HR Panorama

The up and coming trends make it clear that recruiting and retaining talent is the Gordian knot for organizations. The way to success will be decided by the quality of the personnel involved in the operations of the company. The key point in hiring a professional is that if the said professional has the required skill, knowledge and attitude that align with the company’s requirement. As simple as it goes the new employee should metaphorically be a glove that fits perfectly.But human psychology plays an integral part here, directly or subconsciously we get influenced by certain biases we possess. This phenomenon is present in hiring as well.

Each one of us has subconscious cognitive mechanisms that affect how we draw conclusions and make decisions. Our choices sometimes are not only based on facts and logic but on emotions and personal experiences as well. Often characteristics such as beliefs, age, ethnicity, race, and gender of the candidates are included into parameters on the basis of which recruiters make their decisions. The unfortunate yet logical implication is that when we select people based on these trivial aspects, we miss the opportunity to select a more capable candidate with the required knowledge and the necessary skills. One should look for knowledge, talent, required skill and attitude instead of gender, age, race, and ethnicity. While race and gender biases gather most attention and are frequently observed during hiring, there are many other internal biases that can affect a recruiter thinking procedure. A case study concludes that Sixty percent of American CEO’s are over 6 feet while only 15% of the total population is over 6 feet tall; this shows some kind of bias in terms of depiction of an ideal CEO. Another example to draw further stress on the case here is the fact that Nicolas Sarkozy-a former French President used to wear 2-inch elevator heels to boost him to 5 ft and 8 in. and look taller than he is because all his colleagues (presidents and prime ministers of other EU countries) looked taller. This is a perfect example of beauty bias. Apart from this, we judge someone’s job suitability based on superficial factors such as the shape of his/her body, the type of his/her haircut, or the tattoos said a person may have. Adding to the ongoing discussion, an interesting fact related to this type of bias is what German researchers found: The ability of obese individual’s to achieve supervisory positions was underestimated. “Normal-weight” individual’s ability to achieve supervisory positions were overestimated. With people jumping to conclusions with this reckless pace, it is essential to eliminate the human factor from this aspect. Today’s time is the perfect era to enact on this change. With the inception and materialising of interesting concepts like AI and complex data analytics we can assemble and put the information to use in a coherent manner

AI aids us to make our decisions secure, explainable and fair. With the availability of an abundance of data, AI uses algorithms to make decisions best fit for the position. It is a feat that the human brain cannot perform flawlessly. AI assesses information without any assumptions and biases that humans are susceptible to. No. of people hired and going for recruiting process hiring will increase endlessly incoming years but the recruiting teams will remain the same size or even contract. This means recruiters have to become more efficient by “doing more with less” and implement cutting edge tech in their day-to-day hustle. Screening resumes is the most time-consuming task, it becomes more tedious when 75% to 88% of the resumes received for a role are unqualified. Screening resumes and shortlisting candidates to the interview are estimated to take 23 hours of a recruiter’s time for a single hire. AI in recruiting sector helps by automating such time-consuming and repetitive tasks. Speeding up these parts of recruiting through automation reduces time-to-hire, which guarantees that you don’t want to lose the best talent to faster-moving competitors. HR Data is readily available and could be easily accessed and analyzed. Therefore, quality of hire has become recruiting’s top KPI. The promise of AI for improving quality of hire lies in its ability to use data to standardize the matching between candidates’ experience, knowledge, and skills and the requirements of the job. This development in job matching is predicted to lead to happier, more productive employees who are less likely to turnover. AI-powered recruiting software has seen their cost per screen reduced by 75%, their revenue per employee improve by 4%, and their turnover decrease by 35%.

The bottom line being that without a shot of doubt the technology being introduced in the market is a key aspect of success and if aligned in a correct way with our sector is bound to bring better results. Results in the form of more naturally vibrant workplace atmosphere, more industrious employees and more profits. Hence AI is helping us overcome human biases and in improving productivity by automating time-consuming tasks.

-By Sachi Gupta HR Club, IMI New Delhi

“Once you have had Apple, you can’t go back to anything else”

Apple, one of the Big Four Tech companies along with Amazon, Google, and Facebook has carved a very important place in the hearts of all the consumers who have interacted with this brand. Founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1976, it slowly went on to become the world’s largest technology company. The brand loyalty Apple Inc enjoys is one of the most fanatic ones at that, as its patrons say “Once you have had Apple, you can’t go back to anything else”. To achieve this kind of success technical innovation is a must but even more important than that are the people, the employees who make this happen.

Now let us understand how the work culture at this Goliath of a company is. Since the inception of the company, it was seen that Jobs often portrayed that the company’s inner working and HR policies were more employee-centric as well as closer to what a start-up would use, even after its entry in the Fortune 500. One of the instances people often connect with is Jobs roaming around the office vicinity barefoot to promote innovation and assertiveness of its own employees. He often said being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to him, going to bed at night saying “wonderful”… that’s what matters. Apple is famous for its customer-friendliness yet enforces a culture of corporate secrecy, often hiring ex-FBI personnel as a part of its anti-leak Global Security team. It realized long ago the inability of humans to keep secrets over a long period. As communication is a basic need of all the social animals, humans tend to drop some unconscious markers regarding the secrets, which often can be decoded leading to catastrophic information leaks. Hence the focus on secrecy and extreme compartmentalization of departments. Jobs once quoted “I am as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to many things.” One of which has been office politics, there is zero office politics which helps the corporate foster a culture focusing on the authenticity of work and performance.

Apple cultivated a sense of ownership which is often translated into the accountability of certain responsibilities, for reference each project has a “Directly Responsible Individual” or “DRI” in Apple jargon. Most projects are undertaken by a small independent team that would have high autonomy in the company reporting to only a few high-level executives. Also, one of the most unique factors with which it motivates its employees is with positive reinforcement, as stated by Renee Morales, former Apple Store Specialist: “There will be a lot of clapping. As a new hire, you’ll get ‘clapped in’. At the end of every shift meeting, there’s clapping. When someone quits, on their last day they get ‘clapped out’. There’s just a lot of clapping.” Another noticeable thing about the demographics of the company is that most employee seems to belong to the 30-40-year age group, i.e. people with brains and real-life experience to back it up with. A feedback system instated in the premises allows for a regular performance evaluation which often helps in quality control over the long run. This work culture nurtures the employee to grow into very competent individuals who put Apple Inc above their own personal endeavors. Steve Jobs saying that “be a yardstick of quality, some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected” truly defines the work culture at Apple. Giving it a unique place among all the other technological giants and putting a ‘ding in the universe’ .

Written By
Ayush Sharma
Under the tutelage of The HR Club
IMI-New Delhi

A.I eradicating biases in HR Recruitment

How does the Fruity Company taste ?