The intervention of artificial intelligence in the recruitment function in UAE’s hospitality industry

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not a new concept for the hospitality industry and recruitment functions. AI has displaced human intervention in routine tasks. In a few years, AI will take over several jobs (Kubler, 2018). Recently AI technologies save time of recruiters by supporting the job application screening, data analysis, and preliminary interviews. Chatbots are now designated recruitment officers supporting candidates. Researchers have studied the influence of AI on Recruitment, but only a few focused on the AI displacing human in the recruitment function performed in the UAE’s hospitality industry. This research aims to understand the transformation in the recruitment function of the UAE’s hospitality industry due to AI intervention. We used concurrent mixed-methods wherein we interviewed 10 UAE HR leaders and surveyed 135 HR professionals. The subjective measures were thematically analysed while the scaled measures were analysed through descriptive methods. This study found that the UAE’s hospitality sector deployed AI technologies in recruitment areas such as job advertisements, collecting applications, maintaining profiles, and storing the applications. The routine, repetitive, and heavy-volume tasks in the recruitment were delegated to AI while strategic roles were retained for human professionals including the development of strategies, and creation of job descriptions and specifications. While the literature review suggested a wider application of AI in recruitment function, the UAE’s hospitality sector seems to be lagging. The recommendations will benefit industry leaders, HR professionals, recruitment consultants, and AI developers to rethink on the recruitment strategies, operations, and administration and to embrace the intervention of AI in recruiting the best talent proficiently.