New Tech Is Changing Hiring, Fast | HackerNoon

The one constant in life is change, and the job market is the perfect example. Only 20 years ago, job seekers walked into physical businesses, clutching printed resumes hoping for an interview. Today, the hiring landscape is completely reliant on new technology.

The development of AI and automation is causing big shifts in the job market, making some jobs obsolete—take data entry and manufacturing roles, for example. At the same time, ongoing labor shortages receive widespread media attention. There are 8 million job openings in the US, but only 6.8 million job seekers, emphasizing an increasing mismatch between job openings and worker qualifications.

Businesses are under immense pressure to fill positions quickly to keep operations unaffected while ensuring they’re finding the most qualified person for the job. To balance this hiring conundrum, companies need to switch up their hiring practices and benefit from new technologies like AI-driven recruitment tools, skills-based hiring platforms, and blockchain to find and hire top industry professionals before their competition does.

Let’s explore technology that’s changing the way businesses and job seekers connect.

Smarter Candidate Matching

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) have already improved HR processes, helping companies track applications and automate messaging. But with AI integration, hiring is taken to the next level as ATS can now analyze and filter resumes, searching for specific keywords like job titles, relevant skills, and industry experience. For example, if a company is hiring a data analyst, the HR manager can set the parameters so the AI-powered ATS can prioritize resumes that include keywords like SQL, Python, and Tableau.

By offloading manual tasks to AI platforms, HR managers can spend their time on building a happier, more productive workforce, such as enhancing their employer branding, developing their talent strategy, and developing employee retention techniques. Plus, since top candidates are typically only in the job market for around 10 days, being able to filter through masses of applications quickly is essential.

However, when using AI in hiring, decision-makers must take action to avoid bias. Previously, Amazon used an AI algorithm to review 10 years’ worth of resumes to understand how to find the best candidates. Unfortunately, due to the lower number of female employees, the AI algorithm thought male dominance in the workplace was a factor for success.

Although most businesses don’t design the AI models they use, ultimately they must take responsibility for ensuring ethical and unbiased implementation. Therefore, company AI models need to be trained on varied and equal datasets and require regular human oversight to check for patterns is a must to ensure that hiring aligns with the business diversity goals. This can be done in-house if the expertise is available, or AI consulting firms can be brought in to assess the model and its data sets.

But AI isn’t only for businesses. AI-powered platforms are now also available for job seekers, which can optimize resumes, cover letters, and LinkedIn profiles. It’s only fair for candidates to be able to use the technology they’re up against in the application process, allowing them to meet the requirements of the AI-powered ATS systems. This includes adding the right keywords at the right density, excluding unnecessary information, and checking that the layout is ATS-approved. Platforms can also help candidates quickly update their resume for each job application and ensure resumes, cover letters, and LinkedIn profiles all tell a cohesive story.

Skills-Based Hiring

There’s been a growing shift toward skills-based hiring over degree-based credentials, and the US is leading the way in this HR revolution. The Boston Consulting Group found that job postings requiring a bachelor’s degree declined by 3.9% between 2017 and 2022 for college-level vacancies. This is likely linked to the revelation that skills-based hires are more loyal to their employers and have a 9% lengthier tenure at their organizations compared with traditional hires.

While testing candidates isn’t a new concept, for instance back in 2017 Unilever started using online recruiting games, analyzing candidates’ risk assessment skills and fairness during the application process. However, new AI-powered platforms offer hundreds of online tests assessing technical skills like an AWS Kubernetes test to soft skills and tests on emotional intelligence and brainstorming.

These platforms offer pre-made evaluations, so businesses can test and go, or HR managers can design customizable tests and assessments tailored to specific job roles. The AI algorithms can also adjust the difficulty of the tests based on a candidate’s responses, meaning businesses get a true measure of a candidate’s skills, and eliminate the need for hiring managers to manually review test scores. Regarding test integrity, many platforms offer features like video monitoring and screen recording and restrict access to other websites.

Businesses spend around $4,000 to source and hire each new candidate, so this extra level of testing can save a substantial amount of money, especially if in a high-turnover industry.

These platforms can integrate easily with existing ATS and HR tools through API integrations, which allow for the exchange of secure data. This real-time data synchronization automatically transfers candidate information, test results, and evaluation metrics, helping to optimize the testing routine and increasing the hiring speed.

Transparent Credential Verification

As its name indicates, blockchain holds “blocks” of records, in an immutable “chain,” creating a secure and trustworthy way to share information. This is becoming considerably useful for HR managers looking to filter out candidates who embellish resumes with extra skills and additional years of experience. Plus, 48% of HR practitioners are so busy that they cannot verify every candidate’s qualifications and background.

Since blockchains are decentralized and act as distributed ledgers, this means once information is uploaded, it’s very difficult to alter or delete. Therefore, hiring managers who have found their top candidates can verify their degrees or work credentials on the blockchain that would have been issued and uploaded by their university and previous employers.

In the case of background checks—which usually take around two to five business days—candidates with blockchain records could control who views their verified credentials and grant permission to potential employers immediately, streamlining the hiring process while maintaining privacy.

The job market will continue to evolve in tandem with new technology and societal shifts. So for businesses to stay competitive and effectively match talent with opportunities they need to incorporate new technologies into the recruitment process. As AI and blockchain develop, they continue to play a vital role in shaping the future of work—one where hiring is faster, fairer, and more reliable than ever.