In years past, it was hard to convince senior executives andmanagers that artificial intelligence had the sophistication andflexibility to handle anything beyond routine tasks. Today,automation technology is being incorporated to streamline a rangeof internal business processes and provide increasingly refinedbusiness insights. Companies are using it to improve everythingfrom customer relationship management to managing inventory. Infact, it has advanced well beyond “process” automation tohigher-level problem solving and critical thinking, affectingentire categories of jobs, from bank tellers and telemarketers tonews writers and radiologists.

But as more organizations apply automation and artificialintelligence technology to these high-level business functions andjobs, HR is among the last hold outs. This is understandable. Noone knows better than HR the threat machines pose to the jobs ofthe people they manage and to the core of what they do: usejudgment and expertise to engage, evaluate and hire the besttalent.

As this article will show, smart hiring automation can deliver anumber of significant benefits, offering more rigorous, objectiveand systematic evaluation, and providing hiring managers with morepredictive insight into each candidate's fit and potential. Thechallenge is to show HR how this technology can improve and augmentwhat they do, and to make sure that they understand the competitivedisadvantages of neglecting to embrace it as their competitors useit to more precisely and effectively find and hire top talent.