Will AI decide your next job? Here’s the truth.

AI is changing the landscape across a wide range of industries, and talent attraction is no exception. Research shows 62% of hiring managers are already using AI for recruitment.

Perhaps this statement makes me sound like a dinosaur but what the heck:

If AI decides whether you get the job or not, do you want that job?

Recruitment is relational. Not a process to be automated. Not for a bot or AI agent. Period.

Sure, there are aspects of recruitment for which AI can create efficiencies. But they are limited — and there are risks.

Recruitment is not about data — it’s about connection.

AI and recruitment bias

AI is far from a perfect system. Currently, many AI hiring tools come with strong biases that could reinforce discrimination.

Amazon’s AI tools, for example, are trained on male-dominated tech experience. As a result, they are prone to downgrading CVs that express a female identity. Other tools often demonstrate prejudice against people from different cultural or ethnic backgrounds.

While technology is evolving fast, so are people's expectations.

Even in the age of AI, we need to keep the ‘human’ in hiring.

Candidates are consumers

When I started in recruitment in 2005, I thought ‘people’ were the ‘product’. When things went wrong in the recruitment process, I would reflect on how tricky it is to predict (much less control) human behaviour.

People change their minds, say one thing and do another and can be influenced by a huge range of factors which are outside of the hiring team, leader or recruiter’s control.

All of this is still true today, except that people are not the product. The product is the job you want the right candidate to choose — and keep.

The candidate you’re trying to attract — they’re the consumer. A successful recruitment outcome (and employment relationship) depends on connection between consumer and brand (employer).

AI may help us move faster, but it cannot replicate human connection, empathy, fairness —or the nuance of human judgement needed to make hiring decisions.

Trust, transparency and care can’t be automated. If AI takes the lead, connection will be lost.

Connect to attract

I am not anti-technology. I am pro human connection. Effective recruitment in the modern world keeps people at the centre of every decision, no matter how intelligent systems become.

It’s not about choosing tech or people — we need to learn how to combine them.

Over the last few weeks, Heart Talent has received more than 1,500 applications and enquiries. How many of these CVs were scanned by AI for keyword matches? 0.

How many of these application cover letters were written by AI? Many, at least 100.

Don’t get me wrong, I love using AI to take meetings notes; create draft reports; synthesise, analyse and combine information from various sources; do research and brainstorm ideas. I even use it to draft content (although I never like what it writes, I need to work on my prompts, clearly).

There are SO many great use cases for AI.

Recruitment — establishing a connection between human beings who might want to work together is not a use case for AI.

Here’s another AI no-no: AI written cover letters without real human input.

Hot tip: A perfectly-crafted cover letter which hits all of the right keywords but bears no resemblance to the experience and employment history in your CV will raise a red flag.

We’re all learning together in this new world of artificial intelligence.

I’m excited by the possibilities ahead, but I’ll also keep banging this drum:

We need to keep the human in hiring.

Technology can support hiring, but it can’t replace what makes recruitment actually work: trust, empathy, curiosity and connection. Those human parts are non-negotiable.

I write about this in my book Attract: Recruitment reimagined.

Sign up here for a free sample chapter and be notified when the book is available for purchase.