The AI revolution in accounting recruitment: How technology is changing the hiring game

Overview

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has threatened to upend our world, and no less so than in how we recruit. It was meant to change everything and revolutionise recruitment, but has it? Well, yes and no. Here is what we know AI can do and what it can’t do … yet.

What AI can do: the revolution in accounting recruitment

• AI can streamline administration processes, including everything from writing job descriptions and advertisements and scheduling interviews to the issuing of employment contracts and onboarding processes - making it a game changer in AI recruitment.

Opportunities presented by AI

I put ChatGPT through its paces on writing a job advertisement for a CFO, and it’s not bad, especially once I began to train it further around the type of candidate I would like to attract. When I asked it to attract a more experienced person, it changed:

From:

This is not a traditional CFO role. This is an opportunity to work alongside visionary founders, shape the financial future of a cutting-edge business, and lead high-impact financial strategies in a scalable, innovative, and agile environment.

To:

As CFO, you will be a trusted strategic advisor to the CEO and Board, bringing wisdom, financial discipline, and sound commercial acumen to a fast-moving environment. Your ability to provide measured leadership and pragmatic decision-making will be critical in scaling the business while maintaining financial integrity.

The language clearly shifts its focus to attract more tenured candidates looking for stability rather than for the next big thing.

• Identify possible candidates based on skillsets, industry, career trajectory – Sort of. You still need to really massage it. Recently, I ran one of the leading job boards’ AI candidate finders up against an advertisement we had posted for a Financial Controller role with a salary of $150K + Super, and it was a real mixed bag. The issue wasn’t so much the failure of the job board's algorithms (they tell me they are investing some serious coin on that) but the poor (and dated) data quality of the candidates’ resumes. It’s the old adage – garbage in, garbage out. AI can only work with what it has been given.
• Deal with high volumes of applications almost instantaneously – With applying to jobs now easier than ever (ironically in part to AI), dealing with masses of data can be a real game changer for the CV-weary recruiter.
• Detect AI-written content (resumes, cover letters) – But here is the kicker: According to ChatGPT, ‘as AI continues to improve (its writing style), it becomes harder to tell the difference between a response generated by an AI and one written by a human.’ It could well be that AI outsmarts itself to the point that it no longer recognises itself. A bit like the Irresistible Force paradox – when the unstoppable meets the unmoveable. 

What AI can’t do: Challenges and risks of AI in recruitment

Key concerns include:

Eliminate discriminatory hiring practices:  

This is problematic as this was meant to be one of AI’s key selling points. It was designed to remove human discriminatory hiring practices. But AI learns from human behaviour and so has learnt to mimic our hiring practices. There are multiple examples (and some have led to lawsuits) of AI advancing candidates with male-dominated sports on their resumes (such as basketball) but treating unfavourably candidates with more feminine sports on their resumes. Why did that happen? Well, the AI had learnt that the business, over time, had hired more men than women and erroneously determined that men were, therefore, a better fit.

Screen for soft skills, cultural fit and attitude (which are three of the highest indicators for role success)

Artificial Intelligence is already being used to assess communication skills via video, but it isn’t as strong around the more subtle human interactions such as empathy, EQ and body language. It’s unlikely either to assess leadership styles, personality traits and cultural fit properly.

Deal with offers, counter-offers, and delicate candidate negotiations:  

This is a big one. The pointy end of the process is the one that requires the most deft of touches as the process moves toward the offer stage. As seasoned accounting recruiters, one of our key strengths during the process is listening out not just for what the candidate is telling us but also, critically, for what the candidate isn’t telling us. Whether AI can ever be trained to probe around the unspoken remains to be seen …

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Final thoughts: Balancing technology with human insight

Artificial intelligence for recruitment is a game changer but an imperfect one for now. Its usefulness lies in eliminating administrative tasks, but it has some way to go in replacing the human ability to identify and manage talent. Balancing technology with human insight is key for successful AI recruitment strategies.

And until it is trained to ignore past hiring data and forge its own path, it will only end up making (and amplifying) the very discriminatory hiring practices it was designed to eliminate.

For help on recruiting your next Accounting and Finance professional, contact us at 02 8324 5640 or via our online contact form.