This is a thought piece about what it is like for job applicants to go through the modern recruitment experience, technology and all. I have titled it Bot Luck. I wanted to write something that captured the emotional impact of the experience, the feelings it leaves people with and the lessons they take from it, and that at the same time looked at broader questions about the ethics, objectivity, and etiquette of recruitment systems today. I have been talking to a range of people about this issue. But rather than turn it into a survey article – there are plenty of those out there already – I make my points through telling the story of Jo, who recently went through an application process for the first time in many years (and who was thereby well-placed to compare and contrast the recruitment world of today with the one she grew up in). I end by saying that today’s recruitment experience can feel like speed-dating a robot who then gives you the silent treatment.
ShareChristopher Lake was a panel member in the discussion held at the annual conference of the Chartered Association of Business Schools on the subject of Recruitment strategies:finding and landing talent during a pandemic. The discussion was led by the Association's Chair, Professor Robert MacIntosh, Head of the School of Social Sciences at Heriot-Watt University. In a lively exchange, Christopher's contribution focused on whether the pandemic has changed people’s attitudes to relocating for a job within the UK and/or internationally. His prepared remarks are attached.
ShareChristopher Lake and Adam Gold wrote in July about the systemic risks to the UK economy posed by the rapid move to homeworking since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Empty city centres, boarded-up offices, and a crash in the commercial property market were the red lights flashing in our future. But if the debate about our cities did not begin with events in Wuhan, the same is true of the debate about the future of work. The idea that artificial intelligence might do to the economic security of wite-collar workers what new technology and cheap overseas labour have done to the economic security of their blue-collar counterparts has been doing the rounds for a while. The question is one of the collective choices we are willing to make, the extent to which we want to apply the brakes to the market or to re-configure the way we regulate it, for instance through accepting that jobs (as we have understood them up until now) will increasingly become scarce goods in our society and that the link between jobs, self-respect, and economic security will need be broken once and for all if, as a society, we are to get through this next industrial revolution in one piece.
Share