The improvement of recruiting processes is playing an increasingly important role, as finding suitable employees is becoming more and more difficult - simply placing job advertisements is no longer enough in most cases. "Companies are facing major challenges when it comes to filling IT positions in particular. Due to digitalization, companies in all sectors now need IT specialists," says Christian Rampelt, founder and Managing Director of dfind.com. According to a study by Bitkom, the industry association for the German information and telecommunications sector, there were around 82,000 vacancies for IT specialists that companies were unable to fill in 2018 - and the trend is still rising.

Bots more effective than recruiters
Recruiters expect one thing above all else from the use of AI in recruitment: lower costs, higher speed and better quality. There are currently two areas of application for artificial intelligence in recruitment.

On the one hand, there are algorithms that take over the matching process. Whereas the search or pre-selection used to take a lot of time because HR managers or external service providers had to read every single application thoroughly, bots now take over the initial screening. AI-based search algorithms compare the company's requirements with the candidates' qualifications.

Christian Rampelt © dfind.com

"For example, we use bots that scan over 50 networks and AI-based talent pools with more than 500 million candidate profiles every day. A human could not cope with analyzing such a large amount of data," explains Rampelt. Another advantage is that bots, fed with the right information, are not guided by subjective feelings, but filter applicants based on hard skills. Intelligent applications are able to make a pre-selection within a very short time, making the entire search process more efficient.

The second area of application comes later in the recruiting process: There are already software solutions that analyze applicants in detail using videos and audio recordings in order to identify any strengths and weaknesses.

Sensitivity required
However, artificial intelligence is not the solution to all problems. As with almost all technical innovations, not everything works perfectly. Recently, for example, a leading online mail order company made headlines because its recruiting software searched for specific keywords that discriminated against female applicants.

"Algorithms develop themselves further through machine learning, but they need a very large amount of data to help them improve. However, if the data set disadvantages a certain group of people from the outset, the algorithm will reflect this. This means that if the algorithm learns the wrong thing, objectivity is lost," explains the Managing Director. For this reason, there are a number of things to consider before implementation - not only should experienced experts be on hand to provide advice and support during implementation, but results should also be critically scrutinized if anomalies are identified.

Profitable combination of man and machine
Anyone who fears that robots will soon be making all personnel decisions, conducting job interviews and that humans will no longer play a role is mistaken. "When filling vacant positions, it is not only the professional qualifications that play a decisive role, but the personality of the candidate must also fit in with the company looking for them. Ultimately, people have to work together in a team and achieve the best possible results, even in difficult situations," says Rampelt. For this reason, it is important to rely on a combination of man and machine. The time that HR managers gain can be invested in other tasks, as it is important to retain skilled workers once they have been found so that the search does not start again in six months' time. as