poems on the fly. It can build you a custom gluten-free meal plan (complete with a custom grocery list). Write a novel in French? Easy.

Depressed? ChatGPT will provide suggestions on managing your mental health.

Need a lease for a rental property located in Colorado? No problem—it will write the legal language for your lease in real time based on local and state rental and fair-housing laws.

Want to code a trading bot to take advantage of buy and sell opportunities in the stock market? Easy.

ChatGPT does all of this and much, much more—with impressive accuracy and speed—in a way that is surprisingly human-like.

Is ChatGPT a Job Killer?

As ChatGPT and other AI innovations continue to develop and mature, it surely will seriously enhance (and disrupt) many industries and has the potential to make many occupations obsolute.

Lawyers, marketers, medical professionals, financial advisors, recruiters, programmers, data analysts and creative artists are just a few of the jobs that could mostly or completely become extinct in the not-so-distant future.

Peter Weddle, CEO of TAtech, the largest professional organization for HR Technology companies, opined on this topic in his 2018 book, 2118: What Humans Will Do When Machines Take Over. Will governments have to pay people not to work? Do we tax AI robots to fund governments? Will these super-machines terminate our jobs, our careers, and the American Dream?

Remember the milk man, who used to deliver fresh milk to your doorstep?

Yep. This is our milk man moment.

AI in Recruiting, Hiring and Advertising

So, before we all lose our jobs, what are some practical ways that we can expand on the use of AI to help making sourcing, matching, hiring and retention easier?

While there already are a growing number of startups in the HR Tech space that have capitalized on the use of AI to help recruiters source, pre-screen, communicate with and hire talent (one that comes to mind is Paradox, run by my good friend Aaron Matos), HR Tech tends to trend behind the curve, and adoption is still low in our space.

Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman were chatting the other day on their most recent Chad and Cheese podcast about some practical applications in recruiting & hiring, and I thought it be might be fun to expand on some of their thinking. Below are a few practical ways that we can begin to harness this powerful technology today:1

Search, match, and communicate with your candidates more effectively:

AI can be used to help with finding candidates for jobs in several ways. For example, AI can be used to:

Analyze job listings and identify the key skills and requirements that are needed: AI algorithms can be trained to analyze job listings and identify the key skills and requirements that are necessary for a successful candidate. This can include things like specific technical skills, years of experience, educational background, and other qualifications. By understanding the requirements of a job, AI can help identify candidates who are a good fit.

Search through resumes and find candidates who match the requirements of a job: This can be done by analyzing the content of resumes, looking for keywords and phrases that match the requirements of the job, and ranking candidates based on their relevance.

Provide suggestions for reaching out to potential candidates: AI algorithms can be trained to provide suggestions for reaching out to potential candidates. This can include things like personalized messages, potential talking points, and other strategies for engaging with potential candidates and encouraging them to apply

Increase your engagement and applicant volume on job postings:

AI can be used to help increase applications to open jobs in several ways:

Analyze job listings and make them more appealing to potential candidates: AI algorithms can be trained to analyze job listings and identify areas where they could be made more appealing to potential candidates. This can include things like highlighting the benefits of the job, explaining the company culture, and providing detailed information about the responsibilities and requirements of the job.

Target job ads to the right audience: AI algorithms can be used to target job ads to the right audience. This can be done by analyzing the requirements of a job and identifying potential candidates who are a good fit, and then targeting the job ad to those candidates through channels like social media, job boards, and other platforms.

Provide suggestions for improving the application process: AI algorithms can be trained to provide suggestions for improving the application process. This can include things like making the application form shorter and easier to complete, providing clear instructions for submitting an application, and offering support for candidates who have questions or need assistance.

Improve your sourcing, interviewing and hiring practices:

Sourcing: AI can be used to help identify and select potential candidates for open positions at an organization. For example, an AI system could analyze a large pool of resumes and application materials, using natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to identify those that are most relevant and qualified for a specific job. This can help to reduce the time and effort required to manually review and evaluate each candidate.

Interviewing: AI can also be used to assist with the interviewing process. For example, an AI system could be used to conduct initial screening interviews with candidates, using natural language processing to analyze their responses and identify those who are most likely to be a good fit for the organization. This could potentially help to reduce the number of in-person interviews that are needed.

Hiring: Once a pool of qualified candidates has been identified, AI can be used to help make the final hiring decision. For example, an AI system could be trained on a large dataset of successful and unsuccessful hires, and it could use machine learning algorithms to identify patterns and characteristics that are associated with success in a particular job.

Avoid the Naysayers and Open Your Eyes

While I’ve mostly focused on the benefits for employers in this article, AI will offer incredible benefits for jobseekers (for those jobs that survive) as well. A few examples include identifying skills gaps and helping eliminate those gaps, critiquing and rewriting their resume, career coaching, and salary negotiations.

However, I’ve talked with a few folks in the HR Tech space recently and I’m surprised at the resistance and skepticism some people have about AI and its impact on our industry—or the complete lack of understanding of how monumental this is for all of us--even with the release of ChatGPT.

Does all this sound like science fiction to you?

Every idea above was 100% ideated and written by ChatGPT.

Think again.

Author note: I asked ChatGPT questions on how AI can help in HR Tech, and 100% of the responses were cut and pasted into this article without any alteration, truncation or changes whatsoever by me.