Ryan Bridgman, regional director, UK and Ireland at Jobrapido
Some of you may be familiar with a quote from the writer Dr Samuel Johnson ‘Change is not made without inconveniences, even from worse to better’. Certainly, throughout history, with the dawn of each Industrial Revolution, many workers and bosses alike will have nodded their head in agreement. After all change can be unsettling and there can be a resistance to any development which poses a threat to one’s job and livelihood. Yet, if you look back at all the Industrial Revolutions, it has always paved the way for more net jobs and more efficient working processes.
We’re now fully embedded in the Fourth Industrial Revolution – which is largely about the rise of smart technology and automation and connectivity – it’s a period where in some quarters there has been apocalyptic talk about the robots coming to get our jobs, even though conversely such developments are creating an abundant stream of jobs and ticketed with high salaries.
As technology developments gather pace, the workplace landscape looks set for further change.
Recently there’s been talk that we are actually leaving the Fourth and making way for the Fifth Industrial Revolution – which has been described as the rise of artificial intelligence.
The Fifth will be about the integration and the partnership (as this is how I think we should approach it) of AI and human intelligence. It’s about understanding and not fearing the unique attributes AI has such as non-bias, accuracy and data so that recruiters and employers can make even better and informed decisions for their organisations.
The Fifth Industrial Revolution will actually place MORE weight on the importance of human intelligence than ever before and how these unique human traits, when harnessed in tandem with the accuracy of AI lead to greater outcomes.
We are already seeing the advantages of this partnership – AI allows recruiters the ability to capture far better profile matches when they are seeking the right candidate. The war on talent isn’t going away and AI supports the challenges the industry has been facing for a while. Plus, it means recruiters will have more time freed up from the manual aspects of their job.
One of the core advantages is that AI provides and acts upon rich data insights. This can only be a huge benefit for recruiters in terms of getting across the right messages which will resonate with candidates and create better engagement between them, in an age where the industry needs to provide a compelling candidate experience and, as far as possible, a personalised ‘journey’ for their job search and ongoing career. That is a big focus for us, at Jobrapido, where we put the jobseeker at the centre of what we do.
To give you an idea of how this is working in practice, we recently partnered with a national recruiter of healthcare workers – where there are significant skills shortages in the UK. By using Smart Intuition Technology to identify skilled Healthcare Workers within both its internal communities and the wider internet as a whole with the result being that a much higher range of qualified healthcare workers have been made aware of the recruiters’ opportunities and have consequently applied for the roles. This has enabled the recruiter to significantly increase its volume of hires and gain a competitive edge.
With all the talk about AI, it might seem slightly ironic to stress the increasing importance of human intelligence in the industry. Recruiter and human resources teams have a fundamentally important role to fulfil and a pivotal role in how organisations can perform: released from the bulk of daily administration, they will finally be able to fine-tune and meet the talent requirements to ensure their organisations can meet the own goals in terms of growth and productivity.
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