Artificial intelligence is having a lopsided impact on recruitment, with jobseekers willing to experiment with AI tools while the companies to which they’re applying take things slowly.

Many companies are cautious of building AI into their hiring processes, with many HR professionals expressing concern about the software’s potential for bias. But AI is already seeping into the hiring process as candidates can use free online tools to rapidly build out resumes and target cover letters to job postings.

While just 27 percent of hiring professionals surveyed by LinkedIn as part of its Future of Recruiting 2024 report said they’re currently using or experimenting with generative AI, as many as 48 percent of candidates are already using AI in their job search, according to recruiting software provider Greenhouse. Top tasks include writing CVs (45 percent), writing cover letters (41 percent), and answering job application questions (36 percent).

For Jenny Frestadius, EQT Group’s Global Talent Acquisition Director, this adoption gap means that employers need to step up their game in the face of a new generation of ultra-polished candidates. “I don’t think they’re necessarily going to hire worse or less good candidates,” she admits, but warns that “you can imagine what will happen if the candidates are super prepared and you’re not.”

An AI-infused arms race

Many companies have avoided rushing into using AI in recruitment, fearful of introducing bias into the hiring process. Amazon, notably, was reported in 2018 to have scrapped an internal project that attempted to vet job applications with AI; its male-dominate training data had initially made it biased against female candidates. While Amazon said the tool was never used to evaluate candidates, concerns linger. Forty percent of HR managers who responded to a Greenhouse survey stated that AI can introduce bias against historically under-represented groups.

Employers are clearly reluctant to outsource important decisions to a computer. By far the most common use for AI highlighted by recruiters surveyed by LinkedIn was writing job descriptions. Fifty-seven percent of those using AI said the technology made crafting job listings quicker and easier. Other stated AI benefits included automating tasks to spend time on more fulfilling work (cited by 45 percent of AI users) and removing daily mundane tasks (42 percent). 

To help recruiters close the gap with tech-savvy applicants, both new and old talent acquisition platforms are rolling out AI-powered features to help with everything from engaging potential candidates to assisting with the interview process. Sixty-seven percent of respondents to Korn Ferry’s recent talent acquisition survey indicated that they believe AI usage will be a major recruitment trend for 2025.

The new recruitment tools include Talentium, an AI-powered hiring platform that EQT Ventures recently led a €3.5m pre-seed investment round into. Talentium aims to improve the efficiency of recruitment from end to end, whether that’s automating the creation of job listings and managing the hiring pipeline, or using AI to take notes during interviews so recruiters can focus on asking the right questions and listening for the answers.

Offering the human touch

The longer-term result of these new technologies is likely to be a profound change in the kinds of work recruitment professionals have to do.

“Talent Sourcer is a job which is going to die,” Adam Gordon, co-founder of Poetry, another hiring startup, says bluntly, before showing how talent acquisition platforms like his can turn assembling complex Google candidate searches from an almost half-hour task into a 30-second one.

Far from cutting humans out of hiring, however, Gordon argues they’ll be more necessary than ever to craft an overall application experience. There’s a fine balance to be struck between attracting and whisking in-demand candidates through with minimal effort while screening out a deluge of job hunters who can fire off tailormade job applications as fast as ChatGPT can generate them.

Gordon lists a number of examples of the kinds of difficult questions recruiters will have to answer rather than spending their days writing job descriptions and scheduling interviews. “What does the candidate have to do? What do they interact with, and how do we make them feel special at the same time? How do we get information from them to see if they can do the job?”

No one likes to feel like they’re part of an excessively automated process, which can be exacerbated in an era of remote working and video interviews. So it’s more important than ever for recruiters to build real relationships with potential candidates where possible and do so in a way that feels authentic to a job-seeker. For example, Handshake, which bills itself as a career social network built for Gen Z, recently introduced a scrollable feed that contains short-form videos and career advice alongside more typical job postings and recruitment event listings.

“This is very much in the zeitgeist of what students want and expect,” the company’s co-founder and CEO Garrett Lord told Forbes. Recruiters surveyed by LinkedIn said that communication, relationship-building, and adaptability will be the most important soft skills needed by recruiters in the next five years.

The challenge of finding, engaging and retaining capable candidates has never been greater. But by being efficient where they can, recruiters can focus their efforts where the human touch can make the greatest difference.