What can a robot teach recruiters about writing? (And how can you stop them stealing your job?)

As our resident HR expert, I’m really interested in the rise of tools like Textio. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a system that, among other things, analyses your language to point out where you’ve slipped into jargon or used words with a certain gender bias. It’s fascinating stuff, and it’s particularly popular with recruiters who want to write clear, gender-neutral job ads.

You might wonder why I’m writing about it – after all, it probably sounds like Textio should be one of our competitors. But it’s not quite as simple as that. As clever as these AI tools are, they’ll always have limits. They give you interesting data, but they’re not pretending to replace living, breathing writers.

Yet.

To make sure it stays that way, I think there are a few things recruiters can do to stay ahead of the robots.

Think like a robot…

Textio describes itself as a ‘learning system’. That’s because it bases its analysis on job ads and descriptions that are online right now. So, the feedback it gives you today won’t necessarily be the same analysis it gives you in six months or two years from now. That’s something writers could all learn from.

Rather than assuming you know what jobseekers want to hear just because your ads have worked well in the past, immerse yourself in your ideal candidate’s language. What do they read? What do they listen to? Talk to your newest recruits: find out what they care about, what challenges them, what inspires them. Don’t let your language leave you behind.

…but use some writerly common sense, too

The good thing about analysing writing as a writer rather than as a robot is that you can filter the sense from the nonsense. You understand nuance in a way a robot can’t. Do you remember Microsoft’s attempt at creating an AI chat bot? It drew its content from real online chats, and it took about 24 hours for the thing to become so racist and genocidal that Microsoft had to take it offline.

As a human writer, you can read something and check it all hangs together properly, and feels consistent. Don’t just stitch together old copy-and-pasted paragraphs that have done quite well in the past. A robot could do that. You can do better.

Write the job ads only your company could write

Neil Gaiman once advised aspiring authors to ‘start telling the stories only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you, and there’ll always be smarter writers than you […] but you are the only you.’

The same thing goes for job ads. There’ll always be bigger companies out there, or companies that have won more awards, but pretending to be the same as them isn’t the answer. If you try to sound like Google, and you hire people who really want to work for Google, they’ll probably leave you at some point to join Google.

Instead, if you want your company and the role you’re recruiting for to stand out, then write about things the robots can’t know and your competitors can’t copy. What stories can you tell about your culture, your team, or what makes your role completely different from anything else?

It’s not just the content of your message; it’s also the tone that’s going to set you apart. In the days before Innocent Drinks, no one sounded like Innocent. Now, friendly chit-chatty brands are ten-a-penny and easy to copy. But they’re hard for a candidate to choose between.

So recruiters, it’s over to you. If you want to bring the best possible candidates into your business, don’t let AI do all the work for you. Remember, if you can develop a genuinely distinctive tone that matches your culture, you’re always going to be on to a winner. And that, for now at least, is something the robots simply can’t do.

0 min read, posted in Training, by Admin, on 9 Nov 2016