There’s something incredibly stupid about talking about the future. Because there's always a high risk of being wrong.
I’m going to do it anyway.
We’ve entered a critical moment in time, one where not thinking ahead to what’s coming next feels even riskier. Right now, there are a lot of outside forces that are influencing change within the talent acquisition space, and there are a lot of people on the inside of TA that are filled with uncertainty about it. So in an effort to alleviate some of that anxiousness and help you grapple with this profound pivot point, I’m going to make a prediction about where things are going. My hope is that by the time it gets there, you’ll already be waiting.
Skate to where the puck is going, not where it’s been. Hey, if it worked for Wayne Gretsky, it can work for TA.
So where are we going? Well, towards massive change. I think we all feel it, and it’s already manifesting itself in a lot of tangible ways. The world as we know it is shifting in front of our eyes almost on a daily basis. When you think about these monumental leaps in history, the spark for change is almost always a piece of technology. The loom. The lightbulb. The computer. And what immediately followed those innovations was a period of chaos.
There’s a new spark for change: AI.
And the messy, chaotic period? We’re in it.
We’ve seen a lot of life-altering technological advancements in the past couple of decades, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen something quite like AI. It’s propelling us forward at warpspeed and shattering foundational principles we all thought we knew about work. Heck, about the world. And that rapid pace of change is what makes it so hard to predict what the next few years will look like, because we often don’t even know what the next day might bring.
Think about this: 10 years ago we all got around by hailing taxis, right? Today, if you went out on a curb and waved your around people would think you’re either insane or a time traveler. Why don’t you just call an Uber like a normal person? But the funny thing is, 10 years ago the concept of using an app on your phone to hire a complete stranger to pick you up in their car would have seemed even more nuts. Nobody saw that coming.
That’s the secret to skating to where the puck is going: Figuring out the thing that will be normal in the future that seems crazy now. We think that thing is “conversations.”
Imagine a world where there is no UI. There is no “backend” to login into. There are no dropdowns menus or form fields or dashboards. Everything gets done through conversations — in essence, conversational AI becomes the new UI. Sounds pretty crazy, right?
That’s the future I’m predicting. And I actually don’t think we’re too far away.
In fact, you’re already seeing this happen in everyday life. Twenty years ago I had to go into an office and login to a desktop computer in order to work. Then laptops came around and things got a little more flexible. Nowadays, sometimes I go into a meeting with just my phone because I can do 99% of the things I need on it. So in a sense, we do know what tomorrow will look like in the HR space, because we’ve already lived it. We’ve already used it.
The challenge is — and always has been — contextualizing the latest tech to work within recruiting and hiring. Because not everything does. We’ve worked on lots of different stuff internally that won’t ever see the light of the day, because despite being pretty darn cool it simply doesn’t make anything drastically different. And from that trying and failing, we’ve learned that the biggest needle mover is with interview scheduling. It’s essentially the gateway to conversational AI; recruiters don’t want to do it, and candidates don’t get any fulfillment from having a person do it for them. We’ve seen many of our clients start there, and then figure out how to leverage AI to solve other problems.
We’ve seen a lot of life-altering technological advancements in the past couple of decades, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen something quite like AI.
We have clients that are automating 100% of the application process via text message and sending offer letters within 10 minutes. We’ve seen time to hire go from 3 weeks to 3 days. We’re going to automatically schedule about 25 million candidate interviews this year. All things made possible through conversational AI. We’re not quite at the point where there’s “no UI”, but we’re also not at square one. And everyday we get a little bit closer, and this conversational vision of the future becomes a little less crazy.
Every day of my working life, I’ve gone to a computer and logged in. I think that’s going to end soon. The way we interface with work — with the world — will become conversational. Will it be six months or six years? That I’m not sure of. But it’s also sort of besides the point. The puck is going to wind up there, eventually.
And if you haven’t already started skating in that direction, you better start.
