How AI Will Make Or Break Recruiting

The 10 Minute Talent Rant is live. I’m James Hornick, joined by Jeff Smith, and we are on the clock. The 10 Minute Talent Rant is our ongoing series where we break down things that are broken in the talent acquisition, hiring space, maybe even pitch a solution or two. Before we dig in all of our content, we found a talentinsights@hirewell.com.

This week’s topic, Jeff, if you are ready, episode 110, how AI will make or break recruiting. You know what I need? I need AI to figure out why Riverside, the, our, uh, our posting platform. Yeah. Doesn’t jive with my computer for whatever reason. It used to, but yeah, they’re not chilling. Two weeks in a row.

We cannot figure this out. And Jeff is recording from his phone, so. Lots of swearing prior to this. Alright. All right. Let’s get into this week’s topic, now that the tariff discussion has completely dominated the economy, we’re going to backslide into AI- go back into another, a real hot topic.

Yeah, back. So there’s two things that we, we wanted to talk about some things that haven’t been gone into, but there’s, there was two big stories that came out in the past week that viral. I know the first one’s a story, but they kind of cracked me up. So, um, there was that AI 2027 white paper,

would it be? I don’t even know what call it, but went viral though. I mean, it is, it is like doomsday. Yeah. And it was, but it was like one of the guys who was early with chat, GPT and a bunch of other “researchers”. Um, And it got everyone like whipped up in a panic. But the problem with it was, it wasn’t just saying where AI’s going.

It was like, it was predicting all these geopolitical events, like saying, China’s going to do this, which, and then the NASDAQ’s gonna rally 30%. I’m like, this is, this is a, I write science fiction. This was all setting, this was a setting of a science fiction backdrop. This wasn’t like saying where AI’s going.

It’s like trying to predict like a million different, like no one can make these predictions. So, what cracked me up was on the flip side there was also an article that came out that Prompt Engineering is dead. This is in the Wall Street Journal. So the hottest skillset, if you remember two years back, everyone, like everyone needs to become a prompt engineer.

It’s like the hottest skillset. So hot. So hot right now. So hot. They all, now it’s dead. Because people realize that all prompt engineering is, is knowing your domain cold and knowing how to communicate and ask it the right questions. That’s all prompt engineering ever was. Yep. So, which brings me to the point that ter humans are terrible at predicting future events.

Yeah. We just spot patterns of today and think we’re, think we can see the tea leaves or whatever. Well, yeah. And then you read, and then you read some other article where it’s like cherry picked, like, oh, this per nostradamus picked, like predicted this. It’s like, okay, well like every squirrel finds a nut.

Right? Um,. Guy made one good prediction and all of a sudden everything else he says must be gold. Anyways. Yeah. Hence the, uh, euphemism. Alright, so I mean, it’s all real. Um. These phenomenon as it were. Um, but it’s not entirely new, of course. Case in point of the last, uh, what we just talked about we’re, we’re really just talking about better automation for the masses in if you get in the software development world, machine learning and automation has been around like decades, not years.

Yeah. Decades. It’s been around for a while. Yeah, this is the whole thing. So I was talking to a CTO at a client of ours last week, and like he was just kind of saying like, this is, he is joking, like none of this is new. Doesn’t really impact what him and his team are doing. For instance, like his, his, his goal is to make his sales team for his company 20% more efficient by automating more processes, using machine learning.

Like this is a normal thing that corporations and technology departments do. By the way, um,. good on him or her, I don’t know if it’s a him or her, for focusing on one objective with it that’s simple and yeah, pushing it forward. Kudos to you person who came up with that. Yes. So

the thing I want to point out though is here’s what’s different about the AI boom.

I shouldn’t say different, but here’s like, here’s why it’s kind of extended, is that the the current, what AI has become into as we know it, LMM models, it’s given opportunity for individual people themselves to make themselves more efficient. Meaning you don’t have to worry about, you’re not waiting for your technology group to find a way to make you better at your job or more efficient at your job.

You can now do it potentially on your own if you’re curious enough to do that. And we’re probably use the word curious a million times in this podcast. Um. People who, and and this is this is the bold claim, is that people who don’t figure out and aren’t curious enough to use AI are the ones who are most likely to end up losing their role.

Correct. Or at some point in time. And I, I hate to say that, I don’t want to sound like a doomsday person, but this is just kind of the reality of it. Um, AI is capable of basically taking a lot of the tactical work away from people, which is really what we’re talking about when we’re talking about making you more efficient is like the boring stuff that takes forever.

That way you can get more strategic, either get more done or focus on more strategic ways you can get your job done. And the people who can’t think strategically about that stuff are the ones who are ultimately going to be in trouble. Yeah. So look at the,. So let’s look at this. You’ve got strategic and tactical thinkers on each side of the, the equation.

Um, Phil Knight, our Nike guy. Love me some Nikes. Wearing Blazers right now. Yeah. Yeah. I am actually. Said it best in Shoe dog. Um, you know, some people are great at tac. Some people are great tacticians, some people are great strategists. Very, very few people are both. Um, Tactical only, like you said, like these grind through tasks, sorts of jobs and individuals like those are the people that are at risk, unfortunately.

The strategy only people who don’t get into the details and may be a little bit resistant to using this stuff to make them more efficient will also struggle. So the winners here are people who can think strategically and know how to execute and utilize this sort of technology tactically. You can’t make better bacon or sausage or you know, whatever you want, whatever meat you’re producing, if you don’t know how it’s made, right.

Yeah. And that’s the thing is I think that when we talk to, um, there’s a lot of, fractional exec is a really popular thing right now. There’s more and more people doing it, and the people I see having a better time are the ones who can actually get into the weeds and still know enough about the processes to be able to consult about those things as opposed to people who’ve been so disconnected from it.

So it really requires like the people who can think strategically and do things tactically and approve those things tactically are the ones who are best of benefit, anyways. Um,. AI and recruiting, let’s kind of get to that. Yeah. Because that was kind of the lead here. Ultimately what we’re talking about is like the boring, repetitive stuff- note taking, organizing data, speeding up reports, automating basic research.

You know, it’s like, think of it as having just a really, again, I’m not, none of this is like terribly new, but like a extremely fast average assistant. You know? Um, If you don’t know your processes, if you’re not good at recruitment process inside out, it’s not really going to help you. It’s going to help you enhance that process and do those things faster.

That way you can, because really the goal here, and this, I think this is what everyone is upset with in the recruitment world, when they’re on the other side of it, when they’re a job seeker, or if you’re a client working with a recruiter and you’re not terribly impressed with that recruiter, it’s that like

they’re not human enough, you know? Yes. They’re not listening to you. You know, they’re spending all their time taking notes and grinding through their day, but they’re not actually engaging in the human side of the conversation, which is really the whole point of what recruiting is- is to be able to kind of read between the lines and kind of understand the bigger picture, what’s happening with this company’s search, or the bigger picture is happening with this candidate and what they’re looking for.

That way you can actually make to put two and two together and make that human connection. It should give you more time to focus on building relationships. Yes. Case closed. Uh, And people who don’t look at it that way are, are in big trouble. What,. What AI doesn’t do in the recruiting process is exactly that.

It does not build relationships. It does not strategize. Um, I, I, I think I’ve repeated this or you’ve repeated, we’ve had 110 episodes. This is at least the fifth time I’ve brought this up. Algorithm, Oz behind the curtain, AI, robot, whatever, is not selecting what candidates make it to interview or not. No. It is not happening.

It’s still a human process. And the point, the reason it’s so terrible is that it is so woefully understaffed at the corporate level, that it just takes weeks and months to get through that, that candidate funnel. That’s all that’s happening. Yeah. AI does not, and hopefully, can never replace human interaction.

If you think about what’s important in the process, right? In, in a,. In a job seeking or interview process from the corporate perspective, there’s three things that are always considered. Number one, you’ve got hard skills. You have to have this stuff to do the job. If you’re a tax accountant, you have to know tax law and, you know, your state’s regulations, et cetera.

Yeah. Number two, you think about culture fit. Do they have the, you know, do they have what it takes to fit within the, you know, the, the values of the organization, whatever your organization is looking for. And number three is all the intangible stuff and how you define integrity and grit and honesty.

Again, it’s whatever your organization values. The point is AI cannot influence numbers two and three, and if a skill is a hard skill for the company and you don’t have it, you’re not going to get a look anyways. Yeah. So it, it, it’s kind of all a moot point. What I’m trying to get at here is people get other people excited about opportunities at jobs and vice versa.

It’s not some mundane, no one’s looked at a job description and said, oh, I work there. I’m stoked about, you know, my, my, the, well maybe JavaScript writers, maybe I shouldn’t use, you know, software developers. But I’m so stoked to use Salesforce CRM because it’s in my key list of responsibilities. Um. And then- that job description, that’s been a copy of another job description.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s been written. No one cares. That’s written by Chat GPT. Right. Um,

The really bad uses of AI in recruiting are, you know, these, to your point bots talking to bots, AI cover letters, screening, screened by AI screeners. I have LOL in my notes ’cause that’s literally what it is. Um. You’ve got copy pasted AI resumes, which invariably turns into every resume looking and sounding the same.

Yeah. And then you’ve got training AI on garbage job descriptions like you just said, so that all of those look homogenous and now we’re automating these bad inputs and making everything look exactly the same. Yeah. So a couple small things. So we’ll talk about what we’re doing at Hirewell- again, there’s probably companies way ahead of us.

Like, nothing I’m saying is going to be like terribly shocking. No. If you’re not doing these things, you should definitely look into them. But like, none of this stuff is rocket science. We do have a, a crew of 8 to 10 people who meet somewhat regularly and just kind of spitball. They,. They play with, we, we have Gemini and chat GPT in-house,

they play with both of them, always trying to find new rollout and best practices, which we send the rest of the organization. First off is like having, using it, recording your calls, recording your kickoff calls to your clients. That way you’re not missing any detail. Once you get that detail, um, straight from the hiring manager from whoever else, you know, you can turn that quote, like unstructured data, that conversation into something that’s actually usable.

You can turn that into better notes than you’ll ever take. You can make sure nothing’s ever missed. You can also do the same thing on the candidate side. So you actually, when you make submissions you’re able to actually make sure you’re capturing all the detail in the exact format the hiring manager wants.

In a flash faster than you’ve ever been able to do it before. Like again, like submission level writing doesn’t have to be like the most creative writing in the world. You just need all the facts, the details, nothing left out. But more importantly, you’re getting all this into your CRM, uh, your ATS system so that like you’re not losing every time you have things in the future, you’re be able to search it.

There’s so many conversations I’ve had over the years where you miss details. Yeah. Or you get it, but you’re not a, you’re not able to save it in a way that’s actually searchable and it’s just like you, it’s not even garbage in- the garbage is not getting in like, you know what I mean? Yeah. So it gives such a better – I’m writing my notes with a pen.

Then I’m, yeah, then I sit for five hours ’cause I have seven other things happen. Then I get to putting it in the applicant tracking system. Half of it gets lost in translation. You got six filters before you put any sort of information into the database. Yeah. And the second thing I, I’ll mention too, and this is something we’ve been doing from BD perspective, but like you could do it from a job seeking perspective, if you haven’t looked at deep research, which is fairly new Chat GPT and Gemini both launched them.

That’s a great job search tool. Like we use it when I, whenever certain skill sets or great candidates we have, we can search an area, it’ll scrape real time. I’ll tell it Chicago or any other city, it’ll find jobs companies posted on their own websites, um, which is a great BD tool for us. But if you’re searching for a job, that should absolutely be one of the first places you look.

I, I’m crossing my fingers this is the Indeed killer, ’cause who needs Indeed if you can just go to chat GPT and it’ll actually find 20 companies, like looking for someone exactly like you in your local area because it actually scrapes the entire web. Love it. Um, I’ve been recommending people do that in their job searches recently. But again, we’re using that just to find companies when we have a deep pull of candidates.

Like who else is looking to hire the exact same type of people. Yeah. We want it to kill the the bad, I won’t name anybody, but the bad parts. What makes recruiting so, so mundane and so tedious. Yeah. And it could kill that technology. And,. And look, this applies to every job that those are just some anecdotes from the, um, from the recruiting side.

But, you know, when you start talking about this make or breaking recruiting, like this actually also applies to people’s careers. Um, Yeah. Anyway, companies are, are, you know, they’re going to prioritize people who are curious about AI, um, and want it and want to leverage it to work smarter. Um,. Office dorks have always been paid for what’s between their ears.

They’re paid for their brain, not their brawn. Um, If you’re not curious and you’re not exercising that port, that that muscle, you’re expendable. Um, That’s the bottom line. So we have some final takeaways. What do you got? Yeah. AI, I mean, it’s not AI that’s going to replace you. It’s someone who knows how to use AI to get more done faster than you, that’s going to replace you.

That’s the biggest thing. That’s for recruiters, that’s for internal recruiters, that’s for anybody in any role that’s out there is that you have to be worried about that. Um,. Again, what it’s, it’s really, it’s a way to. the second thing, it’s just makes the tactical things faster. If you’re looking at your day, if you’re- recruiters do boring stuff all day long. This is, This is a job that’s filled with boring crap.

That’s the exact type of stuff you should figure out how you can get that done faster with less effort using AI. The next time you’re in that space where you’re like, you know, dreading to do something, like, think about how, think about how you could be curious enough to think about how this sort of stuff could help you get that done faster, more painless.

Um. The curiosity is going to be the benefit of everything. Self-motivated, curious individuals are going to use AI to amplify their careers and those that don’t will be left in the dust. We are short on clock. That’s a wrap for this week. Thanks for tuning in the 10 Minute Talent Rant part of the Talent Insights series, which is always available for replay on talentinsights.hirewell.com, as well as YouTube, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, and Amazon.

Jeff, thanks again as always. Everyone out there, we’ll see you soon.