AI is taking over hiring. Job seekers aren’t
thrilled.
From saving time to creeping people out, AI interviewers are the new wild card in hiring.
AI is stepping into the hiring world.
AI interviewers make things faster but not without raising eyebrows
Is this a time-saving win, or just another step into a cold, robotic job market?
AI is shaking up the hiring game, and it's not without controversy. Meet AI interviewers — the recruitment version of a Black Mirror episode.
Tools that let people apply to thousands of job applications in a day have left HR teams drowning in resumes. The number of job applications is growing four times faster than actual job openings. Combine that with the fact that hiring takes forever (45 days on average, even longer in tech), and you can see why companies are handing the mic to AI.
So AI interviewers are here to help. Is this actually a win, or just another step toward a dystopian job market?
For businesses, there are some legitimate pros here. AI can handle those time-sucking “screener” interviews where candidates get sorted into “yes,” “no,” or “maybe.” It’s faster, cheaper, and lets founders focus on the stuff that actually grows their business. Plus, it might even be fairer than judging someone purely on a resume.
But here’s the catch — AI can get weird. Nobody really knows what it’s looking for. Is it analyzing how clear someone’s voice is? Background noise? Maybe even physical appearance? That black-box vibe is a no-go for many people.
And for the candidates? It can feel cold as hell — well... not literally hell, but you know what I mean.
Take Paloma Canseco, a graphic designer who recently got hit with an AI-powered phone interview. The bot had a natural-sounding voice, asked her questions, and even reacted to her answers. Halfway through, she bailed, deciding she didn’t want to work somewhere that uses robots to screen humans.
So, what’s the move for indie hackers? As Sure, AI might save you time and help you scale hiring, but it’s a slippery slope. Hiring is about building relationships, not just checking boxes. Whether you’re a one-person startup or scaling your team, keeping the human touch is what makes indie businesses stand out.
Also building an AI powered hiring platform here. Happy to answer any questions on why orgs are choosing this.
Long story: The traditional hiring process is straight up broken rn.
With tools like LazyApply, recruiters are drowning in AI-generated resumes that all look perfect on paper. I've literally seen companies get 10k+ applications for ONE role 🤯
But here's the thing - AI in hiring shouldn't be about replacing humans, it should help us get to actual human convos faster and w/ better candidates. If everyone's resume is AI-generated, none of them can be trusted. We gotta actually understand what's in peoples heads.
Companies love what we've built because they save time on the worst parts of hiring. Candidates love it because they can have a voice in the hiring process.
Bottom line: the winners will be those who use AI to make hiring MORE human, not less.
happy to chat about what we're building at jonathan @ kerplunk.com if anyone is interested
An AI from the applicant side will be talking to an AI from Employer side. Things are going to be insane.
AI's role in hiring is fascinating but also raises concerns about fairness and transparency. Striking a balance between efficiency and human oversight will be key to ensuring job seekers feel valued and understood.
I feel like this can cut both ways. We can learn to be better "interviewees" by giving the agents what they want during the AI screening. I'm not saying it's a good thing by any means, but having done recruitment for building engineering teams (as an advisor to tech startups) it is a massive numbers game. I feel like an AI conversation might give a better foot in the door for "iffy" resumes or LinkedIn profiles that don't do the candidate any favors, yet they might be a solid candidate.
The only way to scale the "giving of chances" to candidates is to be able to scale time, which AI can do. Otherwise, screening involves filtering for the best resumes / LinkedIn profiles, then whittling down the pool to a manageable size for 15-30 minute introductory calls. A lot of those filtered out in step 1 could be given an AI interview.
In fact, they way I'd probably implement this when doing recruiting is to give all the "close passes" the AI interview, and all the "strong seeming" candidates the human screening. Then see if any of the "close" pool just suck at resumes but are actually really promising.
While people are losing their jobs from automation and AI, candidates also have the time and ability to bail on interviews because they refuse to work with AI.
I see a fair bit of this behavior and struggle to figure out whether these people are luddites or heroes fighting Skynet.
We’re building an AI recruiter
During development, we’ve spoken to a huge number of human recruiters. And you know what almost always happens when a job posting gets hundreds or even thousands of resumes? They take the last 100 that came in, review them, and the rest go straight into the “forever unread” folder.
Here’s another key point: 95% of applicants didn’t even read the job description and have no connection to the role. Meanwhile, the 5% who might actually be a great fit get lost in the noise.
I believe AI in hiring is the path to personalization, and it will bring value to both candidates and hiring managers.
The only ones who might feel the impact are recruiters themselves.
We can continue this conversation if you're interested. I have many more insights ;-)
I would love to have a conversation if not a quick 15 mins call? I would appreciate it because I too have a few insights around this as I have hired many candidates
I agree that personalization could make this feel a lot better.
I'm building a startup using AI to enable humans not replace them, but looking for some contract work to pay the bills on the side. So far the job search process has been the worst I've seen in my 15 year career, and any amount of feedback on the applications I'm sending (even if AI generated) would be welcome
Hear hear. The lack of actionable information is what upsets me the most. I’m NOT right for a lot of jobs, but not knowing why I wasn’t selected is the worst part for me. Hell even if they said “sorry, its a lottery now”, would be better than getting ghosted.