AI in the recruitment activities and its implications for AL Industry

It is a globally recognized fact that Artificial intelligence (AI) has jolted each and every aspect around us – all the functions have been transformed to a great extent, and knowledge has taken one definitive step towards democratization. AL Circle has been publishing these recent developments on its website with the help of periodic columns (AL Tech) or blogs. Out of the many fields which are the front-runners of the digital transformation journey with the use of AI, recruitment is a prominent one. Like many other industries, the world of Aluminium is also increasingly relying on AI tools for driving recruitment. 

The requirements of manpower in the aluminium industry:

Like any other industry, the aluminium world tries to obtain access to the best of the talents. The usage and production of aluminium have shown a steady increase over the last decade, and the trend is also continuing in the days to come as well. As a result, employment in the Aluminium industry is also increasing significantly every year, along with new types of roles getting created. At present, the estimated employment in the sector, including direct and indirect global employment, is around 8 million* (including upstream and downstream aluminium industry and recycling as well). Increasing focus on digital marketing, sustainable way of working, supply chain transformation, online marketplace management and technology-related work, etc., are also contributing significantly to generating new employment in the Aluminium world.

While there are some roles where company-to-company shifting of manpower is taking place, there are many roles for which people are coming from other industries within the aluminium industry as well. For example, AL Circle’s research shows that an increasing number of Aluminium companies are recruiting Chief Sustainability Officers and people in the sustainability department or related initiatives. Such roles often come from outside the Aluminium value chain, creating a unique challenge of articulating the right requirement, attracting and selecting the right talents and, most importantly, retaining them.

Key problems facing recruitment in the Aluminium world:

The key problems related to recruitment in the Aluminium industry are the following.

The right Job description: As explained in the previous section, articulating the requirement of any job role is paramount. With the right job description, the expectation from the role in question is clear. The candidates develop a sound understanding of the role from a good job description; hence, the applications are more pointed and lesser becomes the chance of any expectation mismatch. However, in reality, HR managers create job descriptions, and often it is difficult for them to articulate the intricacies of the job role. Receiving cryptic job descriptions from the business functions is also often not enough.

The screening effort: In most cases, the applications are screened by the HR team and sometimes shared with the junior most member of the functional departments. As a result, often, some differently written CVs or applications are cancelled, leading to high levels of Type-2 errors (i.e. situations where a suitable candidate gets rejected). The time taken for manual screening is also strenuous at times, and hence often, manual error creeps in.

Screening tests:  Sometimes, organizations take screening tests on some aspects related to the field for which the recruitment takes place. However, due to the manual effort required to evaluate the papers, often such screening tests are multiple-choice questions than perspectives. As a result, softer aspects like empathy or innovative or critical thinking elements are often missed in such tests, which also increases the overall risk associated with the recruitment process.

Candidates’ fitment and coping with the environment: Companies often try to gauge the fitment of a candidate to a particular role or the organization as a result of a few answers. However, whether the candidate can cope with the company's working environment and how many days he or she can work are often left to anybody’s guess. This, again, creates a significant risk for the organization.

Solutions with the help of AI:

AI can offer unique solutions to each of these problems. The following table highlights such potential solutions:

Conclusion:

It is already an established fact that globally more than 50% of the HR community, especially the ones related to the recruitment, are using AI to ease their regular work and increasing their effectiveness and efficiency. The HR cohort from the Aluminium Industry is also catching up rapidly with this trend. The same will only increase in the recent future and bring more efficiency to the process. This will have many more implications in the Aluminium industry as the future training programs will be designed accordingly. The future targeted skill map will be developed accordingly and even the performance appraisals will be done with the help of various AI tools. Team AL Circle will soon launch a report on Digital Transformation in- the Aluminium world. Stay tuned to the same to know more about such interesting applications of AI in the Aluminium world.

*Source: AL Circle research