What the NEET Crisis can Teach us About the way we hire

The hiring and recruitment space is experiencing more change than ever before. Just over a million 16 to 24-year-olds in the UK are now out of work, education or training, according to the Office for National Statistics. Added to this, LinkedIn has found that vacancies are at a five-year low and 89% of UK recruiters say they plan to use more AI in hiring this year.

The compounded effect of young people being out of work, and recruiters admitting they’ll be increasing their use of AI in hiring, is perhaps why Prime Minister, Andy Burnham recently criticised what he called “the culture” of virtual interviews, over apps like Zoom and Teams.  He argued that a young person can’t possibly show their personality or their passion through a screen.

This all raises some important considerations for education providers and employers. Technology has its place when it comes to hiring, so long as it’s coupled with strong human judgement. For the further education sector, which is both preparing young people for work and facing its own challenges in recruiting the next generation of teachers, good judgement when hiring is non-negotiable.

Where AI belongs in hiring, and where it shouldn’t get a vote

Used well, AI can be beneficial. It can strip names, schools and addresses out of an application so that a first review is based on what someone can do, rather than where they’re applying from. It can handle complex interview scheduling logistics, which can be fiddly and time consuming. It can summarise or draft interview notes, so the panel is comparing candidates like-for-like, leaving them to concentrate their attention on the interviewee.

What AI can’t do is judge whether a young person will grow into a job. That call needs to be made by a person, and benefit of good automation and use of technology in recruitment is that buys back the time to make that call properly.

Where the use of AI in hiring tends to go wrong is when tools are used to make all the decisions.  Applications being rejected within minutes because a system didn’t find the keyword it wanted on a CV, even where they had talked about the same skill – just using different words. On some occasions where CVs are passing the first stage, applicants are being interviewed by a bot and never get to speak to a real person. If an algorithm has been trained on the profiles of people you’ve hired before, it will look for more people just like them, and great candidates with fresh perspectives may get filtered out.

Virtual interviews at early stages with a real person on the other end, can widen the net of talent available for the job. Geography stops being a barrier to applicants, time to hire drops, and candidates who can’t afford a day off and a train fare can take part. But there are two conditions. First, glitchy audio and frozen video could make perfectly capable people look disorganised.

Second, it’s harder to conduct deeper stage interviews virtually. Culture and team fit are much better judged in person, and in sectors like further education, where personality is a large makeup of the job, culture is table stakes. For vocational colleges, a plumbing or electrical installation tutor needs both industry credibility and expertise, and the ability to hold a classroom’s attention. That ability is far better judged by another human, preferably in person.

Ghosting is tied to the systems in place, not the tools being used

The complaint I hear most from young people looking for a job is that they have applied for hundreds of roles and gotten nowhere, or they’re “ghosted” when organisations go dark after just one stage of the process. This can’t be blamed on technology; we need to look holistically at the way hiring is handled.

Candidates should never be ignored, or kept in the dark, even if that means automating some status updates or communications throughout the recruitment process. Taking this stance also pays off later. How someone is treated as a candidate shapes how they feel about the entire organisation, which has a knock-on effect on engagement, and their intent to stay.

The best answer to a hiring problem is sometimes not a hire

If your hiring managers are too stretched to show up at any point in the recruitment process, that’s a signal to look inwards first to fill roles. You may already employ someone who can do the job, or who could do it with a few months of support behind them. That only works if you know what your people are capable of. Too many organisations have a clear view of the skills they are recruiting for, and a hazy one of the skills they already have. Regular development conversations, a live picture of what people want to do and the skills they will need to get there, as well as access to continuous learning that builds on that, are what make internal moves possible. Filling a gap by promoting someone or moving them across from another team, frees up the time and financial investment needed to make space for the entry-level roles young people are currently on the hunt for.

AI in hiring isn’t the threat. Every stage of a process can be supported by technology, but the moments that decide someone’s future should still involve a person who is prepared to make the time and provide the proper judgement. For colleges, the stakes are doubled. The staff you hire shape what young people believe is possible, and the way they are hired preps them to make the right judgement calls in their own use of technology and AI going forward.

By Jeanette Wheeler, Chief People Officer at MHR