The Consultant Machine: How digitalization is changing recruiters’ professional practices and identity

Abstract

Human Resources Analytics drawing on big data and artificial intelligence are today fundamentally changing the way labour market intermediaries work. Recruiters and HR consultants no longer rely on manually created databases and links, but increasingly on new technology which automatically links hundreds of databases, yielding millions of data-points. This new technology takes over human decision-making by automatically distilling the ‘best fitting’ candidates from large, Skynet-like databases. Yet, to date, little is known about how this new technology is transforming recruiters’ and HR consultants’ professional practices and identity, and what kinds of effects it has on the power relations between HR consultants themselves and other actors within the firm and client firms. Theoretically, we draw on socio-materiality theory, which conceptualizes technology and humans as mutually constituted through their recursive intertwining in ongoing, situated practice (Latour, 2005; Orlikowski, 2009; Orlikowski & Scott, 2008). Setting technology at the centre of organizations, it calls scholars of technology to investigate “the multiple, emergent, and shifting socio-material assemblages” (Orlikowski, 2007: 1446) that come to constitute organizations. This theoretical approach is particularly suitable to answer the call for in-depth empirical investigations of HR analytics practice precisely to gain a better understanding of the constitution of the technology itself through interpretative processes (Angrave et al., 2016), as well as of its performative effects on organizational subjectivities (Žliobaitė, 2015, 2017) and the organizational sociality entangled with such technology (Boyd and Crawford, 2012; Scholz, 2017). As technology becomes smart, it takes over decision-making processes key to the firm and the people working there, affecting work practices and identity (Marr, 2015) and redefining power relations (Angrave, 2016; Anthony, 2018). Empirically, this research builds on two months of intensive fieldwork in the Belgian branch of large international HR firm actively pursuing digitalization through the introduction of AI-based tools in order to increase efficiency. Data is currently being collected using in-depth semi- and unstructured interviews with more than forty stakeholders – including HR consultants, their managers and top management – and complementary data sources such as non-participant observations, internal and external (virtual) documentation and the employed technology itself. Preliminary interviews with top managers indicate that recruiters and consultants pay lip service to new AI tools offered to them, yet largely fail to voluntarily adopt them in their everyday professional practice. Abstracts: Stream 4 77 This study is part of a larger project that also includes explorations of bias inherent in AI-based HR systems, the effect of these systems on historically disadvantaged groups, and how these systems impact organizational creativity and resilience.