LinkedIn is taking a step towards automated recruitment. With the newly unveiled “Hiring Assistant”, the company is presenting an AI-supported digital assistant for the first time, which is intended to take over key recruiting tasks.
The “Hiring Assistant” is designed to automate time-consuming routine tasks in the recruitment process. The system is able to generate complete job advertisements from brief notes and identify potential candidates. The algorithm-based approach is particularly noteworthy: the artificial intelligence evaluates applicants primarily according to their skills and not according to criteria such as place of residence or educational institution.
The technological basis is the collaboration with OpenAI. The career network, which belongs to the Microsoft Group, draws on a considerable wealth of data: information from one billion users, 68 million companies and 41,000 recorded skills profiles are included in the analysis.
The system will initially be made available to selected major customers such as AMD, Canva and Siemens. A broad market launch is planned for the coming months. In the future, the digital assistant will also be able to make appointments for job interviews and automatically answer applicant inquiries.
However, the introduction of the AI assistant also raises questions. While LinkedIn emphasizes that the system is intended to relieve HR professionals of routine tasks and give them more time for essential aspects of their work, it remains to be seen how the industry will react to this automation. After all, LinkedIn generates a significant proportion of its revenue – most recently more than seven billion dollars – from recruiting services.
Erran Berger, Vice President of Engineering at LinkedIn, is emphatically cautious (via TechCrunch): “We’re really focused on making Hiring Assistant great,” he explains. According to Berger, further development will only become apparent once the system has been successfully established.
The initiative joins a number of AI-powered features that LinkedIn has recently introduced. These include learning assistants, marketing helpers and profile optimizers. The “Hiring Assistant” marks the next step in this development.