The Good, the Bad and the Bizarre: Using GenAI in Executive Search

The Good, the Bad and the Bizarre: Using GenAI in Executive Search

24 Jul 24 4mins Jon Midmer

In early 2023, GenAI ‘happened’ at JMA, as it did for the rest of the world. For the first time, a client sent us a job description written by ChatGPT. We started to experiment with GenAI in some of the more administrative parts of our jobs. And the answers to the screening questions we send out to graduates applying to JMA suddenly became spookily similar – and worse. 

As a Gen X graduate of language and literature-turned-headhunter with a Protestant work ethic, I was never not going to bristle at the thought of cutting corners to get the job done, or at computer-generated language ranging from the dull to the flamboyant. However, once I’d managed to put my prejudices to one side, we as a company investigated, and took a definite view on, how GenAI should – and shouldn’t – be used by clients, candidates and ourselves in the executive search process.  

BENEFITS 

Efficiency in Admin Tasks 
First and foremost, GenAI can help reduce the amount of time spent on administrative tasks.  

Enhanced Research 
As GenAI is a powerful tool for research, it can help candidates prepare for interviews (both with us and our clients) by enabling them to get to know the company they’re applying to better – from its history, operations and culture, to strategy, marketplace and competitors. 

Interview Coaching 
If this is your thing, GenAI can act as an interview coach by providing guidance on possible interview questions, how to answer them and mistakes to avoid. Some tools provide mock interview simulations in which GenAI plays the role of an interviewer, while others evaluate your answers and give you tips on how to improve them. 

Tailored Documents 
GenAI helps tailor documents to a specific audience, so a candidate can have it refine/adapt their CV for each role they apply for. 

Rapid Content Generation 
One of the biggest reasons people like using GenAI is that it can write hundreds of words on a subject in no time at all. It thus helps those who aren’t great writers (or who believe they aren’t) come up with a structure, or even a rough draft, of CVs, job applications, job descriptions or even case study tasks, to improve upon.   

WATCH-OUTS 

Outsourcing of Admin 
However great it is in theory to outsource admin, we’re against doing this, particularly given the sensitivities of candidate information and interview scheduling. We’re an intentionally high-touch firm that believes admin done well is an opportunity to shine. We’ve heard of competitors that have a different view… 

Quality of Research Output 
While it’s always good to get a jump-start on research via GenAI, from what we’ve seen, the sometimes-superficial output is the algorithmic equivalent of pop science, as opposed to something more in-depth.  

Dubious Overreliance on Keywords 
Even though GenAI can help candidates tailor CVs for roles, this presupposes that adding enough keywords to an application equates to suitability for a role – which, in our experience, is seldom the case. Candidates are so much more than how they appear on paper: can mindset, character and personality be truly gauged by a machine? 

Lack of Original Thought
For all its benefits, the biggest problem of using GenAI as a writing tool is that it mostly provides a bland precis of commonly held ideas, rather than original thoughts – and not all of what it comes up with is accurate!  Whether it’s a client of ours hiring a C-level executive or us hiring a graduate, we’re looking for people with smarts, warmth and interesting ideas. These traits will help candidates truly stand out from the crowd when submitting a piece of writing, or reading from it.  

HOW TO USE IT? 

There are, then, real benefits of using AI in the executive search process, the biggest ones being saving time and effort. Using AI is not, per se, laziness: it’s perfectly acceptable not to spend hours coming up with a job description or CV template when a decent ‘starter for ten’ can be generated in seconds. 

The key to using GenAI appropriately in the executive search process is showing good judgement regarding whether, or how, to incorporate it into a task. The first step is to ‘read’ the task itself. What’s the person who set it looking for? Will the result be better and how much time will using GenAI save? Most importantly, what will the person ‘marking the homework’ think if they suspect or find out that the response was created partially, or even entirely, by GenAI? 

I hope it’s not an outmoded attitude, but I like to think that both our clients and we are looking to hire people with smarts, passion, application and seriousness. If someone can’t be bothered to invest the time to come up with some original thoughts (or, at the very least, make an effort to sprinkle some onto an AI-generated base) then they’re probably not the quality-minded, hard-working person we’re looking for. 

It was heartwarming to hear GenAI-native Tabi, our 2024 intern currently with us via the superb 10,000 Black Interns programme, say last week: “Applying for jobs, first jobs and, I guess, all jobs are meant to be hard, because you need to read up on a subject, think and come up with your own ideas. The problem with GenAI is that it doesn’t help you critically evaluate, it just tells you what everyone thinks about a subject.” 

At the end of the day, our clients, candidates, we and the people we want to hire aren’t robots, and if we don’t use GenAI mindfully we risk coming across as, well, just slightly robotic. So let’s make the most of these exciting new tools, but let’s not forget that, fundamentally, we’re all paid to think, come up with original ideas and connect on a human level.  

It might be that, in time, GenAI will be able to match or even surpass us at that. It just doesn’t seem to be able to quite yet.