The Right Time for HR Pioneers – How Artificial Intelligence supports Talent Acquisition

Last month Dr. Florian Dreifus, COO at SAP SuccessFactors Middle and Eastern Europe, joined Textkernel’s European Sales Manager, Stephan Menge, to present a webinar about Artificial Intelligence in Human Resource for the Summer Edition of Community Boost for HR Pioneers. Here we explain a bit about how AI supports talent acquisition and how Textkernel adapts AI to its services.

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been around for more than 70 years, but more current hype has been given to machine learning (a part of AI), which is the ability to learn without being programmed. Deep learning emerged 20 years ago as part of machine learning and what makes it different is the machines’ extraordinary processing power. It can inexpensively collect data, detect patterns and make predictions to get the most value out of that data. How AI supports talent acquisition is through its ability to process hundreds of millions of CV’s and/or resumes, and crawl as many job ads more efficiently by focusing on quality tasks.

“When we come to HR, we’re looking at the employee lifecycle – let’s say ‘moments that matter’ in this employee lifecycle,” explained Dr. Florian Dreifus, COO at SAP SuccessFactors Middle and Eastern Europe (a Textkernel partner).

“Where are the specific challenges, where are there use cases where it makes sense to apply – in most cases it’s machine learning, it’s deep learning – data-driven approaches to make or improve these moments that matter.” 

Where AI fits into the Hire-to-Retire Lifecycle

HR professionals will recognize these moments along the hire-to-retire lifecycle as the following experiences: recruiting, onboarding, learning, employee, performance, compensation, payroll, administration, and off-boarding. Wherever there are opportunities to improve the employee experience, there’s also the opportunity to increase efficiency, productivity, and engagement.

Dealing with the “H” of HR

While AI adds a lot of value to this lifecycle, the “human” part of HR must remain part of the process so it’s important for HR professionals to understand that the data underlying decisions is only one part of this process.

HR Pioneer: how Textkernel uses AI

Textkernel uses AI to support its customers and their recruiters or talent developers – not to replace them. The three principles embraced by Textkernel are underscored by human involvement to help people improve their careers and lives, to deliver innovations that remain relevant to Textkernel’s customers and partners, and to continuously improve quality, which is a process where people, data, and technology meet.

In 2020 Textkernel processed more than 835 million CV’s and resumes and crawled 350 million job ads. It would be futile to try and do this without an AI solution and while Textkernel has successfully implemented AI to accomplish its business goals, the company is also cautious about overusing AI.

How to Harness AI’s Potential

We are currently in the deep learning phase and if we peer into the future, Menge suggested two, five, or even 10 years, we can’t predict what will happen with AI. The possibilities to automate actions already exist; what can potentially be automated is yet to be realized. First though, businesses should ask themselves how they would like to be perceived by society. In Textkernel’s opinion, it should always be humans making recruiting decisions. 

“We should see support from AI in a more holistic approach,” Menge said.

How AI is a solution for good

Within SAP SuccessFactors, Textkernel works with talent pools of applicants to automatically rank and shortlist them. So that – depending on the high number of applications – recruiters and talent developers can focus on quality applicants and not lose good candidates at the same time. Maybe there’s a candidate who’s not ranked high for one job but may be a much better fit for another one. That’s where AI can help: in matching this candidate to a different job, or matching an existing employee to another job offer within the organization.

AI is much more than hype, it’s a practical approach to efficiently capture, process, and extract value out of massive amounts of data. This has proven to be an invaluable solution to HR, which is tasked with acquiring talent with an exactitude that would be nearly impossible without AI. HR pioneer Textkernel is both leading the way in supporting talent acquisition using AI and helping us to understand the risks so that we can make informed decisions about AI and how we want to use it.

AI is here and it’s already available in SAP SuccessFactors. To learn more about how Textkernel accelerates talent management in SAP SuccessFactors, read this.

Keen to discuss how AI-enabled technology can help your organization?