AI Proof Pitching

There's a presently observed HR dichotomy.

We're all about people. Empathy transcends. A culture most gleaming. Where you can be your best self.

So we'll hire you by AI.

S'pose we ought expect nothing less from our colleagues latterly vying to be the standout epitome of the Sales Prevention Department.

I've blogged on similar lines before. Having helped sales managers with optimal interviewing, I've long realised the winning candidates are too often rejected at the outset. Then by the time you're through the typically drawn out process, is anyone really happy?

Indeed, the concept of Empty Chairs extends to the ultimate danger of filling a seat on your team with someone who doesn't fit. An outcome, at present, it seems clear AI does not avoid. And may well race towards. Yes, you might've "saved" yourself untold, unwelcome interminable hours of application form sifting. Yet still bound very much to lose-lose.

I'd love to witness the genuine deployment of such computing might that genuinely overcomes innate recruiter errors. Which include mistakenly preferring someone that's already been doing the exact spec requirements somewhere else for yonks, ignoring what's at the fringes, and mis-weighting traits that best predicate role success. And they're each before you get to the abject dismissal of anything that resembles the spark, innovation and individuality that they achingly claim to value.

Does AI better guarantee the right calls in a tight marketplace are made? If it did, in an environment like with stalled employment in the UK right now for instance, it'd be priceless. Exacerbated as it is by British businesses scared off taking on new starters through a punitive combination of employer tax rises and day one 'rights'. The old maxim rears its head, to the delight of competing territories; 'where you can fire the most you also hire the most'. Their growth duly rises.

[sidenote - when this crops up with those running businesses, I naturally recommend the contingent workforce approach, where having someone in-and-out for a project, task or short-term fill can work wonders for both parties]

One day, maybe sooner than we'd suspect, AI might be reveal missing magic here.

I recently read how there looms an inexorable direction of travel; "the endgame of this reliance on AI will be horribly retrograde".

As I blog today (& earlier in the year), this tech also veers towards a homogenising force.

Where anything from corporate ads, through cars, to even coffee shops gravitate towards a blanding sameness around the world, similar danger threatens suffocating our arena's recruitment. The digital prose of applicants indistinguishable from each other. Even if they tell their bot to be 'different'.

With our own recruitment, for some roles the 'gig' style commission can be a pathway. Only as a properly remunerated endeavour, mind.

Beyond those, plenty preach in favour of in-person interviews. I for one, also like to judge acumen through a well-crafted video interview.

And at the very start, it pays to ask questions that are as AI-proof as possible.

What can you ask that would flummox a candidate's AI bot?

In short, anything that is not open to being ravished as training data. So all that is not already online. Such as specifics of actual selling campaign events and intimacy with results.

The same applies if we expand on this. Both when we apply for jobs and when we sell. How do we ensure we're not sounding the same as our competition?

Lean into detail. Use actual quotes. Strengthen storytelling expertise.

You can even test out ideas for your own questions conversing with such bot. Refining as you go.

In either place we must aim for distinctiveness. Create that human connection which when apparent, ensures a win-win.