AI for Small Business: Enhance Hiring & Efficiency
Not long ago, during a quarterly presentation to financial analysts, the Walmart Stores CEO Doug McMillon pointed out that generative artificial intelligence technology has helped to fine-tune more than 850 million pieces of content appearing on the giant retailer’s catalog.
"Without the use of generative AI, this work would have required nearly 100 times the current head count to complete in the same amount of time,” McMillon said. “And for associates picking online orders, showing them high-quality images of product packages helps them quickly find what they're looking for.”
That’s just one example of how deeply AI and machine learning technologies have penetrated the world of big business. But it’s the sort of scale that might give small business owners pause: If AI is being injected into the big-business landscape with that level of brute force, how are small businesses supposed to keep pace?
The answer is a happy one: Small business owners don’t have to be left in the digital dust by the big guys. Even as AI technologies revolutionize the way business gets done at the enterprise and corporate levels, there’s plenty of positive impact to be squeezed out of the AI revolution -- whether you’re a solo entrepreneur or a fast-growing company that’s adding employees.
How to do just that is the subject of this new article series presented by Business Services Connect, the one-stop resource for identifying IT and connectivity resources and solution providers that can help your business grow. Discover more on tips, tricks and techniques for making AI part of your daily business recipe.
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AI at Work: Interviewing Job Candidates
Can a computing engine help you fill your next job opening? Absolutely. If you play your AI cards right, that is.
One way to think about AI’s utility for your business is to begin to rely on AI applications as do-it-all personal assistants, always ready to help. That includes assistance during the hiring process and with job recruitment decisions. For example, you can even use ChatGPT to automate portions of your interview process.
Hiring managers will find that AI can assist in sourcing interviewees, drafting the perfect job description and preparing for mock interviews to refine their approach. AI can also help create common interview and follow-up questions as well as guide interview prep by providing instant feedback.
Pro Tip:
Be cautious about inputting any proprietary information about your company or a candidate when using AI tools, as once it’s submitted, it becomes part of the wider data that can be publicly accessible (unless using a custom AI tool that’s private for your company).
Although you may already have a set list of questions and topics you prefer to discuss with candidates, fine-tuning your conversation with the advice of AI can help you get more mileage out of your next job interview.
How so? Think about using AI to tailor your questions and answers in ways you may not have thought about before. Even a brief “conversation” with an AI platform, like ChatGPT, can open up new ways of thinking that yield insights about your candidates and their potential contributions.
As always, the key is specificity. Business owners and other AI users are quickly discovering that the more detail you provide on the front end, the better results you’ll get from your AI engine on the back end.
Query: What questions should I ask a candidate for a new job opening?
Here’s an example of how one popular AI chatbot application, Chat GPT, advised us to handle a real job interview:
Within a few seconds, we received a perfectly sensible and helpful list of topics. Among them:
- “How do you manage your time and prioritize tasks when working on multiple projects?”
- “Do you have any questions about the role or our company?”
- “Have you ever led a project or team? What was your approach to leadership?”
- “How do you stay current with industry trends and changes?”
All are thoughtful conversation starters that can help to bring to the surface a candidate’s persona, experience and outlook.
But, what happens when we go a level deeper? Here’s a slightly different approach that’s more tailored to a specific role, in this case a customer-service agent for a company that sells residential plumbing equipment and services.
Let’s give it a whirl again using the free ChatGPT application found online.
Query: What questions can I ask a job applicant to help me understand their acumen and experience in helping customers who purchase residential plumbing equipment and services?
Among our responses:
- “Imagine a customer is considering two different types of water heaters. How would you help them decide which one is better suited for their home?”
- “If a customer calls with a plumbing emergency and is unsure whether to attempt a DIY fix or hire a professional, how would you guide them?”
- “Describe a time when you helped a customer choose a plumbing product or service. What factors did you consider to make the best recommendation?”
- “Can you explain how you keep track of inventory and ensure that you are recommending products that are in stock and available?”
Again, both queries yielded helpful results. But you can see that the second set dives much deeper into real-world scenarios and potential situations. It’s likely that an interview incorporating the second set of queries is going to produce more authentic, revealing responses from job seekers.
Pro Tip:
As always, the exercise here points to an overarching key to AI success: Be specific (even to the extent of being annoyingly demanding) in what you’re attempting to discover. AI platforms have access to a rich repository of human knowledge and published information. Instructing your AI assistant to accomplish precisely what you want reliably will yield more pertinent, real-world utility.
Related Resources:
Turn pre-interview jitters into confidence with AI (Oregon State University)
AI in job interviews: pros and cons (The Vault)
Four ways to start using generative AI in HR (McKinsey & Co.)
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Check out more from our AI for Small-Business Mini-Series
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AI-Powered Customer Experience: Enhance Your CX Now
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