The current buzzword seems to be Artificial Intelligence. Whether it is finance or healthcare, artificial intelligence has made a mark in that field. It is then logical that it has been proven useful in the field of HR, specifically in hiring and recruitment. The change has already begun.
Almost all the application tracking systems today have AI features that help with resume screening and even interviewing. Elon Musk was right when he said, “AI is likely to be either the best or worst thing to happen to humanity”. While a large portion of a recruiters work does get automated, can we really trust AI to make decisions fairly?
The challenge becomes harnessing the power of AI without compromising fairness in the process.
The Upside
The most cumbersome and time-consuming job of a recruiter is screening resumes. AI solves this. Going through hundreds of resumes would take a recruiter a couple of days at best; AI can reduce that to a few minutes.
Some platforms even allow you to put in a prompt describing what kind of candidate you want, and they generate a list of candidates who best fit your description. This again, greatly reduces the time that a recruiter spends in finding the right kind of candidate.
Additionally, we now have chatbots that can interact with candidates directly. Candidates can get answers to frequently asked questions, can check if their profile matches the job description and can even schedule interviews. This would keep the system running even when the hiring team is offline.
Data analysis and its interpretation, reducing manual errors, and reducing biases are all the upside of using AI in recruiting.
The Flip Side
The downside is that AI depends on what it is taught. The student is only as good as their master. If historically, one gender, graduating university, city, or background is favoured, the algorithm is bound to mirror this pattern.
These cases have been well documented. Like the Amazon AI that penalised any resume that had the word “women” in it. This makes us wonder, are we removing biases or reinforcing the very same biases?
AI tools have also been known to analyse information like facial expressions, without any transparency. This opacity leaves candidates, hiring managers and recruiters unable to decide why certain decisions were made. Sometimes causing us to lose out on potential candidates.
The future of AI in any field was very neatly summed up by Mark Zuckerberg when he said, “We are entering a world where we will learn to coexist with AI, not as its masters, but as its collaborators”.
That is where the future of AI-powered hiring also lies, in being hybrid. Where AI would flag inconsistencies, support recruiters with insights to help them make the right decisions and not to replace their judgement.
Of course, we also have to train this force with the means to perform these functions. We would need to use diverse data to train the tool and to audit regularly. This would involve human intervention in catching biased trends and adjusting them in real time.
We can say without a doubt that AI will continue to shape hiring – just as it has in marketing, finance, and logistics. However, hiring, fundamentally being a people-centered process, is more about potential, personality, and fit—things that can’t always be measured in data points.
The companies that get it right will be the ones who use AI not as a replacement, but as a partner—one that handles the grunt work while humans bring the empathy context, and nuance.
In other words, the future of hiring isn’t AI vs. humans. It’s AI with humans—working together to build workplaces that are not just efficient, but also inclusive and fair.
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