On Wednesday 23rd May, DaXtra CCO Toby Conibear joined UK Recruiter for their Rec Tech Showdown, a live chat show ahead of the UK Recruiter Technology Showcase in June. He discussed recruitment industry trends with UK Recruiter's Louise Triance, her co-host Wayne Barclay of Barclay Jones and the other guest speaker, Darren Curtis from Volcanic.
Toby spoke about how AI and machine learning are affecting recruitment technology, while urging caution since these can often be used just as buzzwords in marketing. Here are some brief highlights from the show.
What are the differences between AI and machine learning for recruitment technology?
- Machine learning statistically analyses huge quantities of data. It learns patterns and makes predictions from that data to provide an advisory service to the recruiter - helping them to prioritise top candidates to move forward in the recruitment process.
- AI involves making decisions, for example shortlisting candidates based on skills.
Innovation comes in understanding the million different ways that candidates can describe themselves and in which a job description works, bringing these together and matching them. Also in introducing a natural language element, which looks beyond the description to the context, for example the level of a candidate's skill and experience in relation to a specific job.
Where does the technology currently stop?
It stops with the ability to sell a candidate to a company and a job to a candidate. Recruiters use skills such as their intuition to make those assessments and technology currently can't do that. Where technology can help is to go out to the ATS, CRM, job boards and social media to find and rank candidates for the recruiter to shortlist.
Are recruiters scared of automation, machine learning and AI? Is this because they don't understand the technology?
There's a lot of automation built into CRM systems already. With machine learning, it is possible to learn the wrong thing so we still need human input to stop this happening. There's a lot of hype around these words, which could be creating nervousness. DaXtra invests in and researches technology to make it easy to use for recruiters.
What's DaXtra doing to evolve its product?
DaXtra consumes a huge quantity of data, so we see changes and trends in the ways people describe themselves and their skills, which feeds into our ongoing R&D. We're always working on making our software even easier to use - enabling recruiters to use the original hiring manager job spec to search for candidates, so that the software can tell you what you should be searching for and which terms to use.
Listen to the full webcast of the Rec Tech Showdown.
To hear more about our products, come to see us at the UK Recruiter Technology Showcase on 20th June or request a demo.