Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence

Are Robots Really the Threat?

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The idea that employees are losing sleep over being replaced by robots has become a hot topic. Everywhere you look, people are saying AI is going to take over most jobs soon. Headlines scream, “Automation will wipe out 97% of jobs by next week!”

But the reality is: employees aren’t actually terrified about robots snatching their roles. That doesn’t mean they’re not afraid, though.

What’s freaking them out? Turns out, employees are more scared of being replaced by another person than a robot. When it comes down to it, we’d rather a machine take our job than have Mark the intern take our spot.

The research shows that people generally feel more comfortable with the idea of others being replaced by technology than by another worker. But when it comes to their own jobs, the tables turn. Most workers find it less distressing to be replaced by AI or automation than by a human colleague.

This boils down to one thing: people don’t compare themselves to machines in the same way they do to other people.

Being replaced by another person can feel like a direct blow to self-worth, while being replaced by technology doesn’t trigger that same emotional reaction.

It makes sense. Getting replaced by another human stings because we naturally compare ourselves to them. The thought process might go, “Sure, a robot can handle this part of the job better than I can, but no way can Mark do it better!” Our egos can rationalize being outdone by technology, but not by someone we see as our equal.

Let’s be real: getting replaced by a robot makes sense since AI can do some things better than humans. But being replaced by another person? That’s a harder pill to swallow because it feels like a reflection of your value. And honestly, it’s way harder to explain to your family that your job was handed to someone else instead of a machine.

HR Meets ChatGPT

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Are you tired of the same old HR routines? HR and Talent Acquisition pros across the world are diving headfirst into the realm of ChatGPT. This AI wizard must be able to spice up their strategies, right!? Here are 5 popular prompts that HR and Talent Acquisition are throwing at ChatGPT:

  1. “ChatGPT, is this candidate a real person or a catfish?” HR isn’t meant to be Sherlock Holmes. We’re sick of desperately trying to unmask phony candidates – just tell me if they’re real or not! Expect a wild mix of advice in return, but how else will we know if this candidate is actually some weirdo scam artist living in his mom’s basement?
  2. “Craft a compelling job pitch for this job description!” When faced with the challenge of selling the unsellable—a lackluster job—we to ChatGPT for a miraculous solution. Yeah, it might be for the most boring job ever with a terrible salary, mundane tasks, and awful company culture, but make it irresistible!
  3. “Invent a mascot that represents our company culture!” Introducing “Happy Hootie”! Hootie is a wise owl wearing headphones, adorned with vibrant colors reflecting diversity and inclusivity. Their wings feature a mosaic of interconnected puzzle pieces symbolizing teamwork and collaboration. Hootie’s nest is a cozy library, showcasing our value for learning and knowledge-sharing. With a microphone in one claw and a book in the other, Hootie embodies our culture of harmony, where every voice is heard, and learning is celebrated. This mascot flaps around, spreading the message of unity, knowledge, and harmony throughout our workplace nest!
  4. “Craft a ‘thank you’ email to an applicant using only emojis!” 👋🙏📬📩🙏📝🤝🗣️🔜🌟 … oh sorry, you don’t speak emoji? Translation: Hello! Thank you for applying. We appreciate it! Let’s keep in touch! Talk to you soon. Best wishes.
  5. “ChatGPT, write a job description that makes even a pet rock excited to apply!” No really, that unsellable job description we mentioned earlier, we still need help. Please make this boring ass job description more appealing.
  6. “What do I respond to this candidate to show them that I’m interested, but not that interested, but still interested enough to show my interest?” *Inserts full email chain, with no regard to privacy and copyright laws* Response: I’m just a robot, I have no clue what you’re talking about.

Generative AI and ChatGPT RoundUp in TA Tech! (Video)

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My friends Madeline Laurano, Kyle Lagunas, and I had a big conversation about all the recent generative AI announcements happening in our industry.

We are going to hear about so many more announcements coming the rest of the year, and we’ll try to keep everyone updated as they come in.

If you haven’t had a chance to go out and test ChatGPT go do it! It’s super simple to login into Open.Ai and get an account.

AI isn’t racist. You are.

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I’ve been on the road and super busy over the last few weeks and haven’t written anything in a minute. So, hold on tight. I have some stuff floating around in my brain that needs to get out!

It’s conference season, and I’m hitting a bunch of them. So far, one thing everyone wants to talk about is ChatGPT and Generative AI. You guys know I like to educate you on this stuff, so GPT and Generative AI are basically the same thing. GPT is the OpenAI generative AI large language model, which is basically owned by Microsoft at this point. Google has Bard as their generative AI, and while they are built to be similar, Google is currently behind Microsoft by a lot. We all expect them to catch up.

One of the biggest issues around generative AI is there are a lot of ethical issues with the use of AI. From folks being concerned with bias in AI to the elimination of jobs that humans currently do to the spread of false news and ideas that seem very real.

“Tim, AI has bias! I read an article in the New York Times! Didn’t you see the lawsuit against HireVue?” It’s one thing I hear in the HR community a lot. Most folks, who don’t really understand AI, love to believe AI is biased! It’s kind of funny when you actually explain to them the reality. Currently, no one is using Generative AI (ChatGPT) in their HR Tech stack. Many are using “Conversational AI” in their stack, which is like old-school chatbots went to college and got smarter. Conversational AI is AI with guardrails. All the responses are built purposely so you actually know anything the bot might answer. This type of AI is incapable of being racist.

So, where does the biased/racist talk come from?

Early machine learning models. Machine learning has been the big buzzword in HR tech over the last 5-7 years or so. Some of the first tech companies to build ML into their tech had some backfires. For the record, the Hirevue thing was one of these issues while testing the potential of using facial recognition as a way to determine if any facial attributes could be used as a potential attribute in helping a company select the best talent. Turned out the machine learning model actually had a really hard time deciphering dark faces over light faces. It was quickly found out and shut down and never used again. But people still pull that one example from five years ago as the only example of AI being biased.

The reality is machine learning learns human preferences. So, when you say your AI is racist, all you’re saying is you, yourself, are racist. It learned your behavior and mirrored it back to you! That’s the funny part! Think of AI as a baby. A baby that can learn a lightning-fast speed. But if you teach your baby bad things, it’s going to grow up and do bad things! Unless the folks who build the AI actually build in guardrails and audits to constantly check that the AI is learning and producing the “right” things. Which is currently the situation. If fact, to Hirevue’s credit, from their early learning, they are leading the industry in building ethical AI policies and third-party to ensure their AI is as biased-free as possible.

Here’s the reality in 2023.

I’m way less concerned with my AI being biased than I am of Jim the hiring manager making the final selection of each hire! I can actually audit and control my AI’s bias. I can not do that with Jim! Goddamn, you Jim!

I actually was on a panel recently with an AI professor from Stanford who said, regarding bias in AI, that in reality, every time you add a human into your process, you add bias. But when you add AI into your process, you eliminate bias by comparison. That made my head turn! Because we love to think the opposite. For some reason, we have a lot of pundits in our industry trying to scare people away from AI in HR. I’m not saying anyone just blindly go forward with AI in HR. Go into it with eyes wide open, but don’t go into it with fear of what AI was five years ago.

I’m fascinated by where and when we’ll see massive usage of generative AI in HR. It’s going to take some time because most HR leaders and legal teams aren’t really excited about using a tool where they have no idea what the response might be to a candidate or an employee! But, I do think we’ll continue to see massive adoption of conversational AI within our tech stacks because there is much less legal risk and, as I mentioned very little risk of bias.

Do we still have ethical issues in AI? Yes. Generative AI is very new, and there is so much we don’t know yet. The use cases are massive, and we’ll begin to see, almost immediately, tech companies testing this in certain parts of your processes to help automate tactical things. The one major ethical issue we’ll have is when we start asking models like GPT questions, and we get answers, and we don’t really know how those answers were gathered or who had an influence on those answers behind the scenes. Because if someone behind the scenes in OpenAI manipulated the AI to answer a question in a certain way over another, we now have to question every answer and who’s pulling the strings behind the curtain.

It’s exciting to think of the possibilities, but we still have a ton to learn. More to come. I’ve got this AI bug now, and I think it’s going to dominate our space for a while!

AI 4 HR! Understanding the most Misunderstood Concept in HR!

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Jeanne Meister, Forbes 2020 Workplace Columnist, and HR executive brought together this incredible team of great HR pros/minds and developed an entire curriculum around using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in every single aspect of HR! What Jeanne and the team know is that AI is currently the most misunderstood concept in human resources, but it has the ability to become the biggest advantage to HR leaders and pros over anything we’ve ever seen! 

AI 4 HR is the one of its kind 5-week online course that will share the fundamentals of artificial intelligence and how 12 HR experts are using AI to completely re-imagine the employee experience. The course showcases specific use cases of how AI can and is already being used across HR for good in:

  • Talent Acquisition
  • Employee Onboarding
  • Internal Talent Mobility (my #1 trend for 2020!) 
  • Learning and career development
  • Performance Management (the single thing every manager needs!) 
  • Coaching

So, yeah, it’s an online, self-paced course of five modules that utilizes great video content from real HR pros/leaders from: IBM, Cisco, TIAA, Davita, GE, Schneider Electric, Hilton, Brigham Women’s Hospital, and more! So, pretty much every industry is represented with real-world case studies and actions. Jeanne made sure to get the SHRM/HRCI credits for you – 8 hours worth! 

What I like about the design of this course is that it goes live on January 20 and runs through February 21. One new module released each week for five weeks. This kind of forces us to be a bit more ‘self-directed’ in getting the content done, unlike other self-directed courses. If you miss a week, you can definitely go back and catch up, but I like that the design of AI 4 HR is set up to get all of us to get it done in a timely way! 

So, what’s the catch! 

It does cost money. Turns out all good things do! The full fee for the course is currently $499  (about half that of one national conference) and if you use the super-secret Tim Sackett code: AINOW – you’ll get $100 off at registration making it $399 (when you check out, go to “Show Order Summary” and you can input the code!). 

It’s a super deal for the content and learning around AI, and for the SHRM/HRCI credits. Go check out the site! I love that you’re hearing from actual real HR people who are using the tech and how they are using it, and not vendors, etc. There’s a big difference between what really happens in our organizations versus what vendors are telling us will happen, many times. 

Register Today! 

For those who go through this, please come back and comment and let the rest of the group know what you thought! I’m impressed with what is being presented, but I would love to get some feedback from others as well! 

Are Employees Really Upset Over Being Replaced By Robots?

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I think we all want to believe that our employees are freaking out that one day their job, in the near future, will be replaced by a robot. It’s all you hear right now in our space! “A.I. will be taking over 97% of jobs by next week!”

The reality is our employees are not afraid of their job being taken by a robot. But they are afraid!

Turns out, our employees are more afraid of their job being taken by another employee, not a robot! A new study by the Technical University of Munich has shown that our employees are actually more afraid of other people taking their jobs, then by A.I.

The study shows: In principle, most people view it more favorably when workers are replaced by other people than by robots or intelligent software. This preference reverses, however, when it refers to people’s own jobs. When that is the case, the majority of workers find it less upsetting to see their own jobs go to robots than to other employees…

People tend to compare themselves less with machines than with other people. Consequently, being replaced by a robot or software poses less of a threat to their feeling of self-worth. This reduced self-threat could even be observed when participants assumed that they were being replaced by other employees who relied on technological abilities such as artificial intelligence in their work.

Turns out, it’s a huge punch to our gut to be replaced by another human since we compare ourselves to being equal, or better, to other humans, but we can comprehend that technology, like A.I., is actually better than ourselves at many tasks.

“The robot can definitely do parts of my job better than me, but g*d damn it, Mark can not!” 

It makes sense, for the most part, we all have fairly fragile egos. It’s hard for us to comprehend that our employer would replace us with another person because that means we probably suck at our job, or at least, our employer thinks we suck. If I’m replaced by a machine I can rationalize that away. If I’m replaced by another person, that’s a hard one to explain to family and friends.

It’s definitely something to keep in mind as we transition many tasks over to the robots. I think from an organizational behavior standpoint we are very concerned about what our employees will think, but the reality is they’ll probably have less issue with it than if we were shopping their jobs offshore to people who will do it cheaper but are real!

The Future of Work, is More Work!

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I’m sure you’ve read an article or listened to a podcast in recent weeks that had something to do with “the future of work”. It’s a hot topic to talk about, primarily because it’s all just a big fat guess and the best content is content where I just get to tell what I think will happen, but really have no idea for sure.

When I take a look at the HR technology landscape and see the tech that is hitting the market around work and performance, I think the future of work is actually just more work!

When I say ‘more’ work I really mean “More” work! Much of the technology that is being created and launched around HR Technology falls into a few buckets:

  1. How can we make workers more efficient at what they are currently doing?
  2. How can we monitor workers on what they are doing (tracking)?
  3. How can we leverage A.I. to do certain tasks workers are doing right now?

Don’t get me wrong, the technology doesn’t scare me in the least, I think it’s amazing, but the reality is much of it is designed to help us humans reach our full potential. If my couple of decades in HR has taught me anything it’s that very few of us humans want to reach our full potential!

Reaching your full potential means you are working really hard!

I have a great story about working in a union job the summer I first got out of high school. My Dad got me the job working in a grocery warehouse picking orders to be delivered to supermarkets. The warehouse just implemented a new software system that tracked the productivity of each worker.

Basically, I would be given an order and the system had estimated how long that order should take for me to complete. If the order was complex I got more time, it is was simply pulling a full pallet of one type of item, I might only get ten minutes or so to complete, some orders were estimated to take 75+ minutes to complete.

The union had negotiated that I only had to work 77% of the time. Yes, you read that correctly! If you added up all of my order minutes, in theory, to keep my job, I had to be 77% efficient. So, in an eight-hour shift of 480 minutes, once I reached my 369.6 minutes of work, I could actually just stop. In fact, I was encouraged very strongly by my union brothers to stop at the exact point!

Now the “new” computer system didn’t account for extra effort. So, if I had an order that was supposed to take 60 minutes, but I worked really hard and completed it in 45 minutes, I just earned myself an extra 15 minutes. By the end of the summer, I was efficient enough in getting orders completed that I spent about three hours a shift playing cards with my union brothers in the back of the warehouse until my shift was done!

The new HR Technology that is in play right now, based on AI and machine learning, would have made these corrections individually within a few shifts, knowing I could do that work more efficiently than another person and soon my orders would have been adjusted. The technology would have ensured that my ‘extra’ effort turned into my normal effort.

We already know that my warehouse work will be replaced by robots, so my example is already dated. But what about that office job? Will a robot replace you? No, not right away, we are a ways off from that, but that same AI/Machine learning technology will track and measure everything you do and soon you will feel as busy as ever, because ‘down time’ is unproductive time and the tech can compute that!

The future of work is more work.

 

The Rise of the Super Star Employee

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Artificial Intelligence is changing the future of work, but there’s one thing that AI won’t be able to do. AI will not be able to create more ‘geniuses’.

A recent study by MIT professors found that as the digital versions of labor grow and will continue to grow, and labor will be able to reproduced cheaply in a number of industries and positions, but the one thing that can’t be duplicated by digital technologies are genius employees. Those employees who are your truly lift your organization to another level.

We all know those rare superstar employees. The one person who has built a product for your organization that will be the future of what you do. The one person who sells 40%+ more than any other person on your team, consistently, year after year. The one person on your team that consistently attracts A players to your team and great talent from other organizations want to work for.

These aren’t your 20/80 employees. 20% of your employees do 80% of the work. These are your employees who are above that. They would rank as your number one employee out of that top 20%. These are the employees that if you had an employee draft on who starts a new company, these folks would always be number one pics.

Our reality as HR leaders, TA leaders, organizational leaders is we will have to start focusing on how do we keep and attract superstar employees. Right now we really work to fill roles with solid hires. Basically, that’s the goal. With the rise of AI-driven automation of transactional work, it will be critical for us to hire a few superstars, more than a bunch of rank and file.

I have a feeling the future of TA team design will have a component of superstar recruiting. In college athletics, the superstar recruit is a 5-star kid. There are very few 5 stars. If you get one, you hit a grand slam in recruiting. Very few schools get 5-star kids. Most schools will be fighting for 3-star and 2-star kids.

I had a feeling that Sourcing automation was going to kill sourcing as a function, but I now see this design where really high-level sourcers will continue to have a very valuable role in finding not just ‘a’ person to fill a position, but finding ‘the’ person to fill a position. Where it will be the job of a part of the TA team to discover who are truly the superstars in certain skill sets across an industry and then work to attract those few potential 5-star employees.

AI will take away a big subset of work that can be easily automated. It won’t be able to take away genius-level, superstar work because those individuals create the future and make things work that aren’t working. They solve unsolvable problems. They predict the unpredictable. You need them more than most of your other employees.

The future of TA is your ability to find, attract and hire superstars. Not everyone will get one. Some will get more than one. The real value of great TA in the world of AI is your ability to hire 5-stars.

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: Pocket Recruiter (@pkrecruiter)

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Today on The Weekly Dose I review the recruiting technology, Pocket Recruiter. Pocket Recruiter drastically reduces the time it takes to screen, source and evaluate candidates, helping recruiters achieve a higher interview to placement ratio. 

Pocket Recruiter is one of these new recruiting technologies built around the concepts of Machine Learning and A.I. Basically, it integrates with your ATS and will automatically scrap every new job (or you can manually put in jobs as well) and then it will go out and source candidates for each job you have from both your internal database and external data as well.

Where Pocket Recruiter stands out is it’s ability to match candidates to your job, and it’s ability to learn and get better. The recruiter gets a list of matching candidates that are scored out and ranked based on, pattern recognition, the internal algorithm, etc.

Your recruiter gets a shortlist within minutes to go out and start connecting. Organizations are seeing savings of up to 60% in time to source and screen, because most of the heavily lifting of sourcing is done, and the matches are of higher quality, so you’ll need less screens. They are also seeing improvements of 90% from resume submitted to the hiring manager to request for interview. So, the quality is definitely improving.

What do I like about Pocket Recruiter:

  • Your recruiters can override the algorithm within Pocket Recruiter to bring back different results almost immediately, if something isn’t coming through like it should. This might seem small, but it’s huge as we that recruit usually quite a bit more than the algorithm in terms of what we are looking for.
  • You can add your internal employees into the mix, making Pocket Recruiter a great tool for internal mobility.
  • The Performance Metrics might be one of the best I’ve seen in any recruiting tool, as it basically replicates your recruiting funnel for you on each individual recruiter. So, not only are you finding talent faster, but you also now have this great performance management tool for your team. I also loved the ROI tool built into Pocket Recruiter.

For me, technologies like Pocket Recruiter are the future of recruitment and how I see A.I. having the biggest early impact to how recruiting evolves in the near future. Pocket Recruiter ensures you are utilizing all of your candidates to the fullest, and it speeds up the entire process to get to hires quicker. Well worth a demo!

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.