AI Provides Levers - Not A Silver Bullet - To Talent Management
By Imran Oomer, Co-Founder at inSpring
The skilled talent shortage has become the new normal in the US economy – and has spurred pockets of innovation on solving the problem. However, not every solution is created equal and some have over-leveraged the power of AI as the silver bullet to a multi-dimensional problem – posing significant risk to sustainable, outcomes-driven talent management. inSpring is at the cutting edge of skilled talent mobility and argues that a comprehensive, integrated approach balancing AI with human-centered talent curation and development leads to the durable, competitive outcomes for thriving companies.
The skilled talent shortage in the US is staggering – and it’s here to stay. In February 2023, there were 9.93 million open, unfilled jobs in the US, and the stats have been consistent for years now at those levels. The “Great Resignation” is real and is ongoing with 50 million workers quitting their jobs in 2022, and as recently as February 2023, 4+ million workers quit, and it’s edging up per Bureau of Labor Statistics trends. If you focus on technology and healthcare sectors – two foundations of the US economy – the trends are even more stark. In technology, despite some Big Tech companies recent layoffs, the cuts have largely been on the business side with development, cybersecurity and engineering jobs on the rise – especially in non tech sectors like financial services and manufacturing. In healthcare, the nursing crisis is impacting all corners of the US, with the National Council of State Boards of Nursing reporting this month that 800,000 nurses intend to leave the profession by 2027. With an aging US population, declining population growth, and declining US college enrollment, a skilled talent shortage is the new status quo.
A silver lining of the sustained talent shortage is pockets of innovation spurred across the industry to solve parts of the value chain to bridge the gap for more qualified talent to enter the workforce. Innovation and fresh systems, pipelines and perspectives are a need-to-have in the HR function that is weighed down with tremendous baggage of tech debt, legacy systems and practices that don’t allow for high quality talent management at scale.
Technology plays a significant role in the solution. Just this year, inSpring launched a 100% remote talent development program leveraging Google Classroom touching candidates across the country with real time skills enhancements in cybersecurity, data science, and development with instructors and mentors from Canada to South Africa. Without integrated technology tools at the foundation of our platform, our operations wouldn’t get off the ground, much less scale. Integrating tools into the sophisticated and complex end to end ecosystem our team has engineered to curate, prepare, polish, train and launch international talent into growth companies in the US has been the key. No one tool or solution is sufficient to look at the problem laterally – it requires vision, robust processes, bright minds, rigorous feedback loops, sharp execution, persistence – and tech.
There are other attempted solutions that are blasting the HR Tech marketplace with AI driven, “silver bullet” solutions to talent curation and management. The fundamental issue with this approach is that human capital management is multi-dimensional with data and decision-making interwoven between systems and human interactions. AI is only as powerful as its underlying dataset, creating significant gaps when applied holistically as the solution to people management at scale. I caution HR professionals on the current capabilities and risks around platforms over-reliant on an AI tool as a one stop shop for talent.
AI-Driven Resume Screening Is Flawed with Prevalent Unvalidated Data
In the Wall Street Journal Tech News Briefing, “When AI gets it wrong, who’s on the hook”, Pew Research is quoted sharing that a quarter of Americans admitted to sharing made-up facts. When speaking to hiring managers, I’m constantly reminded that resume inflation is one of the significant barriers to successful talent acquisition. An AI tool for scanning resumes for key words is only as powerful and accurate as the underlying data is measuring and without a robust set of processes, professionals and checks and balances on data integrity, it’s garbage in, garbage out.
AI Candidate Screening Tools Have Been Proven to Carry Bias
One of the angles AI talent acquisition platforms have promoted is their unbiased view on talent screening. While we aspire for future AI tools to reduce bias in talent management and DEI practices, current tools are flawed and only as unbiased as the inputs provided. In the article “Amazon scrapped sexist AI tool”, it sheds light on the challenges on over reliance on unchecked AI in talent management where 10 years of data input favored men so when an algorithm scored candidates, women were penalized.
Professional Skills Required by Hiring Managers Today Are More Complex Than AI Can Effectively Measure
In the HBR article “Where AI Can – and Can’t – Help Talent Management”, there are helpful examples of companies providing skills assessments using AI. However, on a practical level and across hundreds of hiring manager conversations our teams have had over the past year, screening for technical skills is just the start. Curating high quality talent that can launch and grow within an organization requires a much more complex combination of skills and values that AI tools haven’t achieved yet. From having a growth mindset for early career talent, along with social capital, problem solving skills, teamwork, a dynamic, multi-faceted approach to screening that leverages technology but isn’t fully dependent on today’s Artificial Intelligence it is vital for adding productive, high potential team members to one’s organization.
The developments in AI over the last 12 months are truly encouraging and leave me confident around all the ways that AI will impact talent mobility in the years ahead. A human-centered approach leveraging the best of tech will no doubt create durable, motivated and productive team members that help our organizations thrive and compete into the future.
Imran Oomer is co-founder at inSpring, a Boston-based company helping U.S. employers respond to labor shortage challenges in the nursing and tech sector nationwide.