The Atlantic points out that while artificial intelligence is being applied to the job market by both applicants and employers, fewer people are being hired.
Corporate profits are strong, the jobless rate is 4.3 percent, and wages are climbing in turn. But payrolls have been essentially frozen for the past four months. The hiring rate has declined to its lowest point since the jobless recovery following the Great Recession. Four years ago, employers were adding four or five workers for every 100 they had on the books, month in and month out. Now they are adding three.
At the same time, the process of getting a job has become a late-capitalist nightmare. Online hiring platforms have made it easier to find an opening but harder to secure one: Applicants send out thousands of AI-crafted résumés, and businesses use AI to sift through them. What Bumble and Hinge did to the dating market, contemporary human-resources practices have done to the job market. People are swiping like crazy and getting nothing back.
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For employers, the job market is working differently too. Businesses receive countless ill-fitting applications, along with a few good ones, for each open position. Rather than poring over the submissions by hand, they use machines. In a recent survey, chief HR officers told the Boston Consulting Group that they are using AI to write job descriptions, assess candidates, schedule introductory meetings, and evaluate applications. In some cases, firms are using chatbots to interview candidates, too. Prospective hires log in to a Zoom-like system and field questions from an avatar. Their performance is taped, and an algorithm searches for keywords and evaluates their tone.
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The impossibility of getting to the interview stage spurs jobless workers to submit more applications, which pushes them to rely on ChatGPT to build their résumés and respond to screening prompts ... And so the cycle continues: The surge in same-same AI-authored applications prompts employers to use robot filters to manage the flow. Everyone ends up in Tinderized job-search hell.
There's more at the link.
It's a conundrum. All those who claim that new technologies may displace older jobs, but also open up new ones, are finding that the old explanation no longer applies. Technology is providing more and more information on both sides of the equation, and (supposedly) speeding up the handling of applications: but it's also focusing in on small details and exact matches to such an extent that people who might have been considered for a job in the past, no longer meet the much stricter criteria being applied.
I can't see this as healthy. When I worked in the corporate world, in supervisory and middle management, I always looked at an applicant's work record first, to see what they'd actually achieved in previous jobs. That was far more important to me than their academic credentials or other factors. If their employment history showed increasing levels of responsibility as they progressed, and they could point to measurable yardsticks like completed projects or industry recognition, they were the kind of people I wanted to hire. However, AI doesn't look at that in an overall sense: instead, it has lists of key words, and if an applicant's work history doesn't include enough of them, they're unlikely to ever get to the interview stage. I regard that as a cop-out. Managers are using it to avoid having to do too much research into applicants, and don't want to take the trouble to dig deep to find new staff with the greatest potential. By relying on "the system", they evade personal responsibility.
I have to admit, I'm glad I'm not looking for a job in today's market. It sounds increasingly like a no-win situation for far too many people.
Peter
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