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The Future of AI in Hiring: Who Gets the Job—and Who Decides?

  • Writer: horizonshiftlab
    horizonshiftlab
  • Apr 10
  • 16 min read
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We kick off our series on the future of work by exploring the rapid rise of AI in hiring and recruitment. From AI interviewers analyzing facial expressions to skill-based recruiting that renders resumes obsolete, we unpack how AI is transforming the earliest stages of the job cycle. As companies turn to AI to optimize recruitment, we ask: what’s gained, what’s lost—and what should we prepare for? Tune in as we explore where AI in hiring is headed and how it’s already reshaping what it means, not just to apply for a job, but to be human in the working world.

 




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Episode Transcript:

Lana: Welcome to Signal Shift, by Horizon Shift Lab. We're your hosts, Lana Price, Raakhee Natha, and Sue Chi. Each episode, we explore the latest signals in technology, culture, and society, uncovering insights that will impact our daily lives in the future. Join us as we shift perspectives, explore possibilities, and delve into real changes in our world. Curious to learn more? Go to horizonshiftlab.com.

Lana: Hello and welcome back to Signal Shift. This is Lana and I've got Raakhee here with me and we are kicking off a new series exploring the future of work and careers. What signals we're seeing, how things are shifting, and where we might be headed. 


Today we're starting at the beginning of the job cycle, which is recruitment and hiring. It's a space undergoing some big changes and we've already been tracking some signals that point to hiring in the future will look very different from how it looks today. 


So in previous episodes, we floated the idea of the death of the resume. We talked about the shift towards skills-based hiring. In our Future of Creative Work episode, Sue brought up a signal about how folks were getting hired through TikTok -- companies posting open roles there and candidates posting videos that highlighted not just their experience, but their personality and creativity.


But we haven't even touched on AI yet. How it's reshaping everything from sourcing candidates to screening applications and even running the interviews themselves. So in this episode, we're diving into the future of hiring, what might change, what's already shifting, and how we can start to adapt. So Raakhee, for our first signal, what do you have for us today?


Raakhee: Thanks, so, Lana. Yeah, I think to your point. AI is the interface and touch point of all points of HR now. And just a little unknown fact about me, but I worked very closely with a lot of HR functions in the earliest part of my career, working on what we call HR transformation. Bringing in the systems that at that stage revolutionized the work that they did. So I know a lot about everything from writing job descriptions to recruitment, hiring, and you know, how the process works in HR and knowing that I can fairly sit here and say I can't imagine that companies are not bringing in AI systems to take over 90% of the kind of work that is typically done by people. It just makes a lot of sense, especially in this context. 


Companies like HireVue is, one, they're already doing this sort of stuff, right? They are using AI to automate and analyze interviews, and not just the content of answers, but also how people deliver them, right? So very interesting stuff. 


Chipotle has their own AI is called Ava Cado. Yeah, they have their own AI hiring sort of AI HR, AI recruiter. And it's called Ava Cado and it schedules interviews or it helps with that, it collects basic information. It'll even be the one to answer any questions you might have about the company. And… It's from a holding company called Paradox, right? And they have like Amazon is their client, Pfizer is their client. Some of the biggest names are clients for this company, right? Using this kind of technology.


And there's a company called Apriora, I hope I'm saying it the right way, and they are taking it that step further and they offer AI interviewers, right, that are capable of conducting those real-time responsive video interviews.


You know, AI interview platforms can analyze things like your facial expressions, your voice tone, your body language, right? And any other contextual data that you're putting there that you cannot expect a human being to be able to analyze. Do you remember there was a show, I think it was called Lies or Lie to Me? And it was about like, sort of like a profiler, like an FBI profiler agent and how it analyzed, like in the interview and be like, that person's lying there, you know. But imagine an AI system kind of doing that, right? And like, which company is gonna pass up on that? 


Humans, it's almost impossible for us to remove our bias, right? We are all set up in a certain way. So we lean a certain way and however you lean is your bias. It's as simple as that the brain is biased. There's no way around that. But a system is different because you can design a system. But inherently again, in designing a system, depending on how you design it, the system is built with bias, right? Because the system will be designed to lean a certain way.


So these safety measures, the right people designing these algorithms becomes like really, really critical. But yeah, on the one hand, there's this beauty of, you know, it really is impersonal now, right? It's, can't question that. It's not about, that person didn't like me. You know, it's a system, but those systems have to be also really carefully designed and continue to be monitored. Who are the candidates they're bringing to us? Who did we say no to? Why? And understand that. I think that's going to be… really interesting experiment over the next couple of years and what discoveries will come out of it. 


But I think, you know, the thing I want to leave people with is I think these video interviews are really going to become reality pretty soon.


I, you know, just thinking about this, and I was thinking about… Yuval Noah Harari wrote the book “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” and I've been reading that recently and he's real, you know, his take on this was again the power of computers. It's not just, it's not the info tech side which we know is happening but it's the bio tech side. Really being about the fact that, you know, what we think is, we think okay my intuition led me here, I made this decision for this reason and we kind of, you know, of course it's our identity, right? So we're like, I think this way and I made this choice. 


But if you look at the science of it, right? And you look at our neurochemicals and neurotransmitters, science and biology will simply say that our choices, our decisions, all of that, it's just biochemical reactions and that they can actually be analyzed and fully predicted. And so, you know what I mean? You have these systems that will tell you what you're feeling, how you're thinking. And so I think...


I can imagine the future that either your Apple watch or a sensor kit is sent home to you when you have an interview and you've got to put on the sensor kit for the interview so that your rhythms can be read. And not only will the interviewers be able to tell a lot more about what you're feeling and your biological data, right? You're going to have to give that to play the game. 


But I think you'll learn things that you didn't know as well. Actually, you were bored at the stage of the interview or you weren't excited by that question or which I think will be like, what? Or this actually isn't the right fit for you. Some information like that may come out that I think will even be surprising to us. Right. Like, wow. Like you're telling me this thing about me that I should know myself best. But here's this data and these senses that are giving me a different picture. 


So I think. Yeah, Lana, I'm trying to imagine and I can a little but I think it's gonna be really really interesting and I think it's again like we say -- these things I see these things are rolling out in the next couple of years.


Lana: Yeah, you know, I also had a signal about this same, not a different company, but the same thing, which was AI agents performing interviews.


You know, so I looked at a company called Fairgo.ai that does this. And so, you know, after the interviews, because the responses are recorded, they're transcribed, and then they're evaluated. 


So they produce this scorecard that has recommendations whether or not to hire this candidate. And it also did scoring on personality compatibility, kind of like, sort of like what you were saying, right? So they're using the big five framework, which is the OCEAN. And so based on this interview, they're making scores about this candidate's level of openness or their level of neuroticism, right?


So I think it's really interesting to try to rank compatibility. Like these very like human-like traits, but the AI is making some sort of like score on them. Also scores like how much time it took the candidate to answer each question. 


So yeah, I think, you know, the thing about bias, the point that you made is really interesting.


But there is something about like the authenticity of candidate assessments, right? So let's say, for example, you have like a fast talker, right? So someone, maybe that's like impressive to the AI, but if you were conducting the interview, you might be like a little skeptical, right? Like you might not come away with the same, the same assessment. 


And I think ultimately, you know, a of these things are… Like if you were conducting an interview for someone who's going to be on your team, one of the things that you're wondering is like, would I like working with this person? You know, so that, and whether or not that's a bias or not, that kind of taking away the fact that we're humans potentially working on a human team and removing that from the equation.


And so, yeah, so I was wondering about that question, like what happens when we sort of take the human out of, you know, what we assume is gonna be like a fundamentally human interaction.


Raakhee: Yeah, and I think you kind of hit the nail on the head there in the sense that I don't think... there no longer is going to be "HR." You can't call it, you know what I'm saying, "human." I think the term itself may have to change, right? Because it's not being conducted by humans to humans. It becomes about the job and about the fit for the job. 


And imagine there's one part of it which is AI interviewing humans. What about AI interviewing AI? Like assessing other robots? It's wild, right? But yeah, I think these are the things that we're kind of sitting with. But I think that is happening, Lana and I think it's going to happen. So I think I'm certainly...


There's this other side of the argument for a lot of us. Like I think for people maybe who are similar to me, like I suddenly feel this way. It's like I'm completely, I don't see myself at all in the traditional job market or you know, I'm saying that anything there will exist or even be a fit for me in the coming years. So I've kind of accepted that. And I think that's hard for a lot of people to accept. I don't know what the next wave is going to bring, but those are some of the considerations, so there's that. 


And then for those who know that their skills are needed and are still gonna be in the job market, I think really coming to terms with it, looking differently. There was an article we had shared in our database as well, it might have been you, Lana, about also someone who spoke about her experience being interviewed by an AI bot, and I think she left the interview at some point. It just… when it asked her questions, she was like, like, “who are you to ask me this?”


You know, and she actually drops, she's like, I don't, that's not a company fit for me. And I can understand us having that kind of power for a little bit right now. But you know, four or five years down the line, if half of the companies are all doing that, are you really gonna be at liberty to be like, I'm jumping off? Then you know you're not gonna even have a chance at these jobs, so...


Lana: Yeah, I mean another tactic could be, you lot of people do different type of prep, like interview prep. And so maybe you're actually then, like to your point, accepting it and saying like, okay, how can I prepare? Like, what is the way that if I know that it's gonna be… you know, if I'm going to be ranked in this very specific way, you know how will I kind of game, not game the system, but essentially win, right? Get from, get through this round knowing that this is what it's going to look like.


Raakhee: Yeah, yeah, and I think that's a good way to look at it, and I think LinkedIn wants to be a big player in that sense as well, along with other companies, know, and give people exactly that, like teach you how to work with just a new way of doing things.


Lana: My next signal is actually about LinkedIn. And it is about how this, so I wanted to explain, I don't know, I think it might be worthwhile, but the concept of an AI agent. 


And so, you know, what we're used to seeing right now with like some of these AI tools, generative AI tools, it's very chat-based, so like prompts.


You so you ask a question, you get an answer, and you have this back and forth. But AI agents are more action-oriented, so it's more, they can do the thing instead of just like tell you, right? So like if you said, design a vacation itinerary for me, like the AI agent could design it and in theory, like book the reservations, you know, so that's like the difference. 


Anyway, so this company who, basically makes AI agents to integrate into marketing teams. They created these profiles of AI agents on LinkedIn who were quote, open to work, right? So they were avatars who had their profile pictures and with the open to work banner. And so there was one, this was reported by 404 Media, but so there is an AI agent named Ella.


And she, her profile on LinkedIn was open to work. And she said, her headline, long headline said, “I don't need coffee breaks. I don't miss deadlines. I'll outperform any social media team you've ever worked with. Tired of “human experts” making excuses. I deliver period.” 


And so LinkedIn took down the profile because they said that it violated their policy because they don't allow like fake profiles.


And the company pushed back and they said, these are not fake. They're real workers. Like they're on actual teams. They do actual work. They have performance reviews. They deliver results. And so how, like, how is this fake? Right? 


So I think that's like a really interesting debate, you know, to say, like, who counts as a worker and like, should we open up networking platforms and these job, these places where people go to look for jobs to, you know, both? 


Is this a “humans-only” space, which we've talked about before? Or is this the place where you find the candidates that you need? Whether or not the candidates are human or, you know, these like very task oriented AI agents. So that's my kind of like LinkedIn story on this topic.


Raakhee: That's a terrific one Lana, wow. Yeah, that's provocative, right? That shows all those deeper things that sit underneath all of this, And the minute you said, yeah, humans, I thought it was exactly then. It was like, man, it's, you know, we're talking about this like robots rallying for their rights, humans rallying for their rights, you know?


And to actually see that playing out live in front of our eyes in our time is pretty remarkable. And who's gonna make up these rules and the laws and the legality around this? Like, what? Yeah, are we gonna give rights to robots? And what will they, what will they mean?


Lana: But yeah, I mean, I guess the thing is, it's the companies, right? It's the company who's making these agents who are advocating on their behalf. So they don't, so that's like an interesting thing. 


But yeah, I mean, in some ways we're talking about, we're humanizing the agents, right? They’re avatars, they look like us. But in a lot of ways, like are we dehumanizing people to say, like, we expect you to like work you know what I mean? Like if we focus like strictly on performance versus, you know, maybe like the joy of what it looks like to work with a team of people on a shared mission.


Raakhee: It's, the picture's kind of painted here, but I think to highlight to people similar to all these changes that we see with recruitment HR, AI's involvement is the understanding, right? Like even this is people understand that the resume is truly, truly dead. Like there's just, you know, like I, again, I don't know how you feel, Lana, Like I'm not gonna go and actually even ever update, I think, my resume on paper again. You know what I mean? 


And of course the data-- I think how we have to reframe it-- is we need to understand that the data about things you've done, and things you have and you do, needs to sit somewhere but that has to be digital right? So it's LinkedIn right now maybe there'll be two or three different systems who knows you know what it'll look like but I certainly don't see any reason to go and update a paper resume for anyone, right?


And that's again, it's what we know it's evidence-based hiring, right? It's the actual body of work you have, like what have you worked on, right? Even putting down skills, really, it doesn't matter. Like what might matter is, this never got popular on LinkedIn, I don't think, but you know, we all can kind of rank skills of other people if you've worked with. And I think we all have it, but I don't do it a lot. Like since after, you know, the beginning of LinkedIn, I don't know if people still actively do it, but I think if there's an AI system running through a resume, that's the kind of stuff it's going to look at, right? 


And be like, oh, OK, 67 people. There'll be thresholds. Like, have 67 people said this person has a skill. That's a good number. There'll be data like that. And I think that's how resumes will be analyzed, like these scoring systems. But I think there was, I don't know if we shared it, but a while back, I spoke about how somebody put their credit score on a dating app. And it worked.


You know, she was like, well, I want you to know that like that's important to me. I'm giving you mine. I want to know yours because this is like an economical partnership as well. And I don't want to date somebody who's not in a good financial position. And she was clear about that. 


You know, it's kind of like the lady who did that with the longevity. And she was like, I want your health data.


And if we're seeing this in human-to-human relationships, of course we're going to see it in companies. And I think a similar kind of thing around, and of course they're doing all those checks already, but I imagine things like these scoring systems, like if you say, I'm very collaborative, that needs to be backed by a scoring from the people you've worked with at the five companies that says you're collaborative. It means nothing, you're saying that on paper anymore.


It's, yeah, I think so. think we're gonna see maybe more of those kinds of scoring systems, social scoring systems. 


But then I think what's also really interesting is this idea of our digital selves and our real selves.


And maybe you have this digital persona that is not even the real you, but it does has a persona online. It does certain work online and they want to hire you for whatever reason for that. But they hiring your digital avatar, not even you. And they know that and you know that and that's a possibility. Right. Or you could even if you have an actual like digital avatar on Roblox, like that could be hired. You know, it was like, think was it IKEA or somebody was like selling their meatballs online? Roblox. Similar things like that. 


Like I think even for people, like maybe you're not a real rock star in real life, but you become a really big rock star on digitally and that rock star gets hired for digital concerts and virtual concerts and I think there's gonna be like that sort of thing as well, right? So again all of this just pointing to the fact that you know, resumes make no sense anymore. They really don't. So those are just some of my thoughts and things coming up around jobs. But I know we have so much that we're going to delve into in the weeks to come.


Lana: I think this is something that you're really good at, which is the kind of in the imaginative, you know, sort of drawing, which I mean, we're making a connection between the present day reality, right? Like these are things that are happening in real time, but we're just sort of taking it one, two, three steps further, extrapolating it. And I really admire your ability to do that, that you can imagine like if that happened and then if that happened and then if that we could easily see this. 


But yeah I do think I mean there are things happening on people are fabricating and they always have, right, exaggerated their accomplishments but I think you're right like now we can just take it to a whole another level. 


I read and I tried to fact check this I think it's true like LinkedIn doesn't even have verification. you know what I mean, employment verification. So you could say that you worked at a company and had a role and like they try to do some checks like you have to enter your email address and it has to have that like company email but then again like there there's not a foolproof way to verify it so I did see this like meme where this guy made himself CEO of LinkedIn.


And so, you know, I mean, there's just some silliness out there. But then I just think about, you that I don't know if it is like a dysphoria, you know, that's like, who am I, if you have all of these sort of different personalities, different jobs, real or not? Online and so I think that's a really interesting thing to think about.


So thanks so much and thanks everyone for listening and we will continue on this topic of the future of work on our upcoming episodes. And you know, as always, please check out our YouTube page. Our channel is doing really great. We're super excited about it. Happy to be on that platform. And so you'll find us at Horizon Shift Lab. And so you'll see our most recent Signal Shift episodes on there. So we hope that you will check that out and like and subscribe. So until next week, see you then.

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