Diversity & Inclusion, Equity, Talent Acquisition
A look at how generative artificial intelligence (AI) affects recruitment, talent development, and other HR duties.
ChatGPT is inescapable, developing rapidly, and gaining steam as its impact on how we do our jobs unfolds in real time.
The ways it can streamline an HR pro’s job appear endless, with the biggest and most immediate impact happening on the recruiting side of HR.
“Your imagination is the limit really of what it can do,” says Kevin Wheeler, founder and president of in OpenAI ChatGPT, and pretty much every recruiting company is already in the process of negotiating, or already signed, a contract with them.”
When it comes to recruiting, ChatGPT can help sift through resumes, communicate with job candidates, and write interview questions and job descriptions.
“One of the things that recruiters and hiring managers aren’t very good at is writing engaging job descriptions,” Wheeler says. “They’re usually really boring, so they’re already using it for that quite a bit.”
But no matter how well-written a job description is, it’s what happens after someone applies where ChatGPT might make a significant difference.
“We know there’s a lot of bias in resumes — no question about that — and I’m not sure that ChatGPT will be any better at it than humans are, but I think some of the algorithms may ultimately become more discriminating, [and] I mean that in a positive way.”
ChatGPT can be asked to look at the skills a candidate offers and not the name, he says.
“We know already that if you submit two CVs — with one with an African American name and one with a European name — the European name will almost always get preferred treatment,” Wheeler says. “If you could strip those names off the CVs, that would make it less biased.”
According to a where they “discussed ways in which AI and automated systems in the workplace might support or hinder diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) efforts.”
Accuracy is a concern among many.
“Sometimes humans allow their biases (even unconscious biases) to seep into their decision-making,” says Joe Atkinson, chief products & technology officer at PwC, who points out the data generative AI pulls from “are relying on pools of data that may, unfortunately, reflect or incorporate those biases because they’re made up in large part by the outcomes of countless human decisions and actions.”
Wheeler agrees “there’s been some colossal mistakes made with algorithms,” pointing to and inadvertently eliminated all women.
“The reason was that AI is based on historical data, and so the AI researched all the historical data of all the hires in Amazon in one particular area, technology, and the vast majority of hires were men,” Wheeler says. “So it made an assumption that it only wanted to hire men.”
"Yes, it will take some jobs, but we will continue to need that HR professional role in potentially expanded or different kinds of work.” - Kevin Wheeler
Learning & development
Another way ChatGPT might help create equity in the workplace is around fair pay and promotions — key ingredients to building great cultures.
“How might ChatGPT be able to do more of the analytics associated with who’s getting promoted and how long they stay, and what our pay levels are,” says .
AI can look inside a company to find employees with skills needed for new roles and provide them with opportunities they may not have had. If you’re looking for a new marketing hire, for instance, you might find someone who has writing skills who you weren’t previously aware of.
“It’s looking at parallel skills,” Wheeler says. “What things could you do, even though you don’t do them now, that your skills might match for?”
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