Pithos

There is a quiet conflict taking place on LinkedIn, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that it's spilled over onto other social media sites as well. The belligerents are, on the one hand, people claiming that "artificial intelligence" has been added to applicant tracking systems (ATS) in order to speed the rejection of supposedly unsuitable candidates, and on the other, people who work as recruiters, who spend their time debunking such claims and explaining how things actually work.

While I suspect that, from the point of view of the recruitment professionals, their opposite numbers (some of whom claim to be recruiters themselves) are sowing incorrect information, for me as a bystander, I think what they're offering are measures of hope and/or control. LinkedIn is primarily a professional networking site; I know a few people who work blue-collar jobs, but they tend to be former white-collar workers who have made career shifts along the way. And this year has been a rough one for professionals, especially in the technology industry, President Trump may claim that weak hiring numbers for the past two months are falsified, but the long-term unemployed would likely beg to differ.

The contention that "the problem with the job market" lies with poorly-implemented generative automation or some secret ATS programming that a "quick hack" will bypass is designed to tell people that the more likely explanation, namely that Western societies are in a mode where they're better at economizing labor than in finding new, high-value, uses for it, is wrong. And that's why it has such staying power; a message of hope, even if that hope comes with a price tag, tends to win out over a bleak-seeming reality.

And so in this conflict, the recruitment professionals are on the defensive, as they have nothing comparable to offer. While never stated is as many words, their narrative is that there just aren't enough jobs to go around, and in this high-stakes came of musical chairs, some people are going to be left without a place. That's never going to be a welcome message; accordingly, there will always be a strong market for alternatives.