How AI will make or break recruiting

Introducing, the Shallow Dive™️

And now, a Shallow Dive™️ on how AI will make or break recruiting.👇

I say shallow dive because when it comes to the real impacts AI is going to have, literally no one knows anything.

And because there is no such thing as a deep dive in a newsletter (by anyone, ever.)

I read two hysterical and contrasting AI articles in the past week:

(1) AI 2027

Tldr – A bunch of AI experts said we’re doomed. Two years from now, AI will be smarter than us, all the jobs will be gone, Skynet will take over.

Where it falls apart: the paper wasn’t *just* predicting what AI would do. It predicted China’s policy changes, the NASDAQ stock performance, how the White House would respond, etc.

Guys I’ve literally had multiple science fiction stories published. I know a completely made up setting when I see one. Sure, maybe some part of it will come true (I mean by the sheer number of predictions, it would be hard not to). But come on…

(2) Prompt engineering is dead (per the WSJ)

That’s right, the fastest growing job of 2023 is now dead. Turns out, as a Youtube Short pointed out, prompting engineering is literally just knowing a domain + writing clear instructions on what to ask for.

And now, if you’re stuck, you just ask the AI what prompts to use.

Now, you may not think this contradicts the AI 2027 piece, until you realize: humans are just terrible at predicting things. Two years ago, you couldn’t avoid reading a “prompt engineering is the future” hot take.

Ok, back to my shallow dive on recruiting.

One of my pandemic reads was Nike founder Phil Knight’s “Shoe Dog.” One of the points he made: there are strategic thinkers, and there are tactical thinkers.

Not many people can do both. The ones who can are invaluable.

AI will put that on steroids. In both recruiting and the people they recruit for.

AI is ultimately a tactical replacement. As of today, it takes better notes. It writes more thorough submission summaries (and faster.) It allows unstructured data (conversations) to become searchable data in your ATS. And countless other things.

It does all the boring work, better and faster than you can.

On the flip side, it doesn’t really help strategic thinkers much either. In order to make use of it, you need to have a thorough understanding of the boring stuff works in the first place. You can’t improve a process without knowing it like the back of your hand.

You can’t make better bacon if you don’t know how it’s made.

This applies to agency recruiters, internal recruiters, and more importantly, everyone they’re trying to find (you reading this).

We’ll need less tacticians who grind through the day with busy work.

We’ll need less strategists who come up with plans but rely on everyone else to execute.

👉But everyone who knows how to use both sides of their brain? They’ll be just fine. Demand will never be higher.

This has been another exciting edition of Shallow Dives™️.

James Hornick

Partner at Hirewell. #3 Ranked Sarcastic Commenter on LinkedIn.