Ep 797: Hiring The Humans Behind The Robots
Recruiting Future with Matt Alder - What's Next For Talent Acquisition, HR & Hiring?Show Notes
The race to develop humanoid robots that can work alongside people in factories, warehouses and retail environments is attracting billions in investment. The talent powering this revolution is in critically short supply. Specialist AI researchers, robotics engineers, and machine learning experts are being sought by every company in the sector, from global tech giants to ambitious startups.
So, in this environment of talent scarcity, how much does the human side of recruiting matter?
My guest this week is Kathrin Selezneva, Talent Acquisition Lead at Humanoid. In our conversation, she shares her experience building a hiring function from scratch in one of the most competitive talent markets in the world and explains why, as AI transforms everything around it, the human skills of recruiting have never mattered more.
In the interview, we discuss:
Building a TA function from zero
Recruiting the world’s most challenging talent market
Building trust with the most passive of candidates
Why mission sells when salary can't
The vital importance of human recruiters
Relationship building and strategic thinking
Why talent should determine geography in global hiring
What does the future look like?
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AI is moving from a specialist technology to something employees in large parts of the organization are increasingly expected to be using. Skills, mindsets, and long-established habits are much harder to change than software, which is why meeting that expectation is proving difficult. If the challenge is mainly a human one, AI readiness is as much a matter for HR and talent leaders as for technology teams. So what does it take to get a workforce ready for AI, and what opportunity does that create for talent leaders?
Redundancies have become a constant feature of the talent market. AI is taking a lot of the blame, but the drivers behind this are much broader. Jobs and skills are changing faster than most organizations can keep track of and the conventional response is to restructure the workforce and then hire in the new skills that are needed. That approach relies on a ready supply of perfectly qualified candidates, and in a fast-moving skills market those candidates are increasingly hard to find. It also assumes that employers already have a clear view of the skills and potential within their existing workforce, which is rarely the case.
There is a lot of pressure on talent acquisition to adopt AI, and the discussion about how to do it tends to focus on tools and skills. With layoffs attributed to AI in the headlines, the people in TA teams have good reason to feel anxious about the technology they are being asked to use. That anxiety makes people less willing to experiment, and addressing it has less to do with the technology than with how leaders handle uncertainty.
TA leaders have to keep delivering for the business while they use AI to transform how hiring works. At RecFest USA in Nashville, AI was the main topic of conversation, although the people I spoke to talked about much more than the technology. So where should TA leaders be focusing their attention?