Unilever‘s Practice on AI-based Recruitment

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is shaping the reality of human resource management (HRM). It is ideal for HRM to do predictive decision-making tasks like recruitment and selection. Talent acquisition includes identifying qualified candidates, aligning assessment methods with job or performance-related criteria, and managing administrative discretion in the hiring process. Other threats like high volumes of applications, biases in candidate selection, and a shortage of qualified candidates also bother recruiter teams. While AI-based recruitment supported by the natural language process (NLP) addresses such challenges by automating or augmenting various aspects of recruitment, such as sourcing, screening, and interviewing candidates. Unilever started its partnership with HireVue and Pymetrics to design a system of recruitment, selection and onboarding supported by AI in 2016. This article uses the case analysis method to discuss Unilever’s application of AI in the recruitment and selection process. The analysis will be conducted in the context of social network site (SNS), gamification, and verbal computer mediated communication (VCMC). Unilever saved bunches of time and cost, while improving its HRM performance. Such decision-making tools associated with AI raise concerns of bias and private crisis. This article is also aimed to discuss such a phenomenon in the context of Unilever. Talent acquisition by AI is an inevitable trend. This article is helpful as a benchmark.