Before COVID hit, women in the U.S. had made significant progress towards overcoming gender inequality. Representation was on the rise in male-dominated industries, and women were outnumbering men in the workforce for the first time since 2010. Unfortunately, 2020 would undo that short-lived victory. In December, the U.S. economy lost around 140,000 jobs -- all of which belonged to women. Beyond the U.S., women accounted for 54% of job losses worldwide, even though they only made up 39% of the global workforce. Before women suffer even greater gender inequality setbacks, we have to pick up the pace in achieving workplace equality and inclusivity.

What is the Great Rehire? In a previous article here, I explained it as a war for talent expected in the first half of 2021 signalling a new phase of business recovery and fierce employer competition. In a Hiretual survey sent out to 350 recruiters this November, over half of them cited competition from other companies as their biggest hiring concern next year. In this article, I'll cover the'how.' How can companies start moving toward data-intelligence adoption in talent acquisition to effectively beat out the competition and attract desired talent? As recruiters prepared for 2020, employers were using AI to lower time-to-hire by increasing touch points with the employed workforce and implementing automation in the candidate sourcing and engagement process.

Artificial intelligence (AI), the use of human-like intelligence through software and mechanisms, enables the disruption of the most diverse segments. After all, this is an industry that has grown an average of 20% per year for the past 5 years, according to a survey by BBC Research. Many organizations have already joined the "future" and gained space by efficiently applying AI in everyday activities. For example, some banks started to perform financial services without the help of a human; farms use drones capable of identifying points in a crop that need more irrigation and automatically trigger sprinklers. AI is not set to replace the recruiter's work, the importance of the interview, the empathy, and the sparkle in the eye that we sometimes feel when interviewing a candidate.

Imagine a Future where Robots own every aspect of the Recruiting/Staffing process, where the Robots drive down the cost of staffing such that no human recruiter exists ever again. Imagine where Artificial Intelligence in a reality like Sky Net is scratching the surface of ingenuity such that sourcing, screening, recruiting, offers, and closing all are filtered by Machines. Imagine where there is no more human interaction in the staffing process. We've heard this nonsense for nearly a decade. Further, as Artificial Intelligence technologies come into maturity new calls for the loss of the Recruiter, the end of staffing as we know it, and the end of the human recruiter are all but the swarm of the click baited articles we see swirling around this ethos.

Imagine a Future where Robots own every aspect of the Recruiting/Staffing process, where the Robots drive down the cost of staffing such that no human recruiter exists ever again. Imagine where Artificial Intelligence in a reality like Sky Net is scratching the surface of ingenuity such that sourcing, screening, recruiting, offers, and closing all are filtered by Machines. Imagine where there is no more human interaction in the staffing process. We've heard this nonsense for nearly a decade. Further, as Artificial Intelligence technologies come into maturity new calls for the loss of the Recruiter, the end of staffing as we know it, and the end of the human recruiter are all but the swarm of the click baited articles we see swirling around this ethos.