What Is Generative AI and How Can It Improve the Recruitment Process?

As technology advances, Singaporean companies are considering how AI-assisted initial management processes can benefit their operations. For instance, DBS is using AI to detect fraudulent transactions more efficiently. Similarly, employers can harness generative AI to speed up the recruitment process.

If you’ve been wondering what generative AI is and how to use it in HR processes, you’ve come to the right place. This article explores how generative AI can help HR practitioners assess candidate quality.

Generative AI is a technology that generates images, text, videos, code, music, etc. upon receiving a command or “prompt” from a human user. Engineers train generative AI on massive amounts of data until they can produce high-quality content on demand.

For instance, ChatGPT and other text-based generative AI have disrupted various industries with their ability to answer diverse questions, analyse data, generate code, and produce various documents within seconds. In fact, a Reuters report states that ChatGPT gained 100 million users just two months after it launched, making it the “fastest-growing app in history.”

Generative AI can help you with all kinds of recruitment processes. It can help you create job ads and job descriptions, answer candidate inquiries, and even perform preliminary checks on candidate quality (more on this later). It can also assist you with preparing interview questions, summarising interview transcripts, and creating onboarding kits.

Automating these repetitive, time-consuming tasks can decrease the time it takes for recruiters to get back to candidates and improve the overall candidate experience. According to JobStreet’s Future of Recruitment Report, 67% of Singaporean job seekers say that a smooth, timely hiring process is the best way for an employer to stand out.

Using generative AI can also help you accomplish routine tasks faster and free up time to focus on projects that require more complex thinking and human creativity, such as HR strategy, employer branding, and addressing employee concerns.

You can use text-based AI such as ChatGPT to perform a preliminary check on a candidate’s resume. You might wonder how this differs from applicant tracking systems (ATS). With ATS, recruiters search a database of resumes by entering keywords.

Because of this, they may miss out on good candidates who didn’t include the right keywords in their resume. The ATS may also pull up candidates whose qualifications aren’t quite right for the role if their resume contains the necessary keywords.

On the other hand, generative AI can analyse a resume, compare it with the job description, and assess how suitable the candidate is for the role. For this reason, many talent management platforms like Sense, Oracle, and Workable are integrating generative AI into their software.

However, take note that ChatGPT and Bard warn users to avoid including sensitive or proprietary information in prompts. This is because both ChatGPT and Bard use human reviewers to assess the quality of their chatbots’ responses. With this in mind, avoid sharing any of the candidate’s private information or your organisation’s confidential data with generative AI chatbots.

To evaluate a potential candidate using ChatGPT, all you need to do is enter the job ad and resume. Then ask ChatGPT to assess the candidate based on the job ad. For example, we gave ChatGPT a job ad for a senior business planning analyst at an international shipping company. We then entered a sample data analyst resume and asked ChatGPT to evaluate the candidate’s suitability for the role:

As you can see, ChatGPT provided a nifty summary of the job ad and the resume before assessing the candidate’s qualifications. It even suggested questions to ask the candidate during the interview. If you’re considering several candidates, you can enter all their skills and qualifications, and ask ChatGPT to compare them.

Nevertheless, take note that ChatGPT should only be used as a preliminary tool. We still need human personnel to pick up on the nuances in a candidate’s work history that AI may not necessarily detect.

The free version of ChatGPT is only trained on data up to September 2021. If you’re hiring for skills or jobs that came into existence after 2021, consider using Bard instead. This is because Bard can perform Google searches to retrieve the latest data. As with ChatGPT, avoid providing Bard with sensitive information.

That said, if you want to assess candidates without worrying about exposing their data, you can try Notion AI. Like ChatGPT, Notion is powered by OpenAI. But Notion isn’t a chatbot—rather, it’s a workspace geared toward project management and collaboration, with an AI writing assistant.

Since this AI is specifically geared towards work, it encrypts data and keeps it private—it doesn’t use customer data to train its algorithms. And just like ChatGPT and Bard, you can use Notion’s “Ask AI” function to evaluate resumes.

You can also use Notion’s HR templates and tutorials to track applicants, summarise interview transcriptions, and create employee onboarding documents, all in one workspace that you can share with your colleagues.

That said, manually copy-pasting resumes into AI chatbots and workspaces can be time-consuming. Perhaps the most efficient solution would be to opt for an HR management program that uses generative AI.

For instance, Workable is integrating generative AI into its software. Workable’s AI Co-Pilot can help you identify and assess appropriate candidates for a particular job opening, and it has policies in place to secure candidate data.

Generative AI has exciting potential to revolutionise the recruiting process. Nevertheless, the recruitment process as well as the field of HR will always require a human touch. Rather than replacing recruiters and HR practitioners, generative AI can increase their productivity. This will give them more time to focus on the right strategies for finding the right candidates, keeping them engaged, and nurturing a healthy company culture.

Now that you know what generative AI is and how to use it to your advantage, find out what Singaporean job seekers want by downloading JobStreet’s Future of Recruitment and Tech Talent: Revealed reports.

What is the use of generative AI? Given that generative AI can create all kinds of content on demand, its business applications are limitless. Employers can use copy-based generative AI for any task that involves writing—drafting memos, company newsletters, offer letters, job ads, etc.

Why is generative AI so important? Advances in technology have made generative AI so sophisticated that it is changing the way we work. Integrating generative AI into business processes allows employees to automate time-consuming tasks and create all kinds of content on demand, increasing their productivity.

What is an example of generative AI? ChatGPT is one of the most popular examples of generative AI. OpenAI’s chatbot can answer questions and generate any kind of written content on demand. Lensa AI is another popular example, with its ability to generate self-portraits of users.