Did you even look at my resume, or did the machine do the mailing?

This is a response from a candidate that has prompted many controversial and interesting questions often asked in the industry.

The world we live in has dramatically changed; we are in a new era of technology and a new era of recruitment – a digital era. We are living in a world where digitisation is the norm and everything is highly automated, where human interaction is masked by emails, text messages, LinkedIn, and yes in many cases businesses are harnessing AI and automation to do their mailing.

According to Adobe’s 2018 Digital Intelligence Briefing only 15% of businesses use Artificial Intelligence (AI) today, but 31% plan to add support for it over the next 12 months. Therefore, it is on the rise, and adoption is aggressive.

We are able to search, source, identify, communicate and manage a recruitment process from behind a screen. But is this a good thing?

We have more tools and more access to skilled talent, but we are more disconnected than ever before. Our biggest struggle now is not sourcing or identifying talent, but engaging individuals, who are desensitised by the “noise” of erratic and hopeful messages from hiring managers, talent acquisition partners or recruiters. People are switching off and typical methods no longer work. But, recruiters are still using traditional methods in a new and rapidly changing world to little effect.

I have been very fortunate to live and recruit in London, Sydney and now New York; each role comes with its challenges especially when establishing a name in a new country or industry. I have utilised old school methods with the yellow pages and highlighter, mass messages and automation, all with their own successes and failures.

A number of Third Republic’s Q&A respondents have talked about how technology can’t replace recruitment because it’s fundamentally a human-centric activity. When we recently asked Ingeborg van Harten, Global Head of Talent and Engagement at Irdeto, “Do you think talent acquisition technology will replace this aspect of working person-to-person?” She provided, in my opinion, a great answer:

“A lot of people talk about tools all the time, and them being revolutionary, but whilst they might make certain tasks easier they certainly can’t replace personal contact.

This is a sentiment echoed by influencer Hung Lee, who maintains that: “recruiters won’t be trawling through databases and doing outreach but instead will be creating assets which attract people towards you and provide the opportunity to have a different conversation”. Clearly, those working in the talent acquisition industry are in agreement that technology cannot – and should not – replace the human-centric nature of recruitment.

With that in mind, where do we draw the line and define where we utilise tech or just pick up the phone? I would be really interested to hear your thoughts on the modern day recruitment process and approach.