How to Better Prepare for the Future
What jobs will survive the growth of artificial intelligence as it encroaches on many of our most highly sought skill sets? Will we need the recruiters we have today in five years?
There is an age-old discussion about whether deep expertise or broader, diverse skills are more valuable. In other words, the specialist versus the generalist. Before we had the power of artificial intelligence, experts were favored over the generalists.
That may be changing, especially in recruiting.
Here are scenarios about two recruiters with very different backgrounds and skills. Who will be more likely to succeed?
Tom
Tom has been a recruiter for 12 years. He has a degree in business and entered recruiting right out of college as a trainee. He worked at three large firms and had the opportunity to learn from two guru recruiters who mentored and challenged him. His primary skill set is in sourcing and interviewing and on how a traditional recruiting function is organized and functions.
He now leads a team of twenty-five recruiters at a major international firm. While he oversees the day-to-day operations and directs his team strategy, he still sources and interviews candidates. He is a master sourcer and is considered a perceptive interviewer. He handles several requisitions each month and is proud that he can both recruit and manage.
He has hired and trained a team of recruiters that perform above average, improved the time to fill, and lowered the cost per hire. Despite this, his team is not regarded as exceptional. His monthly reports are well received but have not led to more budget or recognition. His recent request for additional funding for new technology was not approved. His boss feels everything is going well and spending more is unnecessary.
Despite excellent results, lower costs, and improved speed, the function is not considered strategic or essential. They fill requisitions as needed efficiently. He and his team are mostly unknown to hiring managers and execs and are treated as an expected service. It is assumed they will be there when needed, and no one has any complaints. They have not built relationships with the hiring managers, and none of the managers his boss spoke with even knew who Tom was. The recruiting function has no interaction at all with senior leadership and is not expected to offer advice or provide any significant input to hiring managers.
Sally
Sally works in a similar size firm but has a very different background from Tom. She only entered recruiting a few years ago and had no training in recruiting. She has a master’s degree in business and a bachelor’s in data analytics and statistics. Sally came into recruiting from the strategic planning function of another company. Her background includes two years working in strategic planning and three years in a corporate marketing role. She also spent a year living in Taiwan with her previous company and has a working fluency in Mandarin. In that role, she had to hire several engineers and realized that the recruiting function was not able to help her define the skills she needed to hire or find the right people.
She sought a role leading a recruiting team because she felt that she could improve any recruiting function by applying her analytical skill, better technology, and her past experiences to make the function more effective.
Before applying for this role, she took a course in interviewing, researched various software applications commonly used for recruiting, and interviewed several recruiter friends to get a sense of their problems and concerns. She knew she could improve the efficiency of any recruiting function by letting A.I.-enabled tools do some of the work, especially in sourcing and assessment. She wanted the recruiters to work more closely with hiring managers, offer them advice, and build a stronger recruiting brand through the career site and talent communities.
Now, after two years of leading this function, the hiring managers respect her opinions and have a good relationship with her. She has made it a point to understand the business, its strategy, and its potential problems. She has been able to ask for more funding to invest in automated technology. Her varied background seems to help her navigate the company’s politics and provide relevant insight to candidates and managers. Even her manager, who might be expected to resent her, asks for her advice.
What do these two stories tell us?
While Tom is a functionally deep expert, he has only the sourcing and interviewing skill sets. He has done a good job, but he has not been able to build an internal brand or trust. His specialist skill set is vulnerable to A.I., which has already shown that it can search the Internet and other sources for talent, engage with people, and assess skills and abilities. A.I. can do this faster and more accurately than people. He seems to lack flexibility or the ability to adapt to what his organization really needs. He is far more likely to be replaced by A.I. than Sally.
Sally is a generalist with a stack of skills she can call on. She is skilled at marketing and influencing, understands the business, has knowledge about new recruiting tools, and her background in analytics helps her make better decisions on how to direct her team. She has focused on building credibility, giving her the leverage to get a bigger budget.
As the diagram above shows, as A.I. advances, specialists risk being replaced by A.I. Expert knowledge can often be encoded, and expertise based on facts, math, data, and calculations can be done by computers and A.I. faster than humans. While computers may lack judgment capability or be unable to decide between two seemingly equal choices, they can do much of the work of most experts.
Research shows that generalists have the upper hand when rule-based and procedure-based systems are not working. Their broader range of skills and knowledge makes them more innovative and flexible and less likely to be replaced by A.I. They can bring unique perspectives to problem-solving, making them better problem-solvers than specialists. On the other hand, specialists have a narrow focus, making it harder for them to think outside the box and innovate. As we move into a world that demands innovation, generalists are better equipped to meet this demand.
I advise every recruiter to build as wide and varied a skill stack as possible. As Sally demonstrates, combining various disconnected skills can give you a natural edge over those without. Learn areas outside of recruiting, including those with which A.I. has more difficulty, such as creating engaging content, overcoming candidates’ objections, or providing more nuanced information to candidates and hiring managers.
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Could You Use A Trusted Advisor?
If you are looking for guidance or help in becoming a more strategic leader, we may be able to help. For the past twenty-five years, I have been helping recruitment leaders in major corporations, non-profits, and NGOs to redesign, improve, or transform their talent acquisition functions. I work with you as a partner to assess and improve your processes, find and remove constraints, create more engaging career sites, and choose the most useful and relevant technology. I will work with you as a coach, mentor, or consultant – whichever meets your needs. I have only one goal – to make recruiting strategic and pertinent to your organization. Let me know if I can help. Send me an email at kwheeler@futureoftalent.org.
Related Links
The $1 Million Dollar Skill Stack
Skill Stacking: The Unexpected Truth About The Top 10%
Skill stacking: Instead of mastering one skill, build a skill set
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