Dive Brief:

• For months, IBM hinted at recruiting events that they were bringing Watson into the talent acquisition space; now they've finally done it, says Todd Raphael of ERE Media. A source at IBM quoted in the article compares the current version of Watson's recruiting features to the first iPhone, however, so the product is still a work in progress.
• The new product suite focuses on three aspects: recruiting, marketing and sourcing. The recruiting part is named IRIS by Watson, and it will allow Watson to utilize machine learning in order to rank the priority and complexity of jobs. This, in turn, should help recruiters understand how difficult each job may be to fill.
• The other two components of Watson's recruitment tools include marketing data to parse the negative and positive press that's on the internet about a company; and a sourcing tool that assigns a score to candidates based on their fit to the job and the company. An updated and improved version of the Watson recruitment suite is projected to be launched by Q2 in 2017. 

Dive Insight:

For years, IBM has been at the forefront of computing innovation, particularly in the realm of data management and predictive applications. It's not at all surprising that they are boldly entering the recruitment space with their powerful Watson model of machine learning. If Watson can win Jeopardy, then it can surely help recruiters to source and select the best candidates. This new product suite is a window into the myriad of ways intelligent machines will work with recruiters in the not-so-distant future.

It may not be feasible to take the human element out of recruitment entirely, but many observers say it's possible that the use of AI reduces unintentional bias in recruitment. Watson may also be valuable for data mining into applicant tracking systems where good candidates are often lost, giving sourcing teams even more ways to find great talent.