CATEGORY AUSTRALASIAN DENTIST119 There are so many changes happening rapidly everyday due to AI. A hot topic in recruitment is the real world challenges of AI-driven hiring; particularly how bias, fairness, and regulatory issues are coming to the forefront. Artificial Intelligence has quickly become a core tool in modern hiring strategies. But a recent Australian study has cast a spotlight on something we can’t ignore; AI may be introducing new forms of discrimination, rather than removing them. The research revealed something troubling. AI-powered interviews and screening tools are mishearing or misinterpreting candidates with accents, speech differences, or disabilities, with error rates as high as 22%. In a country as culturally and linguistically diverse as Australia, this isn’t just a tech glitch, it’s an equity issue. If we’re not careful, we risk building barriers where we intended to remove them. Roughly 30% of Australian employers have adopted some form of AI in their hiring. That figure is expected to rise rapidly. Meanwhile, global uptake has already reached 70%+. While many companies are embracing automation to gain speed and scale; transparency and fairness are not always keeping pace. I do not want to dismiss the positive influences AI can bring to the table when it comes to certain phases of the hiring process. If AI is helping you write job descriptions, create direct marketing content and saving you time with first phase analysis of applicant resumes, then this saves you time to concentrate on other aspects of your business. But AI can also enable biases if the algorithms are not carefully designed and monitored. This can lead to unfair hiring practices, where the training datasets it relies on are resulting in exclusions of certain demographics due to historic hiring decisions. This should improve over time, as the first road to solving a problem is identifying it. As a career recruiter, though, there is a whole heap of nuance that requires those essential human soft skills, in a way that AI cannot mimic. Not yet, anyway. If there was to be a lack of human oversight in my industry, the dental industry, it could have a real domino affect on the chemistry of the practices we place staff in. It is nuanced, human judgment that will commonly unearth the answer of whether you have made the right hiring decision. Over 30 years and literally thousands of hiring decisions I can analyse the suitability of a candidate to a particular clinic and client with an accuracy that I believe AI cannot. And may never. Assessing a candidate’s cultural fit, their ability to work well with colleagues, calm patients and contribute positively to the practice are judgements discerned away from the pages of a resume. You can have two competing applicants that on paper are similar in suitability. However, soft skills that human recruiters excel at will uncover that the same two people are poles apart in suitability. And as AI is still in its relative infancy, costs can still be prohibitive. Implementing AI solutions for staffing is a significant investment and for employers with budget constraints or SMEs not hiring at a significant scale, this may outweigh advantages in efficiency. AI can be a highly supportive tool in the hiring process, especially if it can identify that first phase, essential job criteria required, before for the employer takes a deeper dive into the suitability of the candidate. But human connection with job applicants is still the benchmark for a positive hiring experience, for both the hirer and the job applicant. Especially in such a competitive job market that dentistry is beholden to. Candidates want to be seen, heard and understood, courted even. When the hiring process is impersonal, it leaves an opening for someone else to swoop in and woo that candidate you so desperately wanted onboard. Human judgement, intuition, persuasion, and creating a real and meaningful candidate experience are still more powerful tools than an algorithm. X COLUMNISTS AI in recruitment: Good hiring still needs the human touch Pam McKean By Pam McKean, Director, AB Dental & Medical Employment Agency Dual-Cured Resin Modified Pulpotomy Treatment. !
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