Perspectives of HR robots / bots in the field of staff recruitment - current realities, opinions and experience of experts

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In July 2016, the Svyaznoy electronic bot, working in the Telegram application, selected about 100 candidates from 800 for sales managers and another 20 programmer candidates, told Vedomosti the head of the Svyaznoy personnel selection and adaptation department, Marina Taran. On-line, he asked candidates 7–9 questions and conducted a primary selection, evaluating the basic competencies of applicants. The bot not only asked, but also emotionally reacted to the interlocutor's answers.

What are the prospects for the introduction of bots in the field of recruitment? The described case is an exception or a starting point for the widespread use of HR-bots? Of course, not everyone is ready for this turn. Moreover, skeptics doubt the feasibility of such an implementation.
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We talked to representatives of Russian business and asked us to express our attitude to this topic.

• What problems in HR are related to the “human factor”?

• What are the advantages of the “human factor” in the work of a recruiter?

• Is the use of robots in HR contrived? Is it possible to consider it as a "tribute to fashion"?

• What functions of a HR specialist could be performed by robots / bots?

• What new robots / bots will be able to do to recruit staff? Should we wait for a breakthrough if they are successfully implemented?

What problems in HR are related to the “human factor”?

Olga Kochergina, Head of High Technologies and Telecom Practice at the Marxman Recruiting Company:

In my opinion, the main problem in HR related to the “human factor” is the subjectivity of evaluation. Any person perceives information, whether it is a candidate’s resume or personal interview with him, through the lens of his previous positive or negative experience, value system, internal motives and goals. There is a risk that, for example, a resume of a relevant candidate may not be selected for further communication.

The second problem is large amounts of information that need to be processed in a short time. And, of course, such things as general fatigue, loss of concentration, bad mood, display of emotions - that is inherent in all people.

Nikolay Patskov, Director General, “FreshDoc.ru Document Designer”:

The human factor in HR is primarily associated with a personal attitude towards the candidate or an illiterate interpretation of the task. A candidate may not be suitable because he looks like “the very same guy” who quit, leaving a lot of headaches in 2007, or an unloved teacher of labor who taught personnel and sewing. In this case, the professional qualities of the candidate can be shifted into the background, giving way to the emotions of an HR specialist.

On the other hand, the Internet is replete with stories about programmers who were “too young” to take office. Human rights officers can be very mediocre aware of the suitability of the candidate of the planned position and look for employees is not where they should be.

Yulia Salandaeva, Director for Human Resources at Netrika IT Company:

In my experience, the main difficulties associated with the human factor in the work of an HR manager are technical. People make mistakes and typos, sometimes they don’t have time to effectively control the need for employee training, and sometimes they don’t see which employees really contribute to the success of the company and who only benefit from the work of their colleagues.

The second problem is related to the productivity of the HR manager: it is sometimes difficult for a person to impartially analyze a huge array of resumes and understand which of the applicants really makes sense to invite for an interview, especially if there are many vacancies.

Anton Nefedechev, PR Director, EFKO Group:

An HR specialist is also a person with all the weaknesses and weaknesses. Attitude towards the candidate may be polar, depending on whether one is a candidate for a seat, or twentieth. After all, HR will be interested in closing the position, and not stretching the bride for a week.

In addition, the "like / dislike" factor will also not be put off. HR is not a psychologist or a polygraph. It can be deceived, but experience in the process of work reduces the difference between HR and the lie detector.

Nadezhda Massel, Project Manager, BDO Unicon Outsourcing:

The most frequent problems associated with the “human factor” in HR are:

• initial interviews with candidates;
• data entry and documentation of personnel events.

Of course, it is possible and necessary to say that the requirements for candidates for a particular position should be formalized. But life does not always fit into the framework of formal requirements, especially in those cases when we are not dealing with mass selection. Therefore, the role of an HR specialist at this stage is very important; he must be able to get the task correctly assigned to an internal customer or agree on it, determine not only the relevance of the candidate’s knowledge and skills to the required level, but also understand how he fits into the existing corporate culture, understand what his level of customer focus is and so on.

Frankly speaking, not every HR specialist possesses the skills of a task designer, hence many errors, failures and complaints arise.

As for data entry, the problem here is not only manual labor. In Russia, HR administration is a separate direction of the HR unit and the whole art, each personnel event of an employee is accompanied by a set of documents, most often in a unified format, and the data directly affect the results of calculating his salary.

In Europe, in principle, there is no such direction, all data is entered by the calculator and HR performs the functions of resource management. From the Russian personnel specialist, analysis skills are also required, but in reality not every human resource officer possesses them.

Galina Tokareva, HR and Events Manager at Appodeal:

Modern HR-manager controls a huge number of processes, ranging from recruiting and ending exit-interview. Each of the stages of selection, adaptation, development, training, motivation, and so on involves actions that repeat with a certain periodicity and contain the same information. In large companies, such actions are automated, because a person is not always able to cope with large amounts of information and perform mechanical work quickly and on time.

For example, an HR manager forgets to answer candidates who are waiting for a final decision, does not send notifications upon expiration of a probationary period, may distract and not congratulate a colleague on his birthday or not inform the personnel department of the arrival of a new employee. A living person cannot always ensure a consistently high quality of work, his productivity depends on many factors: weather, meeting duration, family problems, health, and so on.

Tatyana Rychkova, HR Director, Point for Entrepreneurs (Otkritie Financial Group):

Often, when you have to process a large number of resumes, your eyes become blurred, and you can skip the right candidate. Usually this happens when you can not set a hard stop factor. For example, when the vacancy of a press secretary is answered with the resume of the beauty salon secretary and so on. HR's attention from searching for “the very same” candidate is strongly distracted by constant questions from candidates, like: “Has my resume arrived?”, “And when should I wait for your call?”. And a good HR answers such questions, because it understands that a person is trite. But in return, he sacrifices his time.

Therefore, it would be convenient to get a bot, which at the stage of receipt of a resume could filter them hard by a given parameter. It would not hurt a bot to answer questions about work schedules, salary levels and other working conditions, whether a resume has arrived, and so on.

Tatyana Belousova, HR-director of Comunica integrated communications agency:

Unfortunately, some recruiters allow a personal impression of a candidate to overshadow the potential skills of a potential employee. The applicant may not be lucky, and in the interview he will face incompetent HR. And he will refuse a specialist who is valuable to the company, because he does not like, say, a chin piercing. Or the fact that the candidate is engaged in the overexposure of homeless kittens. In the same way, a candidate may refuse a suitable position, looking at the fact that the HR manager came to the interview in a leopard shirt with strazikami.

Irina Zarina, CEO, CEB SHL Russia & CIS:

HR acts as a link between the company and the employee, present or future. When we talk about the unification of requirements for candidates or about the provision of standardized service and information, the individual characteristics of HR employees can play a fatal role.

Probably, no one is surprised by self-service portals, equal access to information, this goes beyond HR. But with situations of management decision making is more complicated. For example, which year we conduct research on the subject of the most popular assessment / diagnostic tool for candidates, as usual, the interview wins, as the most costly way of collecting information. From our experience, even in the presence of standard questions and criteria for evaluating the outcome depends on the interviewer's attitudes, the halo effect may work (you heard about the candidate as a professional, or he made an impression through presentation skills).

As a result, we transfer impressions from one area to another, and not always consciously. It is not surprising that several years ago in one of the studies we obtained a clear correlation between the success of employees (according to their managers) and self-presentation skills.

You can go two ways: to train and train HR employees to apply objective data, to recheck themselves, but sometimes it is easier to turn to automated solutions, especially in the situation of dropping unsuitable candidates. That is why global research often includes testing not only knowledge, but also screening for compliance with the company's culture.

What are the advantages of the "human factor" in the work of a recruiter?

Olga Kochergina, Head of High Technologies and Telecom Practice at the Marxman Recruiting Company:

The main advantage is a creative beginning, a non-standard approach, which is simply not possible to algorithmize. In addition, that very subjectivism and the manifestation of emotions also have a downside - an individual approach, humanity in communication, an exchange of energy, which, undoubtedly, are also advantages of the “human factor”.

Tatyana Zolotareva, vice president of staff at IT company Technoserv:

The so-called "human factor" is very important in the selection of personnel and the benefits of its use are many. That is why for many decades, only people who overwhelmingly have professional education in the field of human assessment (psychologists, sociologists, etc.) have been engaged in the selection and selection of personnel.

In addition, I propose to be realistic. While in the Russian market there are no robots / bots that can fully:

• manage comfortable communications of two people (a real applicant and his future manager) at the interview;
• answer all the applicant's questions, including the most “atypical” and “unexpected” (until the computer can pass the Turing test);
• to correlate the habits and / or expectations of a person with the already formed corporate culture of the future employer;
• read the true meaning "between the lines";
• to feel the inner world of the applicant (his needs, potential, etc.).

The state, in turn, does not stand aloof from the “human factor” and relatively recently, the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation approved the professional standard “Personnel Management Specialist” (order No. 691n of October 6, 2015, registered in the Ministry of Justice of Russia 19.10. 2015 №39362).

Thus, the activity of a recruiter is standardized. And this definitely means that in the coming years the profession of a recruiter will exist and, of course, will contain the "human factor".

Nikolay Patskov, "The designer of the documents FreshDoc.ru":

The advantages of the “human approach” include the ability to respond not only to the answers, but also to the behavior of the candidate, to connect professional flair, to evaluate moral qualities. In general, everything that we recorded in the "flaws". The difference is that the advantages of this approach overgrown only with proper application. When determining secondary characteristics or making a final choice.

Nadezhda Massel, BDO Unicon Outsourcing:

From the point of view of data entry, in Russia with complex HR procedures, it is also the “human factor” that allows you to correctly display data on employees with district coefficients, northern allowances, and other parameters, so that later no questions or errors in payroll calculation arise.

In addition, HR has a number of important functions that can hardly be automated. First of all, it is the role of a moderator and intermediary between management and ordinary employees, between different departments. Secondly, it is the role of the actual task director. Business no longer wants to make decisions regarding personnel based solely on sensations and personal perception; it requires more and more data to be collected about employees, their talents, and their reactions to certain events. But it is the HR manager who decides what data is needed to solve various business problems, it is he who is responsible for the interpretation of the results.

Tatyana Rychkova, a bank for entrepreneurs Point:

A bot will never understand whether a person is suitable for a team and an individual temperament leader. For some vacancies we can take people with no experience: the main thing is that they have burning eyes and a desire to do their job well. If you pass through the human factor, you can mistakenly take in the team a competent employee who does not join the team and begins to slowly destroy it from the inside.

The bot will not be able to fully check the candidate for behavior in an unusual situation, check the flexibility of the candidate's thinking.

In the end, HR is the face of the company, it needs to establish personal contact, inspire the candidate, “sell” the vacancy.

Tatyana Belousova, HR-director of Comunica integrated communications agency:

During the interview, HR must understand whether the candidate is suitable not only for professional competencies, but also for personal characteristics - extroversion or introversion, leadership qualities, the habit of shifting responsibility, and so on. The bots that exist at the moment are completely unable to assess the candidate so subtly and multifacetedly. Therefore, one cannot get away from live communication with candidates.

In addition, a well-conducted face-to-face interview can increase the loyalty of a company candidate. After all, the interview - this "bride" and the company too. Normal candidates will not discuss subtle and delicate moments like the dismissal from the previous place with the messenger window. Just imagine that you need to lure a valuable manager from a competitor - do you really entrust this to a robot?

Irina Zarina, CEB SHL Russia & CIS:

It is impossible to fully automate the interaction; any interaction is also a mutual sale. Sale to the candidate of the company as well. The role of HR is changing, it is becoming more marketing. Yes, of course, the presentation of the company to potential candidates can also be automated at the initial stages; semi-game screening techniques are suitable for this role: a description of the situation in the company with the choice of a suitable solution. But nobody has yet canceled the final contact with the representatives of the company. It is impossible to replace HR in the formulation of the problem, the choice of methods and the construction of a selection funnel.

Konstantin Tyutyunov, Russian School of Management, an expert in the field of personnel management and automation of business processes:

Often, professionally written resumes are found, and only in a personal meeting it turns out to feel false and recognize forgery. Conversely, dubious resumes are sometimes made up of talented people (in the work issue) who simply could not adequately reflect their merits on paper.

On the part of an expert (selecting a candidate) it happens that the selection criteria are not formally expressed (unconscious competence). And if this is a stage that is closer to the final decision making, then it is easier to conduct a live interview and rely on the “intuition” of the expert.

Whether the relevance of the use of robots in HR? Is it possible to consider it as a "tribute to fashion"?

Olga Kochergina, Marksman:

As with any fashion trend (and now robotization and automation in HR is, without a doubt, a hot topic), this cannot go to extremes. Automating responses to candidates' responses, sending out tests and evaluating test results, resume parsing - yes, excellent topics. But if a job comes to work in the spirit of: “And show us strong commercial directors from competitive companies,” then you cannot do without a creative approach and a human factor.

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Unfortunately, the introduction of robotechnology in recruitment is becoming a normal process. Earlier, in order to get a loan, you interviewed a bank employee for 30 minutes, now you simply upload documents to the site, in 10 minutes you get a solution, in 20 minutes you get money on the card.

In large companies, where human activity is defined as a “performer of functions”, there is no need to look at what kind of person came to the interview, it is enough for the robot to give green signals on resumes and interview questions. But I can’t imagine how a robot will be able to determine whether an employee has talent or prospects, creativity, ability to make friends in the office, not facebook. The ultimate automation of the recruitment process, in my opinion, is impossible.

Galina Tokareva, Appodeal:

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HR industry is very promising in terms of automation, because many companies need a massive recruitment. For example, it is sometimes necessary to hire handymen or vendors, and in different geographically distant points. The development of recruiting bots is not a “fad”, but an effective tool for saving man-hours.

The problem is that now the quality of such recruiting can be called at least somewhat satisfactory only at the very first stage of selection. At this point, the candidate is asked the simplest questions to verify his professional suitability and adequacy. While this is more like a cool trick to attract attention to the company than a working tool, but with the development of technology, things can change.

Irina Zarina, CEB SHL Russia & CIS:

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Of course, the breakthrough is worth waiting, because technology knows how to surprise us. What I do not understand today will be mediocre the day after tomorrow. We go into the music application, listen to the song, and see the recommendations “you will like it” - the program selects a number of characteristics of the track. I think that soon HR-sites will work the same way.

Nadezhda Massel, BDO Unicon Outsourcing:

With the development of these technologies, the specialist’s labor costs will be significantly reduced, and if now one personnel specialist can be assigned personnel office work for 100-500 employees depending on the automation level of the personnel system and the personnel profile parameters of the company, then with the introduction of data entry technologies the number can be increased to 1000 -3000. If you change the requirements of legislation for the design of personnel documentation - higher rates are possible.

Tatyana Rychkova, a bank for entrepreneurs Point:

Breakthrough is not worth waiting for: whatever one may say, a person needs a person. Rather, it will simply simplify the work. If with the help of a robot / bot we can create a good resume filter, then the personnel officer will be able to spend more time researching the right person than spending time on those who are definitely not suitable for us.

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But in the conditions of staff mobility (remote work, freelancing, project and so on) and accelerating the pace of work, you need to have a more understandable system for evaluating candidates in order to reduce the time and cost of errors. It is here that we need platforms that already make a selection of the most successful candidates in the context of the corporate culture of a particular company. They can either completely replace HR, or be an additional assistant to reduce the staff of the HR department.

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