Amy Lindgren

Second Sunday Series – Editor’s Note: This is the second of 12 columns on AI and work, which will appear the second Sunday of each month, from September through August. Last month’s column provided an overview on artificial intelligence.

So hey, I’ve been getting recruited for new jobs and it feels … weird. For one thing, I’m a back-of-the-set person, despite having a weekly column with my face on it. Mine isn’t the kind of career path that usually fuels the dreams of recruiters.

Human recruiters, that is. As it turns out, if you replace the recruiter’s heart and brain with an artificial intelligence (AI) bot, I’m hot stuff. The only problem? They keep getting it wrong.

On the plus side, the pop-up emails I’ve received have been for leadership roles, which I appreciate. But leading a small career counseling firm (which I do) is quite a distance from running a multi-million dollar childhood education center, as one bot was recruiting me for.

I was puzzled at first but the pieces tumbled into place once I got out of surprised humble-brag mode (“Who, me? Take over your little ole operation that’s ten times the size of mine? Why, I’ll think about it.”) Since I knew no reasonable recruiter would spend a moment’s time on such an unlikely match, AI quickly became my prime suspect.

There were other signs as well. For example, the emails describe skills and expertise I actually have — but since I’m not applying for jobs (and thus, putting my information into online databases), the sender must have scraped my LinkedIn account or company website. Again, something a time-pressed human isn’t likely to do when easier options exist.

The emails include the employer name and job title, as well as links for “Full Job Details.” Of course I haven’t clicked the links. But I did go to the company web sites and sure enough, the job postings were real.

I could assume these outreaches, and links, are part of a scam but to my trained nose, they have the whiff of fishing, not phishing. The firms on the varied letterheads either have a recruiting contract with the hiring companies or they’re playing both ends of the equation, hoping to present candidates so they can snatch a placement fee away from other un-signed recruiting firms.

Being allergic to conversing with bots for things I don’t want, I may never uncover the full truth behind these alluring opportunities. But they did pique my curiosity to learn more about how AI might be infiltrating hiring processes. Here are a few of the things I’ve found.

AI is not ATS: Applicant tracking systems (ATS) have been with us for decades, and they all work about the same: Following pre-sets from the end-user (the recruiter, for example), they sort incoming applications and résumés, seeking matches before presenting the specified number of “winners” for further consideration. The software may also send automated notes to candidates, informing them of their status.

As smart as it might seem, ATS software doesn’t act like AI by generating new outreaches or writing new documents. That’s not to say that AI-enhanced ATS doesn’t exist, or that it won’t be in full use soon. But if it’s not part of an organization’s legacy software, the cost for upgrades may be prohibitive.

AI is already conducting interviews: Uh-oh. It’s hard enough to compete for a job, but now you can’t win over the interviewer with your gorgeous smile? For that matter, does that bot care if your hair is even combed?

Bots won’t care about your appearance, but humans will. At this stage, the AI component of interviews seems to be limited to semi-interactive conversations which AI conducts, then assesses and ranks for review by recruiters. How much recruiters use those rankings likely depends on the work itself.

AI-enhanced hiring could benefit job seekers: For example, hiring practices could be more fair if initial “interviewers” were blind to all but the facts. But things could also go south if bots can’t interpret someone’s accent.

Likewise, AI could improve the selection process by applying large dataset learning to candidate résumés to allow more in-depth interpretation of experiences not clearly spelled out. This could even the playing field for candidates who are great workers, but poor résumé writers.

And of course, predictive analysis could be deployed, letting the bots “discover” potentially powerful candidates whose backgrounds would have been overlooked by human recruiters — or by the candidates themselves. Hmm. Maybe I dismissed that childcare program too quickly?

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Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com.