 |
|
|
|||||
Some 99% of hiring managers in the U.S. say theyve used AI in some form during the hiring process, a 2025 report reveals. AI can whiz in and speed up cumbersome workflows (or make them disappear altogether). But after Fast Company spoke to several hiring managers and chief human resources officers to understand how HR is using AI to hire today, it became clear that for every benefit that AI offers theres a human cost. In this piece paid subscribers will: Get a step-by-step guide outlining how AI is reshaping hiringand who gets jobs. Learn what HR is doing to ensure hiring remains as fair as possible across the workforce. What job seekers can do to maximize their chances of landing the position. 1. Writing job descriptions, scheduling interviews Most jobs come with repetitive tasks that can be easily automated, and hiring is no different. According to the 2025 AI in Hiring report from international staffing firm Insight Global, which surveyed more than 900 workers in the professional services industries, 75% of hiring managers use AI to schedule interviews, 54% use it to write job postings, and 53% use it to take notes during the interview and to draft emails to candidates. At Zillow, using AI to book interviews reduced the time it takes to schedule an interview with a candidate from 19 hours to 30 minutes, a 97% reduction, the company says. Meanwhile, documenting interviews with AI saved the team 33 hours per quarter. Bosses maintain that these are all good things. Our team was freed up to do more strategic thinking, says Roz Harris, VP of talent acquisition, engagement, and belonging at Zillow. AI removes the administrative no-joy work, says Mary Alice Vuicic, chief people officer at Thomson Reuters, where AI is used to help write job descriptions, screen résumés, schedule interviews, and transcribe meetings. Companies are also building AI chatbots to help answer candidates questions as they navigate the hiring process. At Genpact, an IT consulting firm, the Genpact Engage chatbot has handled a million-plus questions across 30 countries to date. It has also nudged candidates to finish their applications, improving completion rates by nearly 50%. However, this has come with a cost. Harris points out that as her team of 15 built these tools at Zillow, they knew they were making their own work obsolete. Theres no hiding that the tool were asking you to design could replace you, she says. Zillow worked with team members to re-skill them and ensure they could still work at the company, despite AI taking over a lot of their duties, Harris adds. But in a world where workers may be being replaced by AI, an HR team designing themselves out of jobs speaks to the reality we live in. 2. Screening résumés The vast majority of companies today are also using AI to screen résumés. According to a report from Harvard Business School, more than 90% of companies are using an automated system to filter or rank middle- and high-skilled job candidates. And yet? The same report mentioned 88% of companies say qualified high-skill applicants are filtered out because they dont match the criteria in the job description. HR management company Workday uses AI to screen candidates for jobs. Its currently facing a collective-action lawsuit by applicants who allege the algorithms discriminated against them because of age, race, and disability. Many of the experts Fast Company spoke to pointed out that human resources departments are deluged with job applications, in part because AI has made it easier than ever to apply for jobs and spam hiring managers: DealBook reports that applications with AI-generated résumés submitted on LinkedIn have increased 45% this year. Overwhelmed HR departments have little choice but to fight fire with fire. Candidates are using AI and AI agents to apply for thousands of jobs, so the candidate funnel has exponentially increased, says Ali Bebo, chief human resources officer (CHRO) of educational assets company Pearson. Cognizant, an IT services provider, is developing an AI screening system that will score and rank résumés with the aim of rolling it out in December. The AI will fast-track qualified candidates, allowing them move through validation steps and get to an interview with a hiring manager more quickly. Kathy Diaz, Cognizants chief people officer, is careful to point out that the company is doing a number of testing and quality checks on the AI. We want to ensure were not missing candidates that we shouldnt and were selecting the right ones. We dont want to waste anyones time, she says. The hope, she says, is to eventually save enough time to be able to offer coaching and feedback to candidates who dont make the cut. Still, while several hiring managers say they use AI to screen résumés and provide a recommendation, the final decision, they contend, is up to humans. Absorb Software, an AI-powered learning platform provider, uses AI to rank candidates résumés. But humans review each application to make sure the AI didnt miss anything; highly ranked résumés get a couple of minutes of human review, while lower-ranked résumés get about 30 seconds. Not all companies are on board with automating the process. Zillow and Pearson refrain from using AI to screen résumés. “We’re not using AI to screen candidates, per se, because there are some challenges that are out there, some issues that have been out there where folks have been sued,” says Bebo of Pearson. “We’re quite cautious with using AI to do the screening for us.” Résumé screening rewards candidates whose experience matches the job description, but it can miss the candidates with unconventional backgrounds who might be potential stars. For example, an econ doctorate with a popular blog might make a great personal finance columnist for a media company, but an AI might skip over that person if they have no newsroom experience. To avoid falling through the cracks, Cheryl Yuran, CHRO at Absorb Software, recommends that candidates provide detailed résumés. While a one-page résumé has been standard for years, she says candidates can go up to two pages and should also include a cover letter. We went through a phase where the shorter the better because people were reading every résumé, she says. Now with AI reading it, you want to include a decent amount of description to show your full experienceso AI has enough data. 3. Interviewing So far, companies that use AI to conduct interviews are in the minority, but perhaps not for long. According to a 2024 Resume Builder study, about a quarter of companies use AI to conduct interviews, and another 19% plan to do so within the next year. Brian Jabarian, a researcher at the University of Chicago, conducted an experiment analyzing the results for 70,000 candidates who interviewed for a customer service position. Candidates were interviewed by a human, AI, or given a choice of interviewing with a human or AI. Overall, Jabarian found that the AI interviews offered a more consistent experience: AI interviewers had a 50% chance of covering 10 of 14 required topics, compared to 25% for human interviewers. He also found that candidates interviewed by AI were 12% more likely to get a job offer. PSG Global Solutions, the company that built the AI bot that Jabarian used in his experiment, is planning to roll out its AI interviewer in 80 countries with more than 5 million candidates in early 2026. We wanted to do this earlier, but this represents a major process change and has a significant impact on the candidate experience, says David Koch, PSGs chief transformation and innovation officer. We wanted to be sure it worked as intended and to fully understand its effects, so we began with a pilot and asked Dr. Jabarian to conduct an independent large-scale field study to evaluate its impact. Despite the encouraging outcomes, Koch still recommends AI interviewing only for specific cases: high-volume, high-turnover jobs for which applications are pouring in. AI interviews are not a good fit when you have to sell a candidate on the job, or you need specific talents and fit such as a senior leadership position, he says. (As someone who asked to try an interview with PSGs AI, Kochs statement struck a deep chord, as I found the AI competent but soulless.) Currently, Cognizant uses AI to make screening calls that check a candidate’s availability and interest. AI can handle 300 screening calls in one hour compared to a recruiter, who can go through four to five calls, while producing the same success rate as a human recruiter. While some companies are using AI to interview, the vast majority of those Fast Company we reached out to drew a hard line at using AI for interviewing. Safe Software, a Canadian company that helps organizations manage their data, notes that its critical to keep a human in the loop for interviews. We recently brought a new employee on board with multiple offers. She [said] the fact we did not utilize any AI interviewers was a big reason [why] she chose Safe, Bonnie Alexander, the companys chief human resource officer, writes in an email. Our human-centric approach to the hiring process spoke to her values, which is exactly the feeling we want to maintain as we continue to expand. Not all job seekers are a monolith, though. Per Jabarians study, 78% of job seekers selected AI when given a choice between a human or an AI interview. Jabarian believes this is because AI interviewing allowed candidates to schedule interviews at their leisure. 4. Onboarding According to the Insight Global report, 50% of hiring managers are using AI to handle onboarding. Onboarding is ripe for disruption: In a 2025 study, 48% of more than 1,000 employees surveyed said a bad onboarding experience made them want to leave their job within six months, and only 28% of employees said their onboarding process prepared them for their job. At Atlassian, HR professionals built Nora, an AI agent that onboards new employees, which was rolled out in February of this year. When a new employee signs on, Nora shares information relevant to their role as well as the specific tasks they need to complete. Within the first month, Nora completed 2,000 hours of work answering questions from new hires and is now one of the most highly used agents at Atlassian. Going forward, Atlassian is working toward using AI to make the onboarding journey a one-click proceess. New hires will be able to start by clicking on Atlassian’s AI-onboarding hub, which will automatically assign new tasks and training on Atlassian’s tools and products. At Cognizant, AI handles onboarding for new hiresensuring that forms are filled out properly and fielding routine questions. One of the priorities Diaz has for the time AI saves is to reinvest it in improving the new-employee experience. We arent going to spend less time recruiting, were going to spend different timemore time speaking with candidates about our culture and matching them up with buddies and mentors to make sure they have a good experience, she says. She points out that ideally onboarding should be a long experience where new employees get a 30-, 60-, 90-day, and one-year check-in, and HR can ask how things are going and if there are any gaps. Were not just automating what were doing, she says. We want to totally reimagine it.
Category:
E-Commerce
The latest buzzword is AI literacy. Much like social media, ESG, and CSR before it, employers are now looking for proof of fluency on résumés, and individuals are desperate to differentiate themselves to show that they are keeping pace. And its everywhere, mentions of terms like agentic AI, AI workforce, digital labor, and AI agents during earnings calls increased by nearly 800% in the last year, according to AlphaSense data. Over the last five years, workers across industries have become expected to be well-versed in a technology that is ever-evolving and still relatively new for so many, including the leaders implementing it. The trouble with AI is that by the time a candidate hits send on a CV, their level of proficiency is already outdated. It’s a quiet, corrosive force that’s keeping people silent in the very moments when we need their voices most. But what if the real problem isnt the pace of change or people not understanding AI, but instead that we have made them feel ashamed for their lack of understanding, preventing people from raising their hand to say, “I don’t know? Vulnerability makes us human. Mark Cuban recently posted on X, The greatest weakness of AI is its inability to say ‘I don’t know. Our ability to admit what we don’t know will always give humans an advantage. Why, then, are we creating an environment and fostering workplace cultures that encourage people to fake it, until you make it” as it relates to AI? The cost of staying quiet is real. We’re at risk of shaming ourselves into obscurity. The Shame Spiral in Action Everyones talking about the AI hype cycle. But almost no one is talking about the shame spiral its creating. AI not only has a long-term impact on the economy, but also on the day-to-day lives of people. Companies are replacing roles faster than theyre training workers and in some cases, like Klarna, laying off workers only to hire back when AI tools fall short. People miss out on jobs, not because theyre unqualified, but because no one gave them a path forward. They walk around feeling like impostors in rooms they’ve already earned the right to be in. Inside companies, we see biased tools get approved and shortcuts turn into systems. A recent report by LinkedIn shows 35% of professionals feel too nervous to talk about AI at work, and 33% feel embarrassed by how little they know. These aren’t just workers, they’re parents and community leaders. This shame spiral, fueled by hype that says “everyone gets AI except you,” risks shutting down curiosity and critical questions before they even start. The pattern signals a bigger issue: at the same time people feel too ashamed to engage, AI systems are taking over and making decisions, incremental and important, that affect everyone. To avoid embarrassment, people take shortcuts. A recruiter might rely on an AI résumé screener without understanding how it works and which candidates it may be discarding. A manager might approve a tool that decides who gets extended care without asking what drives the algorithm. A parent might sign off on an AI-powered teaching tool without knowing who designed the curriculum. A 2024 Microsoft and LinkedIn survey found that only 39% of people globally who use AI at work have gotten AI training from their company. We’ve seen what happens when these systems go unchecked. Amazon scrapped its AI recruiting tool after it was found to discriminate against women. Workday faces a class-action lawsuit alleging its AI screening tools systematically exclude older workers and people with disabilities from job opportunities. Microsoft’s chatbot Tay launched with the intention of learning from conversations, was exposed to trolls, and within 24 hours, was posting racist, misogynistic, and offensive content. When silence replaces curiosity, people essentially remove themselves from the decision-making process until they are no longer accounted for. Reshaping The Workplace Reality AI is here, and it is changing the workforce. The choice is ours: Bring people along with us and help them be part of the transformation or leave them behind in the name of efficiency? What moves people from anxiety to agency isn’t more lectures or tutorials. People are inspired by permission and tools. Permission to be a beginner. The freedom and the space to learn. The most confident AI users aren’t experts; they play with different tools until they find what works for them. Digital dignity starts with that permissionpermission to ask basic questions, to slow down, to admit gaps. It means leaders modeling vulnerability before demanding employees fill theirs. To truly embrace and harness the potential of AI, we must focus on impact, not mechanics. You don’t need to code a neural net, but you do need to spot when AI systems are making decisions about you. Start with what affects you directly: parents can ask what tools schools are using, job seekers can learn how résumé screening works, and managers can ask what AI tools are coming into their workplaceand what training comes with them. Practice saying “I don’t know.” The best leaders see gaps as opportunities to ask good questions. JPMorgan created low-stakes spaces for managers to experiment with AI, encouraging leaders to admit when they were stuck. That openness built trust and sped up adoption. Johnson & Johnson encouraged broad experimentation across business units, generating nearly 900 AI / generative AI use cases across research, supply chain, commercial, and internal support. The result? An internal chatbot for employees and a fresh approach to making clinical trials more representative. This isn’t just a knowledge gap. It’s a culture of silence. And if we don’t break it, AI won’t be a tool for transformation; it’ll be a mirror for all the systems we were too ashamed to question. The most powerfl thing we can say in this moment is: “I don’t know. But I want to learn.” Because the future is still being written, and we all deserve a seat at the table and a hand on the pen.
Category:
E-Commerce
For leaders today, the pressure to do more with less feels relentless. Leaner teams, flatter organizations, and the rise of productivity tools such as Slack, Notion.ai, and Monday.com promise efficiency but often deliver the opposite: more reporting, more deliverables, and the demand to be always on.Organizations are increasingly falling into the “acceleration trap,” taking on too much too quickly and undermining their effectiveness and well-being. Sandra, a senior leader in the tech sector, saw this firsthand. After a reorganization left her team stretched thin, she slipped into a 9-9-6 routineworking nine to nine, six days a week. Gallup’s research shows unmanageable workloads and unclear priorities are top drivers of burnout and disengagement. For Sandra and her team, competing priorities created the illusion of progress. Quick wins piled up, but strategic projects stalled. Through our work advising dozens of companies navigating high-stakes transformations, we have seen this pattern repeatedly. Kathryn, as an executive coach and keynote speaker, and Jenny, as an executive adviser and learning & development expert, help leaders recognize when theyve fallen into the productivity trap, and how to climb out before it undermines their long-term impact. Productivity isnt the problem. Unbounded productivity is. Nonstop execution drains energy, mutes your voice, and erodes your ability to lead strategically. Here are four ways to avoid the trap. 1. Set Boundaries Against Over-Execution Deloitte finds that when AI and productivity tools lack clear ways of working, they create more work. Sandras team once tracked 157 projects, spending more time updating systems than moving work forward. As deadlines slipped, Sandra found herself diving into the weeds to close gapsa vicious cycle that left her team dependent on her and pulled her away from the strategic work only she could do. “Long hours backfire,” undercutting both people and organizational outcomes, with over-execution producing diminishing returns. To avoid this death by a thousand cuts, leaders must set clear rules of engagement. Focus only on mission-critical projects and eliminate the noise. Create a not-to-do list. Steve Jobs said, I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Empower your team to say not now when requests dont align with priorities. And keep stakeholders aligned by communicating progress and risks, reinforcing that the team is tackling the biggest problems. By following these principles, Sandras team cut the list to 25 priorities. But protecting time is only part of the equation; leaders must also decide how to spend it. 2. Balance Operator and Architect Modes Even after narrowing the list, Sandra was pulled into details. Her CEO wanted project-level updates, so she dug into the weeds herself, time that should have been spent on architect-level work, such as setting direction, aligning stakeholders, and shaping long-term priorities. If she had stayed at the right level, her team would have managed the details, and her CEO would have been hearing about trends, risks, and strategic shifts proactively through her updates. The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) frames this as: rocks, pebbles, sand. Rocks: the 37 strategic priorities that truly move the business Pebbles: mid-sized projects matter but dont transform the business Sand: daily tasks, emails, and meetings that eat capacity The insight is simple: protect the rocks. Each time Sandra dug into sand, she sacrificed architect time. Ask: Am I building the future, or just surviving the present? Protecting rocks advances strategy and gives leaders clarity to speak up when new requests threaten to divert focus. 3. Speak UpDont Suffer in Silence One of the most common traps for leaders is quietly absorbing more work than they can handle. The instinct often comes from a desire to help and prove capability. However, silence signals capacity and quickly leads to overload. Gallup research shows unmanageable workloads are one of the biggest drivers of burnout and disengagement. The antidote is to make trade-offs explicit and visible. Leaders who speak up frame pushback not as resistance but as stewardship of priorities. Ground conversations in data: dashboards and workload views turn invisible strain into concrete evidence, elevating the discussion from Can you take this on? to How do we prioritize what matters most? Simple routines also normalize dialogue about focus. Start-stop-continue discussions encourage teams to decide what to pause or drop before new work is added. Asking, Which initiative should we deprioritize to make room for this one? reframes pushback as alignment, not reluctance. When Sandra faced mounting demands from her executive team, she shifted from silent acceptance to strategic dialogue. Instead of taking on every initiative, she began saying, If we add this project, heres what wont move forward. That change forced trade-offs onto the table, protected her capacity to act, and strengthened performance. 4. Protect Your Strategic Energy Sandra thought she was shielding her team by absorbing the overflow. It felt generous, even necessary, to keep them from burning out. But the more she took on, the more depleted she became. What looked like support drained her clarity and influence. That realization became a turning point. Protecting her strategic energy wasnt selfish; it was the only way to lead efectively. Leaders safeguard energy by channeling it into high-leverage priorities only they can drive: setting strategic direction, strengthening client growth, aligning stakeholders, and developing talent. McKinsey research shows sustainable productivity depends less on visible activity and more on aligning day-to-day focus with core strategy. Once Sandra redirected her attention to those high-value areas, her team stepped up operationally. The company advanced with greater focus, and her CEO engaged her in forward-looking conversations that reflected her true value. Protecting her energy unlocked not just her effectiveness, but her companys. When leaders over-execute, chase quick wins, or stay silent under pressure, they risk undermining the very future they are trying to build. Busyness doesnt create results or innovation; focus and reflection do. The leaders who thrive arent the busiest, but the ones who know how to protect their capacity for the work only they can do. Where might you be confusing activity for impact, or quick wins for real progress?
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||