Andrew Chan is a self-described funky tech - a functional HR practitioner who uses tech tools to solve problems in the People space.
I spoke to Andy about why skills are more valuable than the ‘perfect’ experience, the problem with hiring the "perfect fit" and using AI to streamline and allow HR professionals to be more strategic.
Cecily Motley: Can you start by telling me about your own interest in using AI within the HR space?
Andrew Chan: In my latest role as People Technology Director at Wildlife Studios, I was managing the technology related to our people function; from hire to retire and everything in between. My big focus is making sure that People and Culture doesn’t become a bottleneck. I’m always trying to figure out what are the high touch, low value-add, hanging fruit that we can automate with AI? What can we simplify, so that employees get a seamless interaction with the organisation without necessarily having to incur the time of HR Business Partners? This kind of seamless interaction is hugely important. It’s a big piece of what makes someone happy when they start with an organisation - like, “I love how efficient we are here.”
And the beautiful part of AI is that you can integrate it with so many existing tools - things like Slack or Teams - that people are already accustomed to using. On the IT side people will already be using things like /IT and /Help, in Slack. The HR team can piggyback off that.
CM: How would you quantify the time that AI for HR can save, to make a business case for investment?
AC: Well we know how many emails or help-desk tickets have come through related to a particular topic and we can estimate the amount of someone’s time it takes to respond to those queries. This tells us the approximate FTE that we can save for the company, or shows that we can reallocate that FTE in a more strategic way, right?
CM: What trends are you seeing in AI within the HR space?
As AI takes on more and more of that functional, people ops work, it is changing the function of HR teams - what have in the past been quite operational roles can now focus more on human operations.
AI chatbots can also go beyond helping employees with policy queries; they can help and change the way that people plan their own career growth. We have these traditional, linear career ladders, but what if we don't want to take the traditional path? For example, AI can allow HR professionals to escape the traditional structures of how HR functions in a company, potentially facilitating more fluid, lateral movement between operations and business roles.
CM: What do you think the big trend is going to be in the next 10 years?
AC: Instead of hiring for a traditional job description, organisations are going to start hiring for skills. We have to recognise: if someone 100% fits this job description are they going to be satisfied coming into this role? I don't believe that you can find the perfect fit and expect them to be satisfied. Then it’s not a stretch role for anybody, right?
When I’m hiring, I’m more interested in finding someone who is a culture fit than someone with the exact people skill set in the job description.You can learn the people skills in the specifics of an organisation, but you can't learn the kind of cultural traits that make you a really good fit there. We risk missing out on great people because the on-paper skills might not fit 100% - but the people skills might. So AI can’t actually do that part - it’s never going to be a complete replacement for a face to face conversation.
CM: How does this translate into hiring for startups vs more established companies?
At large companies, at Fortune 500 companies, HR is slow to change and the problem is they often want to hire people with experience in those same kinds of companies. At startups, on the other hand, you have to be so agile. You can do things in half the time. But TA could miss out on those more agile hires who could really help them grow, because somebody doesn’t have the exact experience to tick the box. So it’s a learning curve for companies. Where are we willing to put ourselves out there to gain some cutting edge change, versus following this very traditional slow growth path?
CM: What would you pay good money to know about your peers?
AC: I would love to know, like, what additional skill sets people have that are outside of HR tech. I think the biggest issue we face as HR professionals is people think we don't have business skills. And I think as a result, your senior leaders don't necessarily give HR that same seat at the executive table that the revenue generating product owners have. We have to get people out of that mindset.
CM: In your day-to-day life what AI tools do you use the most?
AC: I use a personal Open AI GPT account; but judiciously! Chat GPT is great but it's not the best predictor of what the future is going to hold; everything is based on current or past data.