USA 
United KingdomDan Black,
Global Talent Acquisition Leader, EY Global
Assistive Technology is streamlining EY’s recruitment process as it whittles down roughly five million annual applications into around 140,000 hires. Bots and platforms such as EY Candidate Assistant and EYQ, a secure, internal generative AI tool, are proving invaluable to this task. But according to Dan Black, Global Talent Acquisition Leader, EY, who oversees EY's entire global recruitment program, its approach to AI adoption is also fundamentally human-centric...
Dan Black,
Global Talent Acquisition Leader, EY Global
Assistive Technology is streamlining EY’s recruitment process as it whittles down roughly five million annual applications into around 140,000 hires. Bots and platforms such as EY Candidate Assistant and EYQ, a secure, internal generative AI tool, are proving invaluable to this task. But according to Dan Black, Global Talent Acquisition Leader, EY, who oversees EY's entire global recruitment program, its approach to AI adoption is also fundamentally human-centric...
From governance structures that protect against data privacy breaches to re-education and reskilling programs, Black speaks to HR Grapevine to outline EY’s billion-dollar commitment to AI and how he ensures this technology makes recruiting more human, not less.
I lead our recruitment efforts globally, which amounts to roughly between four and five million applicants annually and anywhere from 100,000 to 140,000 annual hires. It is a substantial undertaking and AI can help us to democratize access to jobs and opportunities at EY.
That's not a narrative I hear all that often in the market when it comes to AI. There's a lot of gloom and doom. But for a lot of years, unless you were someone who knew the EY brand, you likely weren’t even aware of what was available to you at the firm. I want to open up opportunities to anyone who's got the skills and qualifications to come and join us.
any examples?
One of the first things we did, even before GenAI was a hot topic, was to launch a candidate assistant both internally and externally in multiple countries around the world. It’s an AI bot that helps the user figure out what opportunities might be a good fit for their skills. You can upload your CV or just populate it with areas that are of interest to you, your background, your skills, and so on.
Within seconds it will return current open opportunities at EY that might be of interest to you. It won’t preclude you from applying anywhere you want, but it can show you what you might not be aware of.
It helps my recruitment and TA teams be able to do their job; to look at five million applicants when there are only a thousand of us. It helps my team streamline this process and focus instead on the human side.
AI technology is helping us to do more of the higher level, higher impact things like having conversations and meeting with people whether in real life or video formats.
It helps my recruitment and TA teams be able to do their job; to look at five million applicants when there are only a thousand of us. It helps my team streamline this process and focus instead on the human side.
It's helped us a great deal with talent rediscovery. That means we can find something in the future for all those applicants - we call them ‘silver medalists’ - who were great candidates but didn’t get the job because someone else had a slightly better background.
When a vacancy comes up, AI can help us by suggesting the people out there in our known ecosystem that could be a good fit for the potential job. We’re piloting and experimenting with this. We get our job descriptions spot on so when they come up, we can see if there are any silver medalists, EY alumni, or people who have opted in to hear from us. We'll still do the proactive recruitment, but having those suggestions will be a huge lift for us.
We have a huge investment in generative AI and technology in general – this year alone there’s a $1.4 billion investment in technology. In March 2023, we launched a collaboration with an intelligent payroll AI capability.
No matter where I am in the world, I can get those answers online and self-serviced, though if there’s something else I need I can get to a live person. But a lot of those day-to-day things that might distract me as a recruiter from doing what I do best because I’m worried about an HR issue or employee issue have been automated. I can focus my time on higher-level work.
In September 2023 we launched our own AI assistant internally, called EYQ. I can ask questions like ‘I’m going to make a presentation at a university next week on EY’s Ripples, our corporate social responsibility efforts. What are the resources or latest projects I can talk about to the students?’
EYQ will come back with a host of resources and references and help me build the presentation. It’s taking all the great knowledge we have at the firm and helping me bring it to bear in a real and responsive way, much more quickly.
I’ve seen a lot of technology come and go over 30 years of doing this kind of work. The most important is to balance speed with responsibility, caution, and understanding of the environment.
All humans inherently have some bias built in, so how do we avoid bias in technology? How do we make sure the algorithms that we build into AI are responsible? AI is only as good as the underlying data. If the data is bad, then what the AI suggests is going to be bad.
We formed an entire set of AI principles at the firm and have a governance structure that we've put in place. So, as we are considering, should we adopt this bot? Should we utilize AI? We ask, who does it benefit? What are the potential pitfalls? How are we going to make sure that it is free of bias or unintended consequences? How are we going to responsibly respond to EU data privacy restrictions on GDPR or a whole host of new laws and regulations around bias in the U.S.?
Having that structure and technology allows us to say it’s ok to go fast, but let’s build responsibly, especially in an organization of our size. You do that by building in the principles and governance structures early on. It’s allowed us to move with speed but also with responsibility.
It's the question we get all the time from our people. First and foremost, I say this: The robots are not coming for your jobs, they’re coming for your tasks.
And in most cases, they're coming for tasks that you don't want to do anyway. So much of the automation is for mundane, routine work that people don’t want to make the time for. IMF did a piece of research that found 60% of jobs in advanced economies will be impacted by AI. But keep in mind that it's rarely entire functions or entire jobs; it's pieces of jobs.
First and foremost, I say this: The robots are not coming for your jobs, they’re coming for your tasks.
We’ve been trying to help to reeducate and upskill our people. We want people to understand how this complements their job because we are about human skills at our center. That means that companies need to be responsible and proactive in building those learning opportunities for people to upskill and focus on the human elements of their jobs, and by the end, be more comfortable with the AI technology.
Our global data and AI leader, Beatrice Sanz Sáiz, joined a call with my recruiters to talk about why AI can be scary. The fear is typically that companies could get the same results with 50% fewer people by using AI. But, she argues, who would want to? What company is looking for the same level result year over year? Everyone is looking to grow. Like any company in the world, if you’re looking for better growth, expanded markets, or a bigger customer base, then yes, you need AI, but you’re also going to need more people to get there. The human element is something that will never go away. The key is understanding how to work best and augment that effort with AI.
Two big ones stand out. There needs to be much more experimentation as this is not one size fits all. You can’t bring in this company, this tech, this piece of AI, or this bot, and expect everything is going to be right as rain. You have to experiment to get it right. That applies to both companies and individuals. As fast as everyone wants to go, there's going to be a trial-and-error period and you have to be ok with that.
The second thing is that if you’re going to make the most of AI, you have to understand how AI is going to work alongside the human complement. There’s been a lot of rush to see what or who can be replaced with automation, as opposed to how to create a blended model. In any other facet of your life, even the ones that technology has made exceedingly simple, there's still a need for human involvement. That’s going to be the real key to success for organizatiosn going forward.
