Keeping Humanity at the Heart of Hiring and HR
August 22, 2025 If you spend even a short amount of time browsing LinkedIn or other social media platforms, chances are you have come across a video of how discouraging online job applications and interview processes can be. One memorable one was a gentleman named Dan Gottlieb on TikTok, who applied to more than 3,000 jobs and only received 15 callbacks, all while having more than 25 years of experience as a Sales Manager. This post currently has 72,000+ likes and 9,200+ shares since it was posted on May 26 of this year (since then Gottlieb, after a ton of authentic hard work, ended up securing a great job).
What has caused the application process to feel like a never-ending marathon for many? What can you do as a candidate or company to combat the headache of a process that hiring has become?
We first must acknowledge the elephant in the room: Hello, artificial intelligence (AI). Technology can replace human effort in many aspects of the hiring process. There are specific recruiting applications that can adjust search parameters to the needed education, experience, and geography and instantly pull up hundreds or thousands of relevant candidates. The same goes for open positions. You type in a specific position, industry, and location, and jobs pop up with a click. In these ways, technology and AI are extremely helpful in making the process more efficient for the company and the candidate. Why, then, are the results not showing more efficiency and faster time to hire?
Problems with AI in the Hiring Process
Good candidates have spent hours perfecting their resumes, researching the company, learning the mission statements, and looking to set themselves apart from the competition. Chances are, by the time a candidate hits the “submit application” button, they have put a good amount of time and effort into the process. This is where the first issue with AI comes in. Positions can be programmed to filter out applications by flagging specific keywords, education, misspellings, and grammatical issues. This may seem like a more efficient process to some, but it also could filter out an ideal candidate because of a very small detail. A resume, at its most simple form, is a black and white piece of paper. It lists your education, career steps, and metrics of how your efforts helped a company be successful. What it doesn’t tell you is what behaviors and personality the individual has. For something that is only black and white, this leaves too much grey area for an AI tool to successfully screen a candidate properly.
When you ask company leaders about what sets them apart from their competition, many of them immediately mention culture. AI can look for relevant experience, positive metrics, and appropriate tenures in a position, but it cannot tell you what a person’s innate behaviors are. If culture is one of the most important things to business leaders, then it needs to be something you are constantly assessing through human interaction. Asking AI to screen candidates solely based on what is found on their resume and allowing it to make decisions on who moves forward is selling your company, and the candidate, short. This is where the stories of candidates who were passed on due to a simple formatting issue on their resume are coming from. One flag for an incorrect date range, and the ideal candidate could be shuffled away.
Don’t get me wrong, resumes are an essential step of the process, but shouldn’t the candidates’ behaviors and desires be just as important?
We recently hired a Chief Technology Officer, and when speaking with candidates, we asked this question:
“Would you have continued forward in conversation if the company was using AI as a key part of the hiring process?”
Every single one said no. This is coming from a professional whose entire career has been interacting with technology, thus having a great understanding of artificial intelligence. My point being, there is a very fine line between using and abusing AI in the hiring process. You cannot entirely replace humans.
We are not here to pick on companies that are using AI. I wholeheartedly believe there are incredible benefits to incorporating it into your business, just not in places where human-to-human interaction is imperative in making the right decisions for your company.
On the other side of the coin, candidates need to be extremely careful when incorporating AI into their job search process. We have received resumes put together by AI software. This may not seem like a big deal to some, but if a candidate is not willing to put authentic effort into their resume, what does this tell you about their integrity? Would the candidate potentially use AI in a negotiation process? AI does not truly understand who you are and all of what you have done, which could lead to inaccurate descriptions or some that don’t make any sense at all. Do not sell yourself short to save an hour or two of time. Recruiters and companies alike will be able to decipher what is authentic and what is AI.
AI is not going away. It will only continue to evolve. It has already been able to replace humans in certain positions. Have you received a spam call recently? Chances are, you got a voicemail from a robot and not a person. It is up to us to make the right decisions on how we incorporate it into our professional lives and businesses.
Here are a few suggestions for both candidates and companies to have more success in the search process.
Candidate Suggestions for Success when Job Searching
About 60% of all available jobs are not going to hit a job board. They are expensive to use and, in many cases, provide a low return of aligned candidates. This can lead to fatigue on the business side and make hiring managers have a negative or laissez-faire attitude toward what comes in.
If you do not immediately receive a call or email back, don’t panic. The hiring manager could be juggling other responsibilities while leading the search. Look to see if you can find the right person on LinkedIn and send them a connection request with a positive note about your excitement.
Can’t find them? Do it the old-fashioned way if possible. Go to the business with your relevant documents in hand and a note to the hiring manager.
Be memorable! It can be very tough to stand out in an online hiring process, so be sure to make an impact when you have the chance. Example: After you apply to a desired position, send a note to the hiring manager with a free coffee and conversation voucher. Just one of many creative ways you can set yourself apart from the rest in a virtual setting.
Challenge yourself to network in your industry. Reach out to those you respect and ask for a 30-minute conversation about a day in their life. Reach out to friends, family members, previous coworkers, or classmates. With more than half of all open positions not being posted online, this could very well be your best bet in finding what is next.
Company Suggestions for Success when Hiring
Make sure you do not have a redundant interview process. Candidates do not enjoy having the same conversation or having the same question asked multiple times. This can seem like a way to make sure you are getting consistent answers, but it comes off as unorganized and can muddy a candidate’s perception of the company. Tactfully plan out each round of the process and assign different employees for each process. Give them specific questions to ask, so that the same questions aren’t asked each round. Ask each employee to document their takeaways. Afterwards, discuss as a group the positives and negatives.
During the first conversation, let this truly be a conversation to get to know each other. Make it relaxed, yet structured. Allow the candidate to walk you through their education and career path. Try not to make preconceived notions based on their resume. Use this conversation to learn their story and use their answers and resume to formulate follow-up questions. This will help the candidate feel more comfortable and open about their past.
Go in with an unbiased mind. Instead of initially thinking about what will not work, think about where the candidate aligns well with the role. If you are finding many instances of alignment, continue to explore them. If by the end of the interview, you have not found much, then chances are they are not the right fit.
Be honest about what makes this job hard. If there are specific projects this individual will be leading, share where it may be tough. If there is a lot of travel in the role, tell it how it is. The more honest you are up front, the more you will discover who the right candidate is.
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