The future of recruitment – can AI replace the traditional CV?

The state of play

With 1.3 million vacancies in the UK, the recruitment sector has never had such a challenging time. Post-pandemic, there has been a significant shift in people applying for roles – more people over the age of 50 have decided to take early retirement to spend time with family and Brexit has removed an entire European workforce. The result - 2 million fewer people looking for work and a scrabble by HR teams to find the best candidates in the quickest amount of time.

The challenge Antony Lee, Dee Set Group People & Retail Director, and other HR Directors face is how to minimise the time and cost spent on recruitment whilst ensuring that those recruited are correctly skilled and want to stay in the role they are recruited for.

Are CV’s now old hat?

Whilst the CV is still regarded as a true representation of candidates, at Dee Set we have turned to AI to make the recruitment process beneficial for us, and our candidates, today. Why? To ensure our recruitment process is efficient, unbiased, and exceptionally quick at securing new talent and getting them into work quick - often within 48 hours from the initial enquiry.

One of the key lessons we have learnt since the start of the pandemic is that people now apply for multiple roles at the same time – and they will accept the best role that makes them the offer the fastest. Candidates no longer have time to wait a week between interviews to see if they are suitable.  If recruiters can’t act quickly, they ultimately will have wasted time and resources on the recruitment as the candidate will have gone elsewhere before their process has been completed.

Our approach to recruitment

To make the recruitment process work in favour of the candidate - our online recruitment portal is accessible 24/7. For Stage 1 the candidates are asked three or four questions about the role they are applying for. If they are successful, they are offered a face-to-face interview for Stage 2. By using AI, our candidates are anonymised which takes away any bias, that could be conscious or unconscious bias around the application process – until we meet them in Stage 2, we have no knowledge of who they are and their employment background. We recognise that technology is not the answer to everything we do – there is an absolute need for some face-to-face contact as we still need to understand who that person is. Once a candidate has accepted a job offer after stage 2, they are sent out a contract of employment which once signed and returned means we are ready to go. Our AI process means we have slimmed down the entire recruitment process from 17 days to just 48 hours.

Recruitment with CVs puts the candidate’s communication skills and attitude at the forefront of their application and those are the skills we’re hiring for. However, this method of recruitment is only a success because comprehensive training is embedded across the entire organisation. We know that we can train the technical side of the role into the individual with the right core skills to succeed. Training is also ongoing, and we encourage self-learning through our training platform. All employees have access, and they can learn anything they want to.

Is there room for even more tech to help us hire?

Whilst future recruitment will see more technology being used, there will always be the need for human interaction within the process. Technology being trialled presently is a second stage video interview (which follows our existing first stage text-based first interviews) - helping to support the need for speed in recruitment in an environment which is flexible to the candidate - anytime, anywhere. As part of this trial we are conscious to ensure that we don’t undermine conscious bias in our recruitment process.

In conclusion, what is important is that organisations realise that the recruitment process is not just the recruitment process. It's the first step into the culture of an organisation. How you recruit someone is the start of a bigger culture of training, communication, and progress.