Within the highly specialised and confidential world of executive search, a new balance is emerging.
AI’s role in executive search is growing, as Artificial Intelligence (AI) takes over data processing and pattern recognition, allowing humans to thrive in areas like creative problem-solving and emotional intelligence.
Adopting AI into the executive search process
There are five important tips to take on board when you begin to adopt AI into your team’s executive search process.
These include:
- Identifying the key areas in which AI could add value, such as in CV screening, scheduling interviews, and conducting an initial round of assessments.
- Selecting the best-in-class AI tools for application across talent acquisition, candidate sourcing, and the screening process. A few of the good ones out there are Eightfold AI, Loxo, HireVue and Fetcher. Read more here.
- Considering the technical prowess of your team members. Do they require a specialist training programme to effectively and ethically utilise these tools? Scheduling a professionally led training course would certainly not go amiss.
- After two weeks or a month of use, evaluate what the impact of these AI tools has been on the efficacy of your firm. While AI in recruitment offers a plethora of benefits, it is possible to come across challenges related to bias, privacy and ethics. On the other hand, to evolve with the times, AI can prove a game changer in its ability to process extensive batches of data both quickly and accurately, and to identify patterns that humans may well overlook.
- Never dispense with the human touch, which is ever important in understanding non-verbal cues, tone of voice, and context, while bringing to the table soft skills such as empathy, intuition and advanced levels of cultural understanding.
A balanced approach – where AI enhances human efforts and vice versa
Perhaps, then, the most critical term in recruitment-based AI adoption is “enhancement”.
Instead of swinging to the one side (i.e. “I’ll never corrupt my human-led operation by giving power over to the bots”) or the other (i.e. “Yay, we can all go on leave while the bots do most of the groundwork!), the reasonable and rational approach is AI integration into executive search such that:
- It adds vast levels of efficiency, scalability and data-driven insights to the process; but
- It could never completely replace human intuition and judgement, in what is essentially a people-centred industry based on honed contacts.
So, if you had to make a list revealing the value that AI brings to the process, versus the reasons why it could never take over from us humans, it may look something like this:
| Value of AI. It… |
The necessity of humans. They… |
| • streamlines lengthy and mundane tasks; | • are excellent at teasing out nuance; |
| • uncovers red flags hidden In the algorithm; and |
• select candidates according to culture fit; and |
| • scales efforts across positions, locations, and more. | • excel at building long-term industry relationships and expanding their highly useful network. |
A match made in heaven
Colleen Carrol, president at ProActivate, writes for LinkedIn Pulse that “the future of talent acquisition clearly lies in combining the strengths of AI, with human expertise”.
While human interaction remains a top priority in the quest to provide candidates with a 
positive experience (i.e. one filled with warmth, empathy and authenticity); AI offers up valuable data about a candidate’s skills, experience and performance history so that those based at executive search firms can proceed to make informed and objective decisions.
Although AI automates administrative tasks and highlights high-potential candidates, it cannot replace the deep networks or emotional intelligence that recruiters use to make culturally aligned placements. AI’s role in executive search, then, is best seen as a powerful, complementary tool, one that supports, not supplants, the human touch.
Jeremy Bossenger | Director | BossJansen Executive Search | mail me |
