The rise of powerful, user-friendly AI tools in the last couple of years has had a huge impact on people’s personal and professional lives. Recruiters are using generative AI tools to fine-tune their job openings, applicants are using them to polish their job applications, and companies are investigating how to use the technology to streamline and automate their existing workflows.
Historically, when powerful new tools like modern AI arrive, people have feared being replaced by technology. So what do today’s workers think?
According to the results of our 2024 Workmonitor survey, they’re excited about the potential of AI. Based on the responses of the 27,000 workers we surveyed around the world, employees are enthusiastic and curious about working with AI. For employers, it looks like the main priority is not to convince employees of the benefits of AI, but make sure they get the AI knowledge they are demanding.
In the latest survey, 72% of respondents said training and development was important for their career, and AI took first place as the most common skill they wanted to develop, with 29% naming it as their top priority. The year before, AI was the third-most-wanted skill — showing a major shift in priorities in a short period.
The 2024 Workmonitor survey produced more evidence for this positive attitude, when most respondents (45%) said they believed AI would contribute to their own career growth and promotion opportunities — not replace them at work.
However, the gap between workers’ preferences and their reality is obvious. Even though almost three-quarters of respondents in 2024’s survey say training is important to them and 36% wouldn’t even accept a job that didn’t offer it, only 52% said their employer was actually helping them develop future work skills. And AI-specific training still seems uncommon — in 2024’s survey, a quarter of respondents (24%) said that they would quit a job if they weren't offered learning and development opportunities to future proof skills (e.g. AI).
Fears of mass unemployment are common when new technologies come to market. As highlighted in this this MIT Technology Review article, all the technological advances of the 20th century were accompanied by concerns about workers being made obsolete. It’s true that AI will have an impact on current business processes — a 2023 report from the World Economic Forum found that a majority of companies plan to accelerate automation in the near future. However, they also plan to shift workers from declining roles to growing ones.
Advances in AI aren’t going to make humans obsolete. However, it is important that employers prepare for the AI transition — training, governance and experimentation are all necessary for realising the potential of AI.
what is the potential of AI for recruitment?
It’s likely that a major contributing factor in the positive attitude towards AI is its efficiency-boosting applications. Rather than making them obsolete, many professionals understand that AI can help them streamline repetitive tasks and develop creative ideas. In recruitment, these applications include:
- Automating routine candidate interactions — like screening, interview booking and other candidate engagement measures. Thanks to the performance of today’s AI tools, these chatbots are much more capable than yesterday’s buggy and overly rigid chatbots that irritate candidates and generate negative headlines.
- Creating enticing job descriptions — generative AI tools can take basic information about a position and turn them into attractive job descriptions, tailored for each audience. An application has the power to really make the difference in your talent search — according to a survey from job platform The Muse, 55% of candidates consider the job description a useful indicator of whether a job will be right for them.
- Interpreting candidate applications — Modern AI tools based on large language models (LLMs) can uncover the true meaning of a text much better than standard tools, providing more accurate candidate selection and creating better matches. In this way, AI hiring tools can avoid issues with typical keyword searches that risk discounting attractive candidates who simply haven’t used the right keywords in their applications.
Recruitment is a people-focused business, and the human touch will always be necessary. However, human-AI collaboration can make human recruiters more efficient and help them make better decisions.
what’s the next step for employers?
Our surveys have shown that workers are keen to start integrating AI tools into their daily work. Now, the pressure is on employers to adapt. We have three main recommendations for companies who want to start experiencing the benefits of AI:
- Work to fully understand the benefits of AI — but also become informed on the potential drawbacks, such as algorithmic bias and AI discrimination.
- Develop internal AI guidelines and policies that guide the use of ethical AI in the organisation and empower employees to use AI responsibly.
- Ensure human oversight whenever AI is used for business purposes.
Companies that follow these recommendations will open themselves up to the creativity and productivity benefits of AI tools and build a culture of responsible, ethical AI use.
find out more the potential of AI in recruitment
To get more background on the potential impact of AI in recruitment, the attitudes of workers towards the technology and our recommendations to talent and regulators in the age of AI, click below to download our presentation, ‘the labour market and AI: something to fear or embrace?’
It’s a condensed version of our longer position paper, and aims to give you the basic facts around AI’s effect on the recruitment industry in an easily-digested package.