Tiago Costa, Chief Executive Officer, Parisima Talent Generative AI In HR

Tiago Costa, CEO at leading talent solutions consultancy, Parisima Talent, says that the HR sector must constantly embrace new ways of working, new skills, new techniques and new technology – including generative AI – to enhance the candidate journey, increase efficiency and boost business.

Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence technology that can produce various types of content, including text, imagery, audio and synthetic data. It’s one of today’s ‘buzz phrases’, driven by the simplicity of new user interfaces for creating high-quality text, graphics and videos in a matter of seconds.

This technology is not new: generative AI was introduced in the 1960s in chatbots. Over 50 years later, in 2014, we saw the introduction of generative adversarial networks – or GANs – a new type of learning algorithm that enables generative AI to create convincingly authentic images, videos and audio of real people.

Generative AI’s newfound capability has opened up a wealth of opportunities for businesses, including new trends in the HR industry. Today, there are several ways in which generative AI is applied in HR to enhance recruitment, training, retention and development, streamline operations and improve efficiency.

The Middle East’s world-leading, ever-expanding hospitality sector has hundreds of new projects in the pipeline. Top of the table is Saudi Arabia, with 300 projects and over 72,000 rooms on the way, followed by the UAE with over 100 new projects and 27,000 rooms. Egypt, Qatar and Oman also have substantial project counts. As a result, the industry is embarking on an unprecedented recruitment drive.
In Saudi Arabia alone, massive investment in tourism, hospitality and real estate in line with Vision 2030 is set to create over a million new jobs, with 250,000 allocated to the 2030 World Expo in Riyadh. Generative AI will be key in ensuring the right talent is sourced, selected and retained.

Generative AI is excellent for creating CV templates that can be used by applicants and HR professionals. The templates mean a consistent design for resumes, which allows applicants to follow a standard format, and makes easier reading and evaluation during the HR teams’ reviewing process, speeding up the entire recruitment process. More and more organisations, including Parisima Talent, are opting for generative AI templates as a key element of their recruitment function.

With diversity and inclusion at the top of the HR agenda, generative AI can help eliminate bias at the earliest stage of the recruitment process, meaning more ethical practices and potentially fulfilling key elements of a company’s Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) policy. The Social aspect of ESG encompasses how an organisation manages its relationship with other parties, including its employees. Generative AI can help ensure responsible labour practices, a focus on inclusive work, the upholding of human rights and health and safety.

Gen AI is also invaluable for candidate screening. This aspect is a personal favourite of mine, as it enables quick and effective identification and ranking of candidates for a particular role. Key words, skills, qualifications and relevant experience are all factored in when evaluating applicants, meaning recruiters receive a readymade, qualified short-list of suitable candidates.

Training and development are integral to employee satisfaction and wellbeing, and can make the difference between the success or failure of any organisation. Through generative AI, we can create training materials to address specific skill gaps and for the corporate mandatory training that every employee needs to complete.

Generative AI is also a useful tool for employee engagement, be it through team satisfaction and feedback surveys or systems to help pinpoint and define recognition and rewards or improve motivation by generating recommended activities. The technology can be applied in performance management too, bringing insights about employee performance and development, enabling HR professionals to evaluate data on individuals, teams or entire departments.

Of course, generative AI is not only beneficial to HR professionals and operations. In the hospitality industry, generative AI reduces costs associated with marketing, customer service and content creation. Hospitality businesses that embrace generative AI can reap a multitude of rewards, including increased guest satisfaction, better operational efficiency, cost optimisation and fresher innovation and creativity.