Learning Ecosystems

From DSC:
In reviewing the item below, I wondered:

How should students — as well as Career Services Groups/Departments within institutions of higher education — respond to the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in peoples’ job searches?

My take on it? Each student needs to have a solid online-based footprint — such as offering one’s own streams of content via a WordPress-based blog, one’s Twitter account, and one’s LinkedIn account. That is, each student has to be out there digitally, not just physically. (Though I suspect having face-to-face conversations and interactions will always be an incredibly powerful means of obtaining jobs as well. But if this trend picks up steam, one’s online-based footprint becomes all the more important to finding work.)

How AI is changing your job hunt — from by Jennifer Alsever

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The solution appeared in the form of artificial intelligence software from a young company called Interviewed. It speeds the vetting process by providing online simulations of what applicants might do on their first day as an employee. The software does much more than grade multiple-choice questions. It can capture not only so-called book knowledge but also more intangible human qualities. It uses natural-language processing and machine learning to construct a psychological profile that predicts whether a person will fit a company’s culture. That includes assessing which words he or she favors—a penchant for using “please” and “thank you,” for example, shows empathy and a possible disposition for working with customers—and measuring how well the applicant can juggle conversations and still pay attention to detail. “We can look at 4,000 candidates and within a few days whittle it down to the top 2% to 3%,” claims Freedman, whose company now employs 45 people. “Forty-eight hours later, we’ve hired someone.” It’s not perfect, he says, but it’s faster and better than the human way.

It isn’t just startups using such software; corporate behemoths are implementing it too. Artificial intelligence has come to hiring.

Predictive algorithms and machine learning are fast emerging as tools to identify the best candidates.

Addendum on 6/7/17:

Career site Workey raises $8M 2replace headhunters w/ #AI https://t.co/Efi9nvNGGu DC:A foreshadowing or a continuing trend? Either way..
…

— Daniel Christian (@dchristian5) June 7, 2017

Addendum on 6/15/17:

• Want a job? It may be time to have a chat with a bot — from sfchronicle.com by Nicholas Cheng
  Excerpt:
  “The future is AI-based recruitment,” Mya CEO Eyal Grayevsky said. Candidates who were being interviewed through a chat couldn’t tell that they were talking to a bot, he added — even though the company isn’t trying to pass its bot off as human.

  A 2015 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research surveyed 300,000 people and found that those who were hired by a machine, using algorithms to match them to a job, stayed in their jobs 15 percent longer than those who were hired by human recruiters.

  A report by the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that more than half of human resources jobs may be lost to automation, though it did not give a time period for that shift.

  “Recruiting jobs will definitely go away,” said John Sullivan, who teaches management at San Francisco State University.