Anyone who has applied for a job in the last year knows the easiest way to get started is to toss a job description and your résumé into ChatGPT and ask the digital Shakespeare to pen three to four paragraphs with your accomplishments as its muse and then fire off the application in a matter of minutes. Not sure if TA pros would suggest that strategy, but it is definitely one that applicants have adopted since the OpenAI platform changed the game.
AI—a tool prized for tackling repetitive work and making mundane tasks easier—might actually be making one aspect of talent acquisition (TA) more difficult for pros, as the technology is making it easier for everyone—not just the qualified, but also the "hey why not" crowd—to submit applications.
According to new data from LinkedIn, which surveyed more than 22,000 consumer respondents and more than 8,000 global HR professionals in Q4 of last year, HR pros are spending more time sifting through résumés and applications. Some 22% report spending between three to five hours on the task daily, and almost three-quarters said that fewer than one-half of the reviewed applications meet all of the criteria on the job posting.
“It’s hard for everyone right now,” said LinkedIn’s own VP of global TA, Erin Scruggs. “There’s this not so virtuous cycle where applicants aren’t hearing back [and] hirers aren’t finding the right quality.”
The tools that applicants are using to fire off a volume of applications is creating a logjam at the front of the hiring process, leading to some alternative strategies by TA pros to find the right talent.
She said recruiters are now turning to “passive” sourcing on LinkedIn in order to find a smaller group with potential “versus the 100,000 people” that apply. “It’s figuring out where you want your teams to spend their time, whether it’s sourcing or reviewing applicants. And so then the applicant has to do something different than just clicking the button to apply and making sure that their application goes in.”
Everyone in the process still has leg work to do. According to Scruggs, applicants should focus their efforts on roles that they’re actually qualified to apply for—for instance LinkedIn’s new tool to assess if a member is a good match based for an open role, she added. Applicants should also focus on strategic networking with connected company employees or fellow college alums who now work there.
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“It’s about understanding what you’re qualified to do, and then instead of clicking the button, it’s how you use the power of the network—that hasn’t changed—to make sure that you’re having the right conversations to become a better candidate,” she said.
A well-written cover letter isn’t enough to set one candidate apart from the thousands of others to find the gems, but TA pros can be on the lookout for the candidates that go the extra mile in today’s AI-powered world of work such as networking and brand affinity.
TA pros and recruiters also have work to do, including better pointing their own AI tools towards tackling parts of the hiring process the technology is currently best equipped for: transcribing notes from calls with hiring managers, developing interview guides, recording and transcribing candidate interviews, facilitating interview scheduling, or even writing job descriptions.
“There’s a lot of ways that we can use it where we’re not worried about bias or anything like that creeping in,” Scruggs said. “It’s solving a ton of different problems. When you talk about the needle in a haystack problem…it’s great at the passive sourcing of helping identify proactively… I don’t think we’ve necessarily cracked the nut on what does it do for applicant volume.”
This is because AI tools are fraught with concerns about candidate selection or assessment and bringing bias into the hiring process. Though, AI tools can help with passive sourcing and firm up a recruiter’s talent networks, according to Scruggs.
“There’s all these things that we’re doing that we’re using AI to be faster and smarter. It’s just not to make a yes-no decision on a candidate,” she said.