Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Galina Panchenko – UX/UI product developer with SignalHire. Her opinions are her own.

Modern technology is developing with incredible speed in all spheres of life.  Sometimes we are even afraid to guess what computers or gadgets will look like in 5 years, so that prospect of creating a Martian colony and artificial intelligence no longer seems so far away.

It is often widely accepted that the sphere of recruiting is more about the human element than it is about technology. According to a recent piece of research around the future of recruiting, Social Media and Social Recruiting Software tops the list as the number one planned technology investment of 2017, with over half (52%) saying they plan to continue or increase investment. Employers believe that Social Media Marketing will be the most in-demand HR skill by year 2020, followed by Data Analysis and Predictive Modelling.

Nevertheless, the recent boom of databases and social recruiting also makes us think. So let’s fantasize together about what recruitment will be like in 5 or 10 years.

1. Computerization of database processes

The computerization and robotics in recruitment will eventually replace many of the functions that a recruiter has to do alone today. The scope of attracting the irreplaceable specialists will be narrowing, several jobs will disappear, especially for technical personnel. It is also quite feasible to create a number of leading employment publications, where the jobs will automatically be submitted from a common database, so the existence of job boards will continue.

The Big Data phenomenon and large recruiting platforms like SignalHire will begin to develop with incredible speed and completely absorb the market for collecting candidate profiles.

Even if artificial intelligence will not replace recruiters, an incredible amount of data will need to be optimized to improve the work on candidate profiles. Nowadays talent acquisition technology can optimize the search process and speed up the connection with the candidate through direct channels (social networks, personal mail, mobile number), which the software collects in one place from different sources.  

“To date, the process has required human attention to detail and is prone to error as a result.” According to Sean Falconer (Co-Founder and CTO at Proven.com), an AI bot has the potential to alleviate some of these pain points (resource www.linkedin.com/pulse).

Some innovative services have technologies for creating various chat-bots and artificial intelligence for initial contact with the candidate while also supporting the hiring process.

Data Scientist’s Ji-A Min research says: “After SAP opened up their university recruitment, they received more than 50,000 applications for sales positions. Even if a recruiter spent only 6 seconds per resume, that’s still more than 83 hours spent just on resume pre-screening. Yet SAP saved more than $370,000 in costs a year with their new recruitment system. How? By replacing manual pre-screening of resumes with automated online assessments and saving their recruiters hundreds of wasted hours.” (Resource www.linkedin.com/pulse)

Thus, on the one hand, AI technologies are being designed to large corporations save on recruitment costs, but, on the other hand, can lead to the fact that a large number of employees will simply lose their jobs if AI will ultimately replace the recruiter completely .

2. No more resumes and profiles

There is a possibility that in 10 years everyone will have a device with full information about themselves. This will save a candidate from having to create a resume and filling in different questionnaires every time they apply for position.

Could recruiting platforms with their chatbots ultimately turn into personal consultants searching for each candidate?, Could the concept of a recruitment agency disappear?

3. Recruiting through internet technologies

We cannot avoid the importance of the Internet when it comes to predicting the future of recruitment.  

In the near future, internet technologies will see a colossal development, while access to all the kinds of resources will significantly increase. This fact can significantly complicate the work of recruiters in attracting candidates. Many experts believe that Internet technologies have a great future. Internet recruitment can greatly accelerate and facilitate the business process and will solve two main tasks: saving time and increasing accuracy of selection. 

But the recruitment process is multifaceted and like any business in which the human factor plays a significant role, it cannot exclude personal communication. So that could be where recruitment platforms will assist again. For example, SignalHire is already active and is working on improving the tools for direct communication with the candidate and optimizing the sending of messages and emails using CRM.

As you can see we still cannot imagine the future of recruiting technology without the artificial intelligence and innovations working alongside social networks and recruiting platforms.

In addition, the recruitment and sourcing industries agree on one thing – that all information about candidates and the possibility of contacting them should be simplified and optimized as much as possible.

It is obvious that only those who will be able to process a huge number of databases and minimize the participation of a human in all these processes will remain, but only if they don’t lose the human side of hiring.

Original source: http://recruitloop.com/blog/predicting-the-future-of-recruitment/