How AI and Automation Can Rescue IT Labor Market from Crashing

7 min read

The pandemic has exposed a major weakness in the labor market. Practically, all companies now have staffing issues1.

At Devexperts, we primarily serve the financial sector and know that it eagerly leans towards innovations. But does it have the capability and willingness to use the latest technology to mitigate the personnel crisis? In this article, we review several worthy third-party solutions and talk about our first-hand experience in applying AI for HR purposes.

Even before the pandemic, good engineers were as good as gold, so hiring and retaining them was challenging for companies. When the pandemic hit and the tech sector went remote, people realized they could work for almost any company worldwide, and their employment options expanded extraordinarily. Naturally, Big Tech companies and well-developed countries offered higher salaries and more benefits. In turn, others had to try and match their offers.

To be fair, companies are also to blame for this disruption in the labor market. Some of them were hesitant to offer higher pay to workers. At some point, it became more beneficial for workers to get an offer from another employer rather than negotiate compensation at their current workplace2.

After Covid hit the globe, the market situation only deteriorated, as the competition for talents kept heating up.

The good news is—technology can help mitigate this crisis.

Two areas where technology can help you

1. Hiring

In the IT sector, candidates are tired of pushy recruiters and tend to avoid their salesy pressure. Surprisingly, chatbots can help here. Despite the limitations of a messenger’s UI, applicants find it convenient for getting digests on new openings (especially with personal configurable alerts). After that, they can find desirable positions, apply, and go through preliminary questionnaires, and only then will they schedule a call with a recruiter.

It could be either your company’s bot or one provided by a recruitment agency.

Some uber-like platforms help you find a freelancer, a contractor, or a team. These make it cheaper and faster to augment staff (for non-mission-critical tasks, of course).

Some cloud-based HR solutions can help to increase the hiring process’s efficiency. Now, this may not sound like cutting-edge technology. However, many companies still have a lower level of maturity in recruitment processes compared to what their sales and marketing teams find borderline okayish (when it comes to cloud solutions).

Another trend in technology for HR is AI-based tools. Every step of the recruitment process can be backed by AI. Some companies apply machine learning to help optimize job descriptions, others use it to target applicants through algorithmic recommendations.

While LinkedIn uses basic machine learning for recommending jobs, its competitors like Indeed, Glassdoor, and Seek use somewhat more advanced algorithms. These platforms build interactive maps based on the users’ information about past searches, interactions, and other activities.

As an example of an instrument that targets applicants through algorithmic recommendations, we can cite PhenomPeople3. It’s a set of ML-based tools that lure potential talents into a company’s site through various social media and job hunt channels.

Some AI tools can even analyze interviews with candidates to determine which one is best for the job. Software vendors also offer solutions for psychological assessments for the same purpose.

MIT has recently reviewed4 these solutions, highlighting MyInterview5 and Curious Thing6. Their algorithms analyze candidates’ responses to determine their personality traits. MyInterview also compiles scores indicating how closely a candidate matches the ideal characteristics for the position (as set by the hiring managers).

2. Productivity

If a company struggles to meet demand with less staff, technology can help free up capacity, so teams can do more with less.

Digital automation solutions help go through larger amounts of work with fewer resources. These streamline workflows and eliminate redundancies and mundane tasks. A couple of years ago, Oracle came up with a comprehensive report7 on applying ML solutions for HR purposes. 

AI-based HR solutions can also help reduce the risk of employees’ burnout, stress, and low morale. That’s because they lighten the load on your staff. One of these tools is Erudit AI Inc.8 It measures employee engagement and notifies employers of burnout and turnover risk, so they can nurture passion and job satisfaction, measure the success of talent retention programs, and intervene before employees hit a breaking point.

At Devexperts we’ve embedded Devexa, our AI virtual assistant, into our corporate messenger, HR back-office, and project tracking software. Devexa helps our employees save time on mundane tasks like time-tracking, configuring reminders, or setting up calls.

Another simple and time-saving shortcut is when you need to see someone in the office. You may not be sure if they came in today or if they’re working from home. You can simply ask Devexa “Is Michael in the office?”. If the reply is positive, head out to discuss your work issues face-to-face.

Devexa AI virtual assistant helps our employees work smart by optimizing mundane tasks

If you aren’t ready to invest much in digital automation solutions, you can still use AI. At least automate your FAQ or helpdesk solutions.

Our first-hand experience: how we manage to find talent nowadays

We strive to provide our employees with competitive compensation, benefits, and a healthy work environment. This contributed to a very low outflow of talents even when the pandemic hit. We’re mostly concerned with acquiring new talents as the number of projects grows and scaling the company accordingly.

Our employer branding team works hard to spread the word about Devexperts being an attractive employer and technology leader. The key drivers to growth aren’t new: we hire remotely, optimize the recruitment funnel, nurture and sponsor professional communities, organize meetups and hackathons, create high-quality content, and work with local universities and colleges.

We’ve also been around for a while and managed to communicate the message that we’re a technology leader for software people. For example, one of our teams experiments on machine learning through Devexa’s AI. We also tell about similar hip projects across our communication channels for potential candidates. We give our potential employees a hand in machine learning technology, and thus we attract even more talents. This pays off, and in the last year, we’ve grown by 150 software engineers across the globe.

References:

  1. Michael Wolf. “The global labor shortage”. Deloitte Insights, 2021, https://www2.deloitte.com/xe/en/insights/economy/global-labor-shortage.html []
  2. Megan Henney. “Workers changing jobs are receiving massive pay increases, analysis shows”. FOXBusiness, 2022, https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/workers-changing-jobs-are-receiving-massive-pay-increases-analysis-shows []
  3. PhenomPeople, https://www.phenom.com []
  4. Sheridan Wall & Hilke Schellmann. “We tested AI interview tools. Here’s what we found”. MIT Technology Review, 2021, https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/07/1027916/we-tested-ai-interview-tools/ []
  5. myInterview, https://www.myinterview.com []
  6. Curious Thing AI, https://curiousthing.io []
  7. “AI in Human Resources”. Oracle Corporation, https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/applications/hcm/oracle-ai-in-hr-wp.pdf []
  8. Erudit AI, https://www.erudit.ai []