The recruitment process is evolving.
Job interviews have a new science fiction feel to them.
Not only are robots interviewing candidates, the future of a job interview will be the Metaverse.
Facebooks CEO Mark Zuckerberg in June of this year told the Facebook team about the future of the company, and that they would build a world known as the metaverse.
The word ‘metaverse’ was first coined in the 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson’s . The metaverse refers to a convergence of physical, augmented, and virtual reality in a shared online space.
The metaverse will be a mix of a physical and virtual world, with its own economy and users will be able to take their avatars and goods throughout the metaverse.
The metaverse wouldn’t be owned by Zuckerberge, instead it will be a collaboration where different companies and individuals add to it, just as they do with the internet.
In an interview with The Verge, Zuckerberg said, “This is a big topic. The metaverse is a vision that spans many companies — the whole industry. You can think about it as the successor to the mobile internet.
And it’s certainly not something that any one company is going to build, but I think a big part of our next chapter is going to hopefully be contributing to building that, in partnership with a lot of other companies and creators and developers. But you can think about the metaverse as an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content — you are in it”
Artificial Intelligence and Job Interviews.
Lets take a step back to the present day.
Currently we are seeing a move away from human job interviewers, especially for the initial recruitment stage.
In an article on Slate about AI stressing out job candidates, they said: “A growing number of real-life recruiters are turning to A.I.-led job interviews, using programs that interview and assess candidates before a human recruiter even lays eyes on them.”
Why would an employer turn to AI led interviewing processes?
Well, why not? In the past 20 years businesses have seen an huge increase in the number of applications for every advertised job role.
On one HR statics website, a statistic stated that “On average, each corporate job offer attracts 250 resumes. Of those candidates, 4 to 6 will get called for an interview, and only one will get the job.”
Other organisations, especially sector leaders, have quoted applicant numbers in their thousands. In short, employers simply don’t have the time to check each individual job application form.
Currently the increase for AI job interviews is showing an indication of the future of recruitment processes.
AI robot interviewers are mainly used to decline unsuitable applicants, reducing the number of hirable interviewees, before a human interview panel takes over.
The ways AI interviews Work.
Do robotic interviewers seem like a strange idea?
Well, AI have been employed for a long time to create job adverts, to post vacancies and to scan CVs and Application forms – yes robots, not humans are declining applicants or offering job interview slots.
In a new report by Jobscan they explain how just under 99% of Fortune 500 companies use applicant tracking systems to scan resumes with a view to streamline the recruiting process.
Robotic interviews are becoming so popular that LinkedIn has a free A.I. video interview practice tool to help applicants prepare for the online job interview.
Currently in a virtual video job interview, applicants get access to a private interview video platform. Once registered, the applicant will be introduced to the interview process. The AI robotic interviewer will ask, on average, 4 questions and each applicant has a minute (or maybe two minutes for some companies) to deliver their answer.
- There is no way to stop and repeat the recording
- If the applicant talks for over the allocated time, the video recording simply stops
- No preparation time is given to adjust the interview video framing
Successful interviewee’s are then invited to the next round of job interview, often conducted by a real person.
Are AI Job Interview’s Effective?
There are some standout benefits to the AI interviewer:
- Robots aren’t effected by charismatic characteristics of some interviewees (this could be a negative if the personality is one of the job criteria)
- AI interviewers don’t get distracted but they do have bias (as the data given is from human data sets)
- Robots aren’t effected by tiredness, the time of day or if they haven’t had breakfast
- AI hiring managers will deliver a structured job interview without going off script (but can they ask follow up questions or encourage a skilled but nervous applicant to say more?)
- There is a more consistent approach with a AI recruiter but robots would struggle with an informal interview process
- 20,000 plus candidates a day can be interviewed and assessed by a AI interviewing programme
Metaverse and Job Interviews.
Big tech companies have been working on 3D and interactive technology for some time. Currently, tech like VR googles are big and clunky, but as technology companies make these gadgets more commercial the like hood of a metaverse lifestyle is highly likely.
This means that two people, an employer and candidate, can meet for a job interview in the metaverse rather then the company head office.
The metaverse job interview isn’t just way to save time on travelling, instead the interactive features of the metaverse can help both the applicant and interviewer to see if they are the right fit for each other.
How the metaverse will work as a recruitment tool?
As part of the metaverse recruitment process , the employer will ask a number of behavioral and situational job interview questions.
In addition, the employer could view how an applicant works by setting them a business-as-usual task under conditions that often appear in their sector – this could be a time pressured situation for a broker, or a structural engineer having to produce calculations for a complex structural design.
The metaverse will bring enormous opportunity to individuals who want to work from homes and employers will be able to test how the employee would work remotely (and in the metaverse) and collaboratively on projects.
Applicants will be able to show work, data, videos and statistics in 3D during the metaverse job interview, providing evidence to back up their claims of suitability.
Employers can check applicants online social media feeds live in the interview questioning the candidates on their motivations for posting about a certain topic.
Zuckerberg, in his interview with The Verge explained power of metaverse interactions “The interactions that we have will be a lot richer, they’ll feel real. In the future, instead of just doing this over a phone call, you’ll be able to sit as a hologram on my couch, or I’ll be able to sit as a hologram on your couch, and it’ll actually feel like we’re in the same place, even if we’re in different states or hundreds of miles apart. So I think that that is really powerful.”
In the metaverse, applicants will be able to choose their on avatar – could this help with unconscious bias? And their might even be a need for metaverse only job roles.
We don’t currently know how the metaverse will evolve the job interview process, but as evidence points to an increase in AI recruitment managers and remote working, it is highly likely that a metaverse recruitment process is on the cards.
