AI in Recruitment: Insights for Life Science Hiring and HR Managers

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming businesses’ operations – recruitment is no exception. AI-powered tools are changing the recruitment landscape, making it faster, more efficient and more effective. Let's take a closer look at AI and explore its uses in recruitment.  

How’s AI transforming the industry?  

Industries that require extensive data analysis, such as finance, healthcare and e-commerce, have been the ones to adopt AI most actively and swiftly in their processes. 

The healthcare industry, for example, has seen a significant increase in the use of AI in recent years to improve patient care, speed up drug development or streamline clinical trials. Similarly, the finance industry uses AI to detect fraud, reduce risk and automate processes.  

Still, some industries are using it more actively than others. It was not until the end of 2022 and early 2023 that generative AI unleashed powerful services accessible to the masses in a way that had never been possible before. 

In a matter of days, millions of users flooded ChatGPT, a generative AI developed by OpenAI to create content from user prompts in the form of a chat. Other generative AI tools have also sprouted alongside ChatGPT, generating virtual images and videos in response to simple prompts.   

Today, AI capabilities are as accessible as they’ve never been before. So, how can we leverage its full potential in recruitment? 

Ways to leverage AI capabilities in recruitment  

Implementing new tools and services can be scary – especially if you’re pioneering. Using AI in recruitment, though, is not an unorthodox move anymore. Several large companies have successfully used AI in their recruitment processes for years, paving the way for other businesses to follow. 

In the life sciences industry, where talent is in high demand, AI can help streamline recruitment processes. “There are many ways to use AI in recruiting life sciences profiles. For instance, predictive analytics algorithms can help you define the likelihood of a candidate’s success in the position, based on their previous experience, education, and skills”, says Franck Teboul, VP of International Operations Leader Life Sciences at Kelly. 

AI in recruiting has been used to improve the effectiveness and productivity of matching candidates to job offers. For instance, Kelly in Europe has been using textkernel tool to parse resumes and enable auto-matching for a few years, while our American colleagues are implementing AI similarly using textkernel and another two platforms, Arya and HireEZ. 

While AI cannot replace Hiring and HR Managers, it is not only helping reduce time-consuming tasks, such as candidate search and applicant shortlisting, but to reduce unconscious bias and increase diversity. 

Frank says, “Typically, AI can help identify life sciences candidates who may have been overlooked in the traditional recruitment process, such as those that possess transferable skills from other industries.” 

The workers’ perspective  

However, hiring and HR managers should keep in mind the perspective of the target audience of AI in recruitment: workers and candidates.  

A recent study published this year unveils that most US workers are not in favour of using AI in hiring or monitoring. According to this recent Pew Research Center survey, most respondents opposed using AI in final hiring decisions, analysing employees’ facial expressions and tracking workers’ movements on the job.  

Most importantly, two-thirds of respondents said they “would not apply for a job with an employer that uses AI to assist hiring decisions.” Yet, despite concerns about the use of AI, almost half of the respondents said AI “would be better than humans at treating all job applicants the same way.”  

The employers’ perspective 

On the other side of the recruitment process, employers have found that while AI is increasing productivity, the use of ChatGPT in writing applications creates a mismatch of expectations. 

All applications look perfect. Cover letters are immaculate with perfect syntax and great ideas. However, when employers meet candidates, expectations are misaligned – the difference between the cover letter and the interview is evident.  

Advancing towards AI in recruitment (with caution)  

Considering the ambivalence of workers’ perspectives, what can Hiring and HR Managers do? Caution is needed, without hindering advance. 

As a recent McKinsey article claims, using AI also raises questions about systemic biases, privacy, intellectual property, filtering inappropriate content and spotting inaccuracies. ChatGPT, for instance, can “hallucinate”. In other words, it responds inaccurately, where the user has no tools to get alerted and challenge the response.  

“It’s important to use AI responsibly and ethically, and always remember that it is just one tool among many that can be used in the recruitment process,” added Franck Teboul. 

Some tips for using AI in recruitment  

There is no doubt AI can optimise recruitment, but the human touch is critical for assessing social skills and whether an employee will fit into the company culture. AI cannot replace human recruiters entirely, yet. 

One could argue that AI is biased and still flawed in many ways. Yet, AI tools are only as biased as the data they are trained on. We must be transparent about the technology's use and ensure it helps reduce biases instead of perpetuating them. Yet, overreactive measures can block technology advances. 

Instead, consider creating guidance and empowering employees to explore the use of AI while managing risks. Hiring and HR managers can work closely with data scientists and software engineers to develop inclusive and fair algorithms that are accurate, fair, inclusive, private and evaluated periodically.