I have given a few presentations this year on how advanced technologies like wearable tech, the Internet of Things, and robotics might change work and workplaces, but often in these talks it has seemed like the concepts have felt a little remote or not totally relevant to folks in the audiences (usually HR/Talent pros).
It is one thing to envision how connected machines, robots, or drones are going to change work on the front lines, but how much, really, will they impact the day-to-day work in HR, Talent, or Recruiting? I suppose HR pros have a right to be a little skeptical about the nature or level of likely disruption.
Well before you get too comfortable in concluding that HR will be kind of immune to these kinds of technological advances, take a look at a quick (2 minutes or so) video, (embedded below, Email and RSS subscribers will have to click through), of what potential wearables might have in HR, recruiting, etc. The video is a demo of a Google Glass application prototype from Germany's Fraunhofer Institute, and I think you might be able to see some obvious, (if creepy) use cases for your work in HR or recruiting.
The technology, dubbed SHORE (Sophisticated High-speed Object Recognition), gauges emotions such as anger, happiness, sadness and surprise and projects this information directly onto the screen of Google Glass, sort of annotating the face of the person you're speaking with.
Pretty cool right?
An application that gives you a better read on the emotions of the person with which you are speaking?
Isn't a lot of HR/Recruiting centered on actually speaking with people, getting a read on them, trying to possibly get behind what they are actually saying?
Wouldn't this kind of a technology, (when further developed and refined), have some role in HR/Recruiting?