It’s no secret that artificial intelligence is challenging and changing almost every job function. Talent acquisition is no exception.
In the past, recruiting staff wrote and posted job descriptions, mined resumes and cover letters for qualified candidates, contacted them for interviews, followed up with offers or requests for additional interviews or information and sent onboarding information.
Candidates searched for jobs online (or in newspapers, depending on how far back you look), tailored their resumes, wrote cover letters, made follow-up calls and waited to hear from recruiters or human resources.
Today, AI is partially or completely automating many of these formerly manual tasks. According to Bullhorn’s “GRID 2025 Industry Trends Report,” which incorporates responses from more than 1,500 recruitment professionals, 67% of companies are using AI in recruiting for tasks like creating job descriptions and finding candidates, compared to 59% in last year’s report.
One survey respondent’s comment sums up sentiments nicely: “AI, I think, is just going at warp speed now. So if you’ve not started, good luck catching up!”
Asked how prevalent AI use is in recruiting, Steve Lowisz, chief executive officer of Qualigence International, a Livonia, Mich.-based recruiting firm, offered an instinct: “80% of recruiting firms are using AI; less than 40% know what they’re doing with it.”
Edward Pederson, vice president of commercial operations for PitchMe, a London-based human resources tech firm, noted that “40% of a recruiter’s job can be done with AI.” What he’s learned in his years on the cutting edge of AI use in human resources is that, “the world isn’t quite ready for it yet.” Candidates’ discomfort with AI, a lack of integrated systems and disparate government regulations are tempering using AI to its full potential, he explained.
No matter how you look at it, AI is shaking up the recruitment industry, and the future remains uncertain. Stuart Gordon, senior analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, noted that the advent of social media job postings has already forced change in the recruiting industry.
“Recruiters have already gone through a lot in the last 15 years,” Gordon said. “They’ve had to adapt and change.” This is just the latest disruption, he said, noting “we’re probably in for a rollercoaster.”
AI functions in recruiting
How are recruiters using AI? Prevalent functions include searching and matching candidates — a time-consuming ordeal if done manually — and writing job descriptions.
Bullhorn’s report shows 56% of respondents using it to search for and match candidates, 51% for recruiter administrative tasks, and 42% for screening and evaluating applicants. Other automated tasks were winning new business, at 42%, submitting candidates to clients, at 33%, and managing payroll and billing, at 30%.
The “SHRM 2025 Talent Trends” report, which includes survey responses from more than 2,000 human resources professionals, shows that 66% use it to create job descriptions, 44% use it to screen or review resumes, 32% use it to automate candidate searches, 31% use it to customize job postings to specific groups, and 29% use it in communicating with applicants during the interview process.
AI as a recruiting coach
Lowisz’s recruitment firm has developed its own AI tool that does candidate searches with AI bots and also coaches recruiters in interviewing and evaluating candidates.
“The simplest use of AI is to get rid of administrative tasks,” said Lowisz. “The better use is coaching.
“It ensures we gather the right information,” he added. “Intake sessions with clients are much cleaner.”
The tool also summarizes conversations with candidates. “It indicates areas you may have missed,” Lowisz explained.
The internal tool, now in its third or fourth iteration, incorporates Qualigence’s recruiting expertise. Recruiting experts give the tool specific criteria to help them make better decisions. Without specific criteria, Lowisz explained, AI just spits out whatever it can find on the Internet or in open-source AI, which doesn’t provide any value-added expertise. “We get it wrong all the time,” he explained.
While some firms use AI agents to screen candidates or conduct interviews, Qualigence has stopped short of that automation. “We have elected not to have AI interviews with candidates because of the personal touch,” Lowisz said. “Candidates want to talk to a human. They want to know someone cares.”
However, Lowisz also owns a Cleveland staffing firm for blue collar jobs, and that firm uses AI to ask candidates seven basic questions, and then a person follows up with an interview.
Lowisz also noted that, while AI can be used to make hiring decisions, it shouldn’t be given that authority. “AI should never select candidates,” he said. “That’s dangerous. It should coach you on how to make the decision.”
A human recruiter can evaluate a candidate based on other openings they know about, Lowisz explained. They might conclude that a candidate isn’t right for the job they’re interviewing for, but would fit for another job. “AI isn’t fully trained to do that – at least not yet,” he said.
Lowisz doesn’t see AI replacing recruiting firms in his lifetime. “But recruiting firms that don’t adopt AI will go out of business pretty quickly,” he said.
Faster work with a human focus
Ellen Hughes, manager of marketing and communications for Epitec, a staffing firm headquartered in Southfield, Mich., said her firm posed strategic questions related to AI before implementing it.
“We started by asking ‘where do we see it supporting our team and how is it related to our values as a company?’” Hughes said. “How can AI make us faster and smarter but also not lose the personal touch?”
About three years ago, Epitec developed a set of general guidelines, she said. “We use AI to help our team do more. AI helps us find our A list of candidates faster. We also use it to understand the technology we’re recruiting for and to identify titles or keywords to search for,” she said. In that way, AI has been an educational tool, she said.
Epitec also uses an AI chatbot to interact with technical candidates, Hughes said. Technical candidates especially like interacting with AI because it asks questions recruiters may not ask, she said. “They like to engage in that way.”
Hughes advised transparency in AI use to maintain candidates’ trust. “Be careful that candidates don’t feel like it’s a bait and switch,” she said. “Make sure they understand where AI is employed in the process, especially if there’s voice AI involved.”
She also stressed the importance of strategic use of AI. “Understand what you’re trying to do,” she said. “Don’t let the tool find you; find the tool.”
Finally, Hughes made the case for experienced human recruiters working alongside AI. “There’s such a strong case for really good recruiters,” she said. “There’s always going to be some human interaction there.”
Two reasons humans need to monitor AI are candidate fraud, where candidates use AI to create applications that don’t reflect their true experience or skills, and AI hallucinations. “Be skeptical of what AI gives you,” Hughes said. “Make sure it doesn’t throw something in there that’s false.”
AI agent interviews, talent care
There are effective uses of AI in interviewing. Case in point: Kelly, the staffing company, has used AI agents for initial interviews with blue-collar candidates.
Pederson, who served as vice president of innovation and product development for Kelly before moving to PitchMe, said one Kelly client had 150 clients visiting the office for interviews daily. To streamline the process, candidates filled out an application on an iPad. If they met requirements, an AI agent would call their cell phone to ask screening questions.
“Her name is Anna,” said Pederson. “I’m told she’s very polite.”
The AI agent would then provide a score to accept or reject the candidate, or trigger a transcript reading to decide. “We have a human in the loop for that process,” Pederson said, as a hiring manager reviews the scores and decides.
“The overall sentiment has been pretty good,” said Pederson. Most candidates are glad their application didn’t go into a black box and that they received a call. “Candidates can opt out of it, but less than 1% have opted out,” he said. “It helps get more viable candidates in front of hirers.” Managers also spend less time with candidates who aren’t qualified, he explained.
Kelly is also piloting what the organization calls “talent care,” Pederson said, where an AI agent follows up with hired candidates to get feedback on the interviewing and onboarding process, and check in with candidates at key milestones to answer any questions they may have.
Benefits of AI use in recruiting
Is AI helping or hurting recruitment efforts? The answer is “yes,” but let’s explore the benefits first. It’s not surprising that time savings and efficiency top the list.
The “SHRM 2025 Talent Trends” report shows 89% of professionals who use AI in recruiting say it saves them time or increases efficiency. More than a third (36%) say it helps reduce costs, and 24% say AI has improved their ability to identify top candidates.
Bullhorn’s “GRID 2025 Industry Trends Report” further ties automation to revenue growth. The top-performing recruitment firms were 57% more likely to be in the advanced stages of digital transformation, which includes AI automation. At least twice as many firms that have automated tasks like searching for and matching candidates saw revenue growth of 10% or more.
Time savings also showed up as a benefit based on the GRID report. The report asked firms how much time they spend on each task and predicted time savings with AI implemented. Responses indicated 4.5 hours saved weekly from searching and matching candidates, and 3.6 hours each for screening and administrative tasks, plus savings from other manual tasks that add up to 17 hours of time savings per recruiter weekly.
Finally, average time to placement seems to correlate with both automation and revenue increases. Based on the “GRID 2024 Talent Trends Report,” 80% of candidates want to be placed in less than 20 days. In the “GRID 2025 Industry Trends Report,” firms with increased revenue in 2024 were 21% more likely to be under the 20-day threshold and almost 40% more likely to place candidates in less than 10 days. Almost half of firms that lost money in 2024 were above the 20-day mark.
What’s more, the report showed firms that automated candidate searches were 50% more likely to have an average placement time under 20 days compared to those not using automation. Firms with automated screening in place were 86% more likely to place candidates in under 20 days compared to those not using AI for screening.
AI cautions and pitfalls
While AI can save time and produce efficiencies, it’s universal that AI confuses the hiring process, said Gordon. Candidates use AI to develop their CVs and resumes, trying to trick the employer’s AI so they’re not filtered out, he said.
“Candidates use AI to make their skill set look perfectly geared to that job, when it likely is not,” Gordon explained. “What we’re finding is that the quality of candidates is not as good as it would be if a human made the decisions.”
In a 2025 Checkr survey of 3,000 hiring managers, 59% of respondents said they’ve suspected candidates of using AI tools to misrepresent themselves, and 60% said they’ve identified a candidate misrepresenting experience or qualifications, while another 13% suspected deception but couldn’t prove it. What’s more, 62% said that job seekers are better at faking their identities with AI than hiring teams are at detecting them.
The Checkr survey also showed a tendency toward more in-person interviews to verify identify and qualifications, with 36% of respondents saying they would reduce fraud this way. Fraud detection software was the go-to prevention method for 31% of respondents, and 24% said they would invest in better background checks.
Algorithmic bias
On the recruiter side, algorithmic bias is a concern — and potential legal risk. AI systems have been known to produce systemic, repeatable biases that produce unfair results for groups based on gender, race, ethnicity, age, and other characteristics. These biases can build up over time based on historical data and embedded criteria.
For example, AI may favor hiring people with certain characteristics simply because those types of people are already in the roles. It may favor people with degrees from certain universities or disfavor caregivers because of gaps in employment. And because AI is increasingly used to screen candidates, those with certain characteristics may never reach a human recruiter for evaluation.
Universal availability levels the playing field
Finally, since AI is readily available to all recruiters, it’s no longer a differentiator or revenue generator. An April 2026 Staffing Industry Analysts article put it this way: “Across the firms we work with, productivity gains that were a differentiator 18 months ago are increasingly the baseline expectation. When a tool becomes universally available, it raises the floor for all participants without delivering lasting advantage to any of them.”
Gordon noted that “AI only” recruitment firms are emerging, but their margins aren’t much different from typical recruiting firms. “The traditional players have had to get quite efficient already,” he said. “This is just the latest phase for them.”
This reality brings home the importance of strategic AI use with human guardrails in place. And if a recruiting firm’s differentiator is its expertise, it also makes the case for an internal AI tool that incorporates that expertise, like what Qualigence developed.
“Sit down and figure out why you’re using it – how it impacts recruiters and candidates,” Lowisz advised. “Pick one or two things to implement.”
Pederson’s advice is similar. He advises a “micro focus” on targeted areas where AI can help. “AI is really good at middle to middle, but not end to end,” he said, explaining that human intervention is necessary, especially at the beginning and end of the recruiting process. “Think about the humans along the way,” he said.
The future of AI in recruiting
Most agree that AI use will continue to increase and will replace more manual processes, but that human recruiters will always be part of the process.
A 2024 Mercer report entitled “Strategic AI Adoption in Talent Acquisition Today” explores what the next frontiers of AI use in recruiting might look like, including:
• Enhancing diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging by incorporating these elements into AI algorithms.
• Predictive analytics to determine a candidate’s fit with the team, career path and more.
• Virtual and augmented reality interviewing to immerse candidates in job roles, providing a “day in the life” experience virtually so they know what to expect.
• Training and development recommendations tailored to a candidate’s current skill set, personal preferences and more.
