Dare You Use AI in Your Recruitment Strategy? A Deep Dive With Beamery
For tech SME leaders, there is a tantalising question: do you dare integrate AI into your recruitment strategy?
Is it ethical? Useful? Valuable?
Richard Freeman, CEO of always possible spoke to Ben Slater Senior Vice-President of Marketing from tech challenger scale-up Beamery.
Is the buzz around AI in recruitment just BS?
Every tech SME leader knows the stakes: find the right talent or risk stagnation. Traditional recruitment methods, though tried and tested, have limitations. They might cast a wide net, but do they delve deep enough? This is where AI offers promise, sifting through the noise to unearth hidden gems of talent.
Beamery as a case study
Beamery is a company playing hard with this transformation. They say they want to unlock the potential of every human on the planet. What does that mean, and how is it grounded in a deep understanding of both tech and talent? As Ben Slater puts it, the goal is not about just optimisation; it’s about survival. In an ever-changing business world, the companies that will thrive are those that embrace a skills-based approach, looking in depth at their current capabilities while forecasting future needs.
Uncovering hidden talent pools
One key highlight from the conversation was the challenge of accessing the widest pool of candidates, not just the most obvious ones. Beamery’s tool offers insights to businesses, prompting them to think differently about where opportunities are advertised. Instead of focusing on a candidate’s current skill set, why not consider adjacent skills that indicate a propensity to learn and develop faster?
Richard Freeman posed an interesting scenario: Imagine a tech company searching for an engineer; traditional methods might focus on technical qualifications. But what if data showed that eight out of ten top-performing engineers had a background in music? Suddenly, a musical skill becomes a game-changing piece of intel.
AI-powered job design
At its core, Beamery champions a novel approach to job design. It’s about calibration sessions between the manager and the recruiter, focusing on skills. By mapping these skills to live market data and refining them based on high-performing employees’ traits, AI ensures that recruitment strategies are nimble and informed.
The ethics of AI in recruitment
AI = big ethical questions. Especially in recruitment, where biases related to class, race, and gender have to be eradicated before anything is used at scale. Beamery knows it has to get this right, and to lead others. With AI, unconscious biases associated with education and background can actually be pushed aside, placing the emphasis on skills and potential (that HR teams might not always see).
Listen to the full podcast conversation between Richard Freeman and Ben Slater on The Possibility Club for even more insights into the intersection of AI, recruitment, and the future of work.
Is the future of your company one where AI plays an integral role in recruitment?
Companies like Beamery are providing the tech.
Companies like always possible are providing the workforce strategy and holistic thinking and planning.