Question
I’d love to hear your take on LinkedIn’s new AI (Artificial Intelligence) assistant for recruiting and hiring.
Nick’s Reply
They call it Artificial for a reason.
And I’ll let Mark Cuban back me up. Asked in a Wired interview about how AI is being used in screening job applicants and changing hiring, Cuban responded, “I think smart puppies are smarter than AI is today or in the near future…and I don’t think that’s going to change for a long time.” Pressed about how long, he said, “Ten years. Because wisdom doesn’t come with text.”
It seems Cuban heard the pitch about AI in human resources (HR), steepled his fingers and said, “I’m out.” If you want a blow-by-blow account of why AI in HR is a scandal that corporate America is carefully ignoring, read investigative journalist Hilke Schellmann’s stunning book, The Algorithm: How AI decides who gets hired, monitored, promoted and fired and why we need to fight back now.
GitHub eats LinkedIn’s breakfast
AI in the service of HR is so pitifully impotent that multi-million-dollar systems to automate recruiting and hiring are easily neutered by free code any job seeker can find on Microsoft’s Github.
Jason Koebler, cofounder of 404 Media, reports that, using Auto_Jobs_Applier_AIHawk he “applied for 17 jobs in an hour on LinkedIn.” Chewing automatically through one job posting after another while Koebler eats his breakfast, AIHawk enters his biographical information and creates custom resumes and cover letters for 2,843 jobs and submits them.
LinkedIn’s AI Hiring Assistant: It’s all in the family
There’s no need to agonize over how to engage the uber-automation of recruiting that drives job seekers to depression and despair. Koebler reports that AIHawk “is actively being used by thousands of people to use AI to automatically apply for jobs on LinkedIn at scale.”
This by itself is all you should need to know to avoid any kind of AI-based recruiting campaign on LinkedIn (or anywhere else) no matter what the company or job is. Code jockeys smarter than you have already exploited the AI’s pathetically fatal weaknesses.
Microsoft, which owns both LinkedIn and GitHub, just announced it has entered the AI agent race with LinkedIn Hiring Assistant — thereby pitting two of its businesses against one another. It’s “all in the family.”
My take is, Microsoft is promoting mutually assured destruction by triggering a ludicrous and very costly escalation of “HR technology” that, as Mark Cuban puts it, isn’t the equal of a smart puppy. For a few years, HR had the upper hand. It deployed the equivalent of an AI dog with a note in its mouth to “recruit.”
But once the code jockeys that live on GitHub figured it out, they sent their own dog with a note in its mouth to meet HR.
“A growing AI battle”: One HR consultant’s fantasy
Josh Bersin, a long-time apologist for HR’s shameless misapplications of technology to “people management,” gleefully eggs on the AI robo-dogs while they tear each other into millions of little digital pieces:
“There is now a growing AI battle between recruiter and candidates. As AI helps recruiters source and screen candidates, the candidates are using AI to ‘power-up’ their resumes. One of our clients told me that almost all their job applicants now submit resumes that look eerily similar to job descriptions. Why? Job candidates are using AI also!
“This means is that tools like LinkedIn Hiring Assistant are more essential than ever. As job seekers tweak their identity and even use AI interview assessments to game interviews, HR has to beef up its tools to better differentiate candidates.”
Translation:
Guys like Bersin make more money when HR and job seekers are encouraged to throw bigger and bigger digital dogs into a fray that no one wins except HR tech firms and HR consultants. (See New Recruiting: Let’s just hire ChatGPT)
Do we really need Mark Cuban to explain that his puppy is smarter than HR’s AI — and will be for at least another 10 years? Does HR really need pundits like Bersin to egg them on to keep spending billions on AI that is, well, Artificial?
Mark Cuban’s puppy
So, what do I think of LinkedIn’s AI Hiring Assistant? I think it’s just more BLAH BLAH BLAH. You’re better off being interviewed by Cuban’s dog.
Corporate boards of directors would do well to take a look at what HR is blowing their company’s money on. If that billion-dollar HR technology worked, code jockeys on GitHub wouldn’t be nuking it in their spare time. It doesn’t help to tell HR and job seekers that they each need to “beef up” their “AI tools” so they can really fake each other out.
Some advice to job seekers: While it may seem cool to “beat the AI” with more AI, consider that this AI war does nothing to get you the insider’s edge on getting hired for the right job at the right company. The notes in those robo-dogs’ mouths are…blank. Go around the barking dogs and learn to talk shop with people who do the work you want to do at the companies where you want to do it. That’s where jobs come from.
Advice to employers: Learn to recruit. That means get off your duff and go out to meet the people that make your industry go ‘round. That’s where talent comes from.
The Intelligence in LinkedIn’s AI Hiring Assistant is Artificial, so can we just make things simple and call it what it is — LinkedIn’s Stupid Hiring Assistant? The only real intelligence I see in this cockup is Mark Cuban’s puppy.
What’s your experience been with AI in your job search? Have you tried AI tools for job seekers? Is your puppy smarter than LinkedIn?
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I absolutely love this. The only thing stopping me from spooling up an instance of AIHawk and wasting HR’s time is that it would be unethical.
@Daniel: I agree that the current state of AI in recruiting, hiring and job hunting is unethical and, frankly, stupid and counterproductive. The mere existence of job-seeker tools like AIHawk suggests that HR has no intention of backing away from such technology itself and that job seekers are leveling the battlefield (does it really have to be a battlefield?) simply because they feel out-gunned. And they are. My hope is that someone on the HR side realizes that by effectively funding these tech companies HR is destroying its relationships with the professional communities from which it needs to recruit.
We’ve heard it so often that it seems like noise now: RESPECT for candidates is key to recruiting and hiring. And interposing fake intelligence between candidates and hiring managers reveals a fatal flaw in HR philosophy and practice. HR execs need to stop bragging how “high tech” they are when in fact they are clueless about the dangers this “technology” creates for employers and job seekers alike.
Thanks, Nick, for taking up the mantle on this latest gimmick. My weeks-old Boston Terrier puppy, Dr. Watson, also gave a “paws down” on LI’s Hiring Ass******.
@Andrew: Please give Dr. Watson an extra treat for me. I’ll cover you for it. And shorter product names are better. (And your suggestion is more accurate.)
<3 Dr. Watson is the "Paws" that Refreshes!
And along with this AI ping pong match on an HR table, is the dilution of accountability. Managers who put a low priority on recruiting now have a stronger excuse for the whine, “HR isn’t sending me good candidates.
If there’s an up side, it’s that HM’s who give a high priority to their hiring, put on a recruiting hat and find their own prospects, the old low tech way…by developing their own sources and …horrors….by actually talking with people.
As to the AI “assist” on both sides of the table, the users will find that what it’s doing, is automating bad practices.
And aforementioned Mgrs who are serious about finding & hiring qualified people will see through the smoke & mirrors and see them as time wasters disguised as an efficiency & take a pass on counting on it for help.
@Don:
“automating bad practices. “
Funny how some people get rewarded for that. It’s easier to make improvements on the technology than to the actual process.
I’ve said all along, if you’re smart and do what you know will work, this automated backdrop plays to your advantage. While everyone else is in the AI corral congratulating themselves for creating more busywork, you thereby have lots less competition.
I think we blew past the definition of AI.
It is Artificial Ignorance. How about a chicken with downs syndrome.
@Eddie: Chickens are about a notch below dogs, and several notches above AI which, although it lays eggs all the time now, produces nothing nourishing. Let’s not insult chickens. :-)
LinkedIn’s Stupid Hiring Assistant presents us with a shorter yet appropriate acronym: LISHA. Any bets on how long it takes LinkedIn to adopt the “name?”
Of course LinkedIn (and undoubtedly the other snake-oil sellers like Indeed and ZipRecruiter) are lining up to jump on the AI bandwagon. It’s new, it’s hot, give us more of your money! They’re counting on HR departments and lazy executives not knowing how AI works and succumbing to the fear of missing out.
It’s like if I hired my cats to shop for groceries, and now they want extra money so they can use my smart speaker to make the list.
@A.I. Is: You just gave me a belly laugh. Very apt analogy. At least your cats know how to use the technology you put at their disposal.
From what I read here, I get the impression that very many, perhaps most, large companies use automated methods by default, and deliberately make it very difficult for applicants and hiring managers to go around the official process. I assume this would include many of the biggest and most prestigious companies.
Two related thoughts:
1) This is a big red flag for applicants, not only because it is very likely to lead to a time-wasting, demeaning process followed by being ghosted, but also because these companies cannot possibly be hiring the best people and also show signs of over-control. Does a company with these practices really have a strong future, or has it already reached its peak?
2) How does one learn, other than by trial and error, which companies rely primarily upon respectful recruitment practices? Assuming they are, on average, smaller and harder to find than the obvious big names.
Is there any difference between the AI programs and executive management as far as intelligence goes nowadays? They both seem to have a hard time with basic tasks from what I’ve seen. If the hiring process involves “Artificial Intelligence” at an employer, consider them dumb and done. Computer software is no substitute for human cognition which, again, seems lacking at a lot of places today.
Nick, your title has a typo in it, just to let you know.