How to stop being afraid that artificial intelligence will leave you without work

... and start using neural networks for your career right now.

A dream job is like a soul mate: it definitely exists somewhere, but the chances of your chance meeting in the big world are so small that they force those who do not want to give up to be in constant search. To stop chasing a dream means to abandon it. There are two main obstacles to meeting the applicant with the employer of his dreams - as well as the employer with the member of the team he has always dreamed of:

1. The lack of a single database of vacancies and resumes. Many modern specialists have the skills that make them potentially in demand anywhere in the world - English proficiency, programming, etc. And at this time, somewhere in small Estonia, another start-up begins, which tomorrow will become a new Skype, and today you would be very close to each other - but how could you know that you also need to check Estonian job search sites?
2. Huge time spent on information processing. But even if such a universal base appeared, it would be impossible to process it entirely without a team of analysts plowing full-time on this project. But if you can afford a team of analysts to look for work, you probably don’t really have to look for a job.

Filters will not help

No filters will solve this problem, because the task of reducing, say, a million new vacancies, at least to a hundred or other, through which a person is able to break through, requires too many conditions to coincide:

• both parties, the employer and the applicant, ideally fill in the texts of vacancies and resumes;
• both sides understand exactly what they need and what they don’t need. These are already requirements of a higher order: not to the counterpart at the negotiating table, but to oneself.

Many "young and dynamic" groups tend to replenish their ranks with the same "young and dynamic" in order not to lose, obviously, youth and dynamics. But the stories of life, common sense and the film "Intern" say that age is primarily a sign of experience, and not backwardness. And a variety of companies can greatly benefit from this experience. But for reasons of a more psychological nature, they, with applicants, pass by each other in the market because they were unable to separate objectively important factors from age complexes and stereotypes. This is just one example, but any reader will surely be able to provide his own examples of failed employment in the comments due to reasons that did not really matter, but still outweighed.

Probably, you do not need to stretch this introduction further - most likely, you have already seen that all the above problems sound like work for artificial intelligence. Which, however, has not yet been created (perhaps also because some specific employers have not met with any specific applicants), but there are specialized AI, projects on which are now growing like mushrooms, mutants after a radioactive rain , washed away the last tracks of the loser to the insurgent machines of humanity . Collectively, they cover all the main stages of the search for work and personnel on both sides of the process. Of course, Eychary were among the first to see the benefits that neural networks bring to them. In 2017, IBM interviewed about 400 HR managers around the world about the use of cognitive computing in their work . Half of the respondents expressed confidence that cognitive calculations can change key areas of their work. And we will begin our review with those services whose services are already used by “personnel officers” from around the world to search for the best people for their companies.

AI, we are looking for talents.

1. Work with vacancies and resumes

Textio's Advanced Writing Service helps improve the efficiency of job texts: Textio analyzes ads and offers improvements. The VONQ marketing platform uses machine learning based on the results of previous campaigns to distribute the vacancy to relevant sites. Wonderkind Platform Programmatic chooses the best place and time to display job offers - let's look at a live example of how it does it.

In the Netherlands, KFC employs 2,000 people in its 53 offices and 53 restaurants. Before
In the summer of 2016, people themselves willingly filled out applications and went to work for the company, it was enough to advertise in a restaurant. But competition has grown, and staff turnover has remained at a high level. HR agencies could not provide KFC with new employees and the company contacted Wonderkind.

A few weeks before the opening of the new restaurant, 75 employees had to be found. Technology Wonderkind has determined that potential applicants in this area will respond more actively to ads on Facebook and Instagram, that students will not travel to work that is further than 10 km from home, and that despite the peak hours for these social networks (from 20: 00 to 23:00), the optimal interval will be from 17:00 to 18:00. Advertising targeted at users within a radius of 5 km from the future restaurant resulted in 77 completed questionnaires, of which 61 people were hired. The cost of one hiring an employee was € 3.55 - that is, for almost a whole restaurant, hiring less than 300 euros.

The same approach worked for the general manager of the restaurant. Usually, KFC spent a quarter of its future annual earnings searching for a candidate, and with the help of the right place and time, it saved 87% of the reserved amount. The system showed ads on Facebook and Google to specialists within a radius of 60 km from Amsterdam, the coverage was 77 thousand people, the number of clicks was about a thousand, one person got a dream job.


The network of KFC fast-food restaurants using advertising through Wonderkind reduced the cost of received resumes by 87%

Social networks and professional communities are another source for finding candidates. Monster’s TalentBin service collects data and creates “passive resumes”: in the personal account, the HR manager sees the profile with links to all specialist pages on social networks, its skills and statuses. If a person likes hot sauce and donuts, you can mention this in a letter so that you are more likely to catch it. It remains only to conduct interviews and select the most appropriate specialists.

The trend of recent years have become video interviews . This approach is considered effective and inexpensive, including IBM and Goldman Sachs Group. HireVue makes it even easier: it decrypts the interview in the text, analyzes the result and selects the best candidates.

2. Interviews

More information about the skills of a potential employee can be learned not only by the HR-manager by phone, but also by interactive AI. The Mya chat bot from FirstJob, which specializes in employee search, was launched in 2016; at that time, the startup had already worked with a number of technology companies, including Fitbit and Evernote, as well as with giants from Fortune 500. According to the calculations of the chat bot development company, Maya saves HR professionals 75% of the time by automating part of the hiring processes. He is even able to add interviews with suitable candidates to the calendar.

After a candidate has filled out a vacancy form and starts communicating on the FirstJob website, via Facebook messenger, via Skype or mail, the bot clarifies the applicant's qualifications and experience, answers questions about corporate culture, politics and the benefits of a future job. If the chat bot finds out that the candidate is not suitable, Mya will save all the data in any case in order to later suggest the person for another role. According to the results of the interviews, the bot makes a short list of the best candidates. Recruiters can better prepare for live interviews and personalize job offers.



Some AI-based services are able to find the right time for interviews: Beamery beamery.com analyzes data from corporate calendars and email accounts for this.

3. Selection of candidates

It remains only to choose who is better suited for the job. MosaicTrack www.mosaictrack.com selects from the base of available resumes - both new and old - the best options for a specific position. The service uses AI in order not only to collect suitable questionnaires for keywords, but also to understand which of the high reality applicants the “live” HR managers of the company will be invited to for interviews. Instead of reading hundreds of resumes, experts get a list of the best candidates. Among the company's customers are Citibank, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM.

And I plow hunt

Let's look at the process on the other side of the barricades. And we start with the first and most important question of any novice careerist: who should I become?

1. Career guidance

The Wade chat bot from the Wade & Wendy startup in theory should help professionals understand where they can apply their skills. The applicant communicates with the chat bot, talks about himself, Wade collects the profile and sends it to Wendy, and she sends the data to HR managers. Now startup Wade & Wendy has attracted $ 3.9 million investment. But, unfortunately, beta.wade.ai didn’t communicate with this AI - it is at the beta testing stage.

2. Your cadre

In the future, while new employees are working in the company, the AI ​​will help them “acclimatize”. IBM is working on a system that can answer the most common questions. AI will train to search for names, places and contacts of people who will help beginners.

IBM specialists for advertising the cognitive system Watson also offer several options for its use, useful for company employees. First, it is able to inform the employee about periods in which he is unlikely to be approved for a vacation. Secondly, the system can determine the mood of the employee by voice - and advise him to take a break after the next call to the client before the next call or meeting.

3. Machine learning on job search sites

Finding jobs on the job site may be ineffective when you use regular filters. The simplest example: put a salary of 100,000 rubles - cut off vacancies with 99,500 rubles of salary. Still more difficult, when almost the same outwardly job offers actually differ - for example, vacancies with different programming languages. The third problem is the ranking can occur at the time of publication of the vacancy. Headhunter development director Boris Wolfson told about this in 2017 when the resource switched to machine learning.

Headhunter trained the system to sort jobs in descending order of likelihood of response. For this, an interaction analysis was needed. A similar approach is used by other job search sites - Glassdoor and LinkedIn. At the beginning of 2018, the system brought Headhunter 1.2 million additional responses per month .

4. Under the hood

Because of the AI, it will be more difficult to quit — for example, Veriato's Recoon platform by analyzing the activity of employees in the mail and surfing the network determines which employees are ready to leave the company or steal any information. Machine learning makes patterns of normal data usage and looks for any anomalies in real time.

Why AI will lead to the emergence of new professions

Well, today neural networks are helping people. But what will happen tomorrow, when AI will be powerful enough not to help people find work, but to replace them with it?

People have long been afraid of losing their jobs because of robots with artificial intelligence. But the emergence of cars did not cause global hunger, because new ones have replaced new ones: millions of people work in the automotive industry and maintenance, more than a billion people got behind the wheel. Like many other technologies, AI and applications based on it will leave some professions in the past, but at the same time will lead to the creation of new solutions, companies, jobs and increased efficiency in various industries.

Why EXACTLY new professions will appear

According to experts of the consulting company Cognizant Technology Solutions, engaged in the digital transformation of the business, in the coming years at least 21 new professions will appear. More interesting is not the list itself, but the principles on which the company has built its research .

First, the profession has always changed. Once upon a time, people-alarm clocks knocked on the windows, helping workers not to oversleep their shift. Then they were replaced by ordinary alarm clocks, and now smartphones. Instead of telegraph operators and distribution station operators, today there are telecom operators that allow us to call, send SMS and look at the seals on the Internet. After the disappearance of many professions, people did not become unemployed, because there were new opportunities.


Alarm clock man of the early 20th century

Secondly, many types of work are boring or dangerous. Monotonous work, shifting documents from place to place or packing matches into boxes will not make everyone happy.

Third, cars need people. Machines are already capable of many things, but they are still far from a person in their capabilities. These are tools, and someone should use the tools.

Fourthly, one should not underestimate the genius and imagination of people. It is the curiosity that we are capable of that allows us to expand the scope of using the invented tools, to look for a new use for them.

Fifth, technology improves all aspects of our society. Medicine, banking, education are far from ideal. Technologies will become a central part of the development of many industries, make them more efficient and more convenient.

Sixth, and this is one of the main principles to be guided when we talk about new professions, technologies not only solve problems, but also create new ones. Solving one small problem may result in another. While you are repairing one thing, something else is breaking.


21 new profession in the horizon 10 years according to Cognizant Technology Solutions

In the next five years, the IT intermediary profession will emerge, which will develop innovations in the field of “shadow IT” - this is when gadgets and applications are used in the company without control from the IT department. Such experts will know all the latest trends in the field of applications and technologies that can positively affect the business.

Data Detectives will look for solutions to improve their business through the analysis of information obtained from sensors, gadgets, biometric devices and in the traditional IT infrastructure. They will have to have the ability to find "a needle in a haystack."

Brokers of personal data will appear within ten years. They will work with personal data on behalf of the client and look for ways to sell them more profitable.

In the same period, “personal memory curators” will help the elderly: they will create an environment based on past experience. And, of course, we should expect the appearance of professionals who will be engaged in the organization of travel with the help of augmented reality. For each of these professions, you need new tools based on machine learning and AI.

100 new professions

While Cognizant Technology explains why new professions will appear, the Russian Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI) is wondering what they will be in the Atlas of New Professions , the almanac of new activities that they predict in the next 10–20 years. If you download the Atlas PDF and print it, you’ll get a great gift for your little nephew or niece, who with its help will be able to shock those adults who continue to ask: “Who will you become when you grow up?”.

Such specialties from the new list, such as an IT physician who will create and manage physiological data bases and work on software for therapeutic and diagnostic equipment, will be associated with AI. The living systems architect will plan and create closed-loop technologies involving genetically modified organisms. And there will be a specialist in overcoming systemic environmental disasters, designer of augmented reality and territories, concierge robotics, clinical bioinformatics, operator of medical robots.

While these lists are just predictions, but it is already clear that people are unlikely to remain without work.