According to some recent studies, a workforce crisis is forthcoming. This situation could cost the global economy a maximum of $10 trillion.
The root cause of the problem involves an imbalance between demand and supply, whereby some economies have a surplus workforce while others experience a shortage.
A report compiled by the Boston Consulting Group pointed out that an equilibrium in both demand and supply is quickly turning into an exception as opposed to a norm. The group predicted considerable worldwide labor-force imbalances, particularly shortfalls, between 2020 and 2030.
Alternatively, artificial intelligence (AI) appears to be increasingly venturing into the workforce space. In fact, a report by McKinsey suggests that by 2030 automation will replace at most 800 million employees.
In response to this looming crisis, several startups have come up to try and remedy the situation.
In turn, venture capitalists have responded by investing millions of dollars into numerous recruitment-based startups. Fetcher is one of such startups that recently rebranded and abandoned its previous name, Scout.
According to Fetcher, the underlying problem behind the awaiting workforce problem lays with the highly skilled, in-demand employees. Such individuals are less likely to be on the lookout for new job opportunities, which appears to be an issue for businesses looking for top talent.
Since headhunting is an old, resource-intensive and time-consuming method of talent searching, Fetcher is turning to artificial intelligence in an attempt to automate the process.
Even so, the company looks for qualified candidates through all the common professional networks including Twitter, LinkedIn, and even GitHub among many others, while establishing the ideal way to interact with them.
The data gathered is stored in the company’s database, which according to the information given to VentureBeat, has 100million candidates currently.
When undertaking its candidate search process, Fetcher correlates skills and keywords in a bid to determine the probable skill sets that may not be featured on candidates’ online profiles.
The company also looks for hiring partners at other firms to develop insights that might be challenging enough for human recruiters to recognize.
The AI platform used by Fetcher evaluates the backgrounds of its customers’ existing workforce to assist in finding patterns around skills, professional backgrounds, education and more. By doing so, Fetcher can find similar candidates elsewhere.
According to Andres Blank, Fetcher’s CEO, the company recently assisted a Fortune 500 company in hiring 40 candidates with different backgrounds for its summer program.
Fetcher targeted hundreds of potential candidates from various backgrounds, which allowed it to address diversity problems in a more affordable and meaningful manner.
Blank co-founded Fetcher in 2015 under the name Scout. Previously, he had co-created Pixable, a social photo-sharing application, which was later acquired by Singapore-based Singtel for over $26 million back in 2012.
Although Fetcher is still a young company, it hopes to solve the looming global workforce issues through relying on the integration of AI into the recruitment space.
Other companies in this recruitment space are also making advances when it comes to incorporating AI into their operations.
Some like Woo recently raised $7 million to support its in-built headhunter platform while others like Ideal and Pymetrics raised $3 million and $8 million respectively to improve their AI-driven recruitment platforms.
Source Venturebeat
