Imagine this. 

You are on the lookout for your next job. 

As per the normal process: you create a CV, scour the most trending job portal available, submit those lengthy applications, and then, the hardest and most agonizing part of it all, you wait for a reply.

If you are lucky, that waiting time can only be as little as a couple of days. Other times, it can take weeks or even months! Often though, and this is the worst scenario possible, you get no reply whatsoever and are forever left in limbo - pondering, questioning, hoping.

Even after you have successfully ticked off the job’s criteria with your employment, education, and criminal history and received that long-awaited reply back confirming your progression to the next round of back-to-back interviews assessing your technical and social skills, on average, the time for you to truly secure an offer can still take over a month! 

Compare that with the growing expectations of the latest generation of graduates who are used to having the world at their fingertips and believe the time-to-hire i.e. going from the first interview to a final offer, should only take a week max, and you’ve really got a major crisis on your hands as a recruiter if you want to impress and retain the young and talented fast enough before they get snatched away by a competitor!

Now, let’s hit the rewind switch.

You are still on the hunt for a new role.

But wait, what’s this? The job you’re applying to doesn’t even require you to upload a resume?

There is no painfully long form to fill in with invasive questions regarding your religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation?

And the cherry on top? You don’t even have to mentally prepare yourself for weeks of back-and-forth emails between yourself and your potential future employer discussing interview availability, documents required for background checks, contract details, etc.

Why?

Because the procedure of verifying your personal and technical skills are fit for this role, passing your background check, and securing the job now only takes a matter of minutes!

No, I’m not kidding.

A system like this already exists at one of the biggest organisations in the world, Amazon. If you wish to work at one of their many fulfilment centres (glorified industry term for warehouse), that is; a place where robots and humans work together as one to make sure your latest Prime order reaches you by the promised delivery date.

The Amazon hiring process for these hourly roles is so streamlined and straight-forward, you can even get a virtual job orientation before you ever step foot inside a warehouse. Not to mention it takes less than 30 minutes for you to get a decision on your application, and the only point at which you really interact with another human being is when you’re asked to come in for an Office Hours appointment to get your ID photo taken, and have your official documents verified and scanned.

That’s it. You’re in.

Just stop for a moment and think about this though: if it’s possible for a top company like Amazon to build an automated system to assess and decide whether you are best fit to wear a company’s employee badge or not, just how far away are we from that machine-led philosophy creeping its way further up the ladder? 

How long do we have until there is no human involvement whatsoever in not just the hiring process, but in your day-to-day job?

What if having a robot as your colleague becomes the new norm? It seems to already work wonders for Amazon, and with the competitive nature in which large tech conglomerates operate, it won’t be long until others follow suit.

I suppose the elephant in the room I’m trying to get at is: how close are we to cracking automation to the point where it not only helps us hire humans, but even allows us to replace them altogether?