Thinking of using AI to write a job description for your company? Experts and recruiters are cautioning against it.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s wrong with automating this part of the often long, difficult hiring process, especially for highly specialized IT roles? While using AI might be a time-saver, according to many in the recruiting world, it also robs the company of the ability to think deeply about what a job requires, as well as an opportunity to connect in a more human way with candidates.<\/p>\n
Paul DeBettignies, the founder of Launch Hiring as well as founder and strategist of Minnesota Headhunter LLC, said that he doesn\u2019t have a lot of faith in the use of AI for crafting job descriptions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we\u2019re going to automate everything, then hiring, finding a job, and recruiting is going to become even more transactional than it\u2019s already been,\u201d DeBettignies said. \u201cWe all already say we don\u2019t like it, so we\u2019re just going to do more of it?\u201d<\/p>\n
DeBettignies added that recruiting has always relied heavily on tech tools. Many years ago, a time-strapped recruiter might have used cut-and-paste to slap together a job description from other job descriptions found online, such as Craigslist. AI might only make this trend worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor years, job descriptions have always sucked, and now that we\u2019re using AI, AI has been training on crappy job descriptions,\u201d DeBettignies said.<\/p>\n
Failure to launch.\u00a0<\/strong>Creating a good job description relies on insightful questioning. Managers must articulate who they might need to hire and why. According to recruiting author, facilitator, and speaker Katrina Collier, \u201cmost of them get it wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Fortune reported<\/a>\u00a0last year that 66% of managers are \u201caccidental\u201d; Collier said accidental managers haven\u2019t been trained in managing a team, let alone in replacing someone\u2019s role within it.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, the managers just want recruitment to go away, it\u2019s their least favorite task,\u201d Collier said. \u201cWhen you\u2019ve got the likes of any of the large language models, OpenAI, whatever it is, they can just type in\u2026whatever, and up comes a job description and they go roll with that.\u201d<\/p>\n Collier said the description generated by AI often isn\u2019t specific to a company and team. Instead, she encourages recruiters to have an internal conversation to work it out.<\/p>\n If a company chooses to lean into the AI description, DeBettignies can ask the model why someone might not want to apply for the role. He often gets the same three answers: There are too many bullet points, there isn\u2019t information on why someone would want to work at a company, or there isn\u2019t enough information on salary or benefits.<\/p>\n \u201cMy advice is to not fully automate this,\u201d DeBettignies said. \u201cI do appreciate speed and I appreciate efficiency. Hopefully it does get us to\u2026where we are now able to do the human things more and better and deeper than we\u2019ve been able to do.\u201d<\/p>\n AI as a spackle of sorts.\u00a0<\/strong>To some, like Steve Visconti, the CEO of cybersecurity company Xiid, AI is a tool that could be used to help fill gaps in job descriptions.<\/p>\n Visconti said he believes AI is a good tool for help with job postings, \u201cbecause you don\u2019t want to overlook something that should have been obvious.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI would write the job description\u2014which I do, by the way, I do this\u2014and then I generate an AI version,\u201d Visconti said. \u201cThen I try and merge the two and see how I can make it better. So, in a sense, AI didn\u2019t save me a lot of time, it just made it better in that specific case. I think it\u2019s a great tool, very valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n Visconti pointed out how AI could help fill in required skills for a vital IT position, including cloud native, Kubernetes, OpenShift, and so on.<\/p>\n Collier agreed that the tool could be helpful if \u201cyou really know who you need to hire\u201d and AI is used to help flesh out a description.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can be amazing if you\u2019ve done all the research, but often it\u2019s just a case of, I need a quick win,\u201d Collier said. \u201cThey just go and ask, and then [AI is] pulling in all the badly-written job descriptions that exist in the world and going, \u2018Yeah, here\u2019s a great one.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n This report was originally published<\/a> by IT Brew<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n