Recruiters should learn to love the machines that are going to 'take over' their jobs

Companies and employees who embrace change stand to benefit the most from it.

By Wendy Murphy LinkedIn Talent Solutions

AT LAST MONTH’S World Employment Conference in Dublin, a trend that has been building for some time was really brought home to me: HR leaders are worried about the future of employment.

Even now as employment here in Ireland, and across the leading economies, heads towards record levels, there’s a growing concern in my profession that the changes filtering through that are driven by artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and big data, are going to reduce job creation.

These technological change may even upset some of the long thought unassailable professions such as law, accountancy – and even HR itself.

This fear is not new. When the first industrial machines replaced manual workers, there was unrest and sabotage – a word invented at the time by angry workers in France displaced from their factories – and political change.

When advances arrived in the second half of the 19th century, a new group of professionals became obsolete: messengers were replaced by the telegraph and canals that employed thousands were replaced by the railway.

In the last century, we saw word processors replace typing and early computers take the place of some of what we’d now call ‘knowledge workers’.

In each case, there was disruption and difficult change for some – but the result was more opportunity, better jobs and better lives for most.

There’s every reason to believe we can do this again, but it’s the companies and employees who embrace this change that stand to benefit the most.

High-value jobs

Machine learning and AI are already here, but right now the evidence of its impact on our day-to-day lives is subtle, whether it’s the type of movies that Netflix recommends, the gifts that Amazon suggests to us or even the jobs that LinkedIn suggests to members.

In the past few years these tools have become more apparent – they are on the streets as self-driving cars, in the IT products we use via the cloud and increasingly in our pockets as our phones become more powerful.

How afraid should we be that the next place they will be showing up is at our desks, instead of us? Some suggest that a decent portion of work in the world’s largest economies can now be automated.

But the contrasting point of view is that, as before, the tools will make us human workers better, faster, and more productive. Forrester Research estimate that in the US alone, 15 million high-value jobs will be created over the next decade as low-value jobs become automated.

What does this mean for young professionals embarking on their career? Employment has continued to change – there are fewer jobs for life, more changing between roles. As productivity increases, we’re all going to need a mindset of growth.

We’ll need to embrace lifelong learning, as no one is sure what jobs will go the way of the telegraph operator and the typist. Some estimates suggest the majority of the jobs that will be available in the future don’t exist today, so workers need to ensure they are adaptable to respond to opportunities to come.

Flexibility

It would be wrong to think this new flexibility is limited to employees – it’s a necessity for employers too. Companies will need to be more agile in response to these trends. By the very nature of new types of jobs emerging, there is a skills shortage for these roles.

As a result, companies will invest more in finding the right talent. That could mean physically moving the business to talent hubs where the workers you need want to live.

In a recent project that LinkedIn worked on, a client was looking to set up a centre of excellence for cybersecurity in London. They tried to recruit to fill the roles as part of their planned expansion when establishing the centre but struggled.

Using our data, we were able to see where in the UK the talent was located. We saw it was in London, Cambridge and Edinburgh – expensive cities with tight jobs markets – but we also saw it in Belfast.

Looking at demand for talent in those cities we saw that there was huge demand in London and that – hub though it is – it was not the easiest place to hire. This was not the case in Belfast.

We were able to show to our client that the talent was in Belfast, and that they would be well placed to make the hires they need. They moved to Belfast, filled 25 vacancies and reduced their hiring time by 25%.

This is one example – the changing talent landscape might also lead to greater remote working – some companies are of a new breed that have no physical office, allowing their workers to join in from anywhere they wish to be.

For other businesses it could be that embracing the opportunity to find raw talent and then help them learn the skills is the solution to their talent needs.

Wendy Murphy is head of global accounts for LinkedIn Talent Solutions EMEA.

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