Two in three HR professionals are focusing their use of AI tools on improving their recruiting, interviewing and hiring abilities, according to a new report from the Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM).

While one in four organizations are currently using AI to enhance HR operations, two-thirds of these employers have only done so in the past year, meaning AI’s involvement in HR departments is still “in its infancy”.

SHRM’s research among 2,366 HR professionals from organizations of varying size across US markets found significant enthusiasm for further evolution and adoption of AI going forward.

Three quarters of HR respondents said advancements in AI will “increase the importance of human intelligence in the workplace” over the next five years.

Meanwhile, around 60% said they are optimistic about the “potential for the effective use of AI by employees at their organization” (61%) or that AI will “improve collaboration at their organization” (56%).

One in four HR professionals told SHRM they are concerned that AI will cause “job displacement” at their organization.

However, those who work at organizations that use AI are 16 times more likely to say that AI has transformed existing jobs rather than displaced jobs at their company.

Unsurprisingly larger firms are more likely to have adopted AI for HR purposes, with 38% of respondents in this category at organizations larger than 5,000 employees.

That’s compared to 22% of respondents from organizations with 2-99 employees.

Automating talent acquisition processes is an efficiency use case for AI

In the talent acquisition space, AI is being used to generate job descriptions by two in three HR departments (65%), followed by customizing/targeting job postings to specific groups (42%) and reviewing/screening applicant resumes (34%).

“We uploaded a job description to a generative AI tool and asked what an applicant might search for to find this particular job,” said a medium-sized employer in the software development industry quoted in the report.

By then tweaking our job ad, we increased applies by 16%.”

Other prominent uses of AI for talent acquisition purposes included the automation of candidate searches and communication with candidates during the interview process (both 33%).

The overwhelming reason for adopting AI to support talent acquisition is to save time and reduce efficiency, respondents stated (88%). This was followed by reducing costs (35%) and improving ability to identify top talent (23%).

The focus on time and efficiency, rather than optimizing talent identification or analyzing performance during recruitment, suggests AI use is more often used to automate processes rather than enhance decision-making or generate new insights for optimization purposes.

However, one in three HR professionals told SHRM that the diversity of their hires is somewhat (29%) or much (3%) better through the use of AI.

Racial/ethnic diversity saw a 69% improvement through using AI according to respondents, while gender diversity and educationally diverse candidates saw a 56% and 55% boost respectively.

Elsewhere, around half of AI users said it made learning and development programs more effective (51%) and increases employee engagement (44%).

A similar level of adopters in HR use AI to recommend or create personalized learning and development opportunities for employees (49%).

Other uses included tracking employee learning and development progress (45%) and to identify gaps in employee knowledge or skills (28%).

One in five respondents said that using AI helps to upskill or reskill employees.

“Preparing customized training for our employees is easier with AI. I can insert a prompt or policy, and the program will develop a training outline,” said a large employer in the education industry quoted in the report.

It definitely requires intervention and correction, but just getting a template outlined is very helpful.”