How do HR professionals feel about the new tech?
A majority of employers across Malaysia have no plans of implementing artificial intelligence (AI) in their recruitment strategies this year, according to a new report from Hays.
In its survey among 832 Malaysian employers, Hays found that 39.4% have no plans to use AI in the coming year. Another 29.8% said they haven't adopted it but are looking to explore its use in the coming year.
This comes despite 83% of human resources personnel in the survey saying they support the use of AI tools to help with their tasks at work, according to Hays.
In fact, 44% of them believe their organisations have adequately embraced AI to remain relevant in the future.
Using AI in recruitment
Among the employers already implementing the technology in recruitment, majority of them (17%) said they use it minimally.
Another 11.5% said they moderately use AI in specific stages of recruitment, while only 2.3% said they rely on the technology heavily.
According to Hays, employers mostly use AI in recruitment during the following stages:
- Resume screening and shortlisting (54.3%)
- Candidate assessment and ranking (33.7%)
- Perform predictive analysis for candidate fit (31.4%)
Concerns on biases
Despite the use of AI, hesitations remain among employers over the lack of a standard regulatory framework, including budget, and the lack of human touch and personalisation of the technology, according to the report.
More than half of the respondents (57.4%) also still believe AI-powered resume screening can still be biased and would require addressing before being utilised.
This comes as 26.6% of AI users said they are not actively assessing biases in AI recruitment tools, and only 26% HR personnel in the survey said they have policies on how to use them.
Marc Burrage, Hays Asia managing director, said organisations have an "active role" in preparing for the increasing implementation of AI within recruitment.
"This involves closely monitoring the inherent biases with their vendors and considering ethical considerations being addressed at the ASEAN level," Burrage said in a statement.
"Companies could leverage such strategic international collaboration to jointly and continually develop the necessary frameworks to adopt at a local level. This is particularly crucial in fostering trust in inclusive hiring, especially considering the expectations of both staff and candidates to utilise AI in recruitment or job-seeking processes."