In years past, it was hard to convince senior executives and managers that artificial intelligence had the sophistication and flexibility to handle anything beyond routine tasks. Today, automation technology is being incorporated to streamline a range of internal business processes and provide increasingly refined business insights. Companies are using it to improve everything from customer relationship management to managing inventory.  In fact, it has advanced well beyond "process" automation to higher-level problem solving and critical thinking, affecting entire categories of jobs, from bank tellers and telemarketers to news writers and radiologists. 

But as more organizations apply automation and artificial intelligence technology to these high-level business functions and jobs, HR is among the last hold outs. This is understandable. No one knows better than HR the threat machines pose to the jobs of the people they manage and to the core of what they do: use judgment and expertise to engage, evaluate and hire the best talent. 

As this article will show, smart hiring automation can deliver a number of significant benefits, offering more rigorous, objective and systematic evaluation, and providing hiring managers with more predictive insight into each candidate's fit and potential. The challenge is to show HR how this technology can improve and augment what they do, and to make sure that they understand the competitive disadvantages of neglecting to embrace it as their competitors use it to more precisely and effectively find and hire top talent.