The AI-Enabled Recruiter: Skills and Teams for the Future
To our Talent Community,
Last month, we explored how AI tools are transforming recruiting. Your enthusiastic response showed us you want to go deeper—beyond the tools to what this means for recruiting teams and careers. We wanted to reflect on what we’ve been observing in the market and the future implications.
History has shown us that greater efficiency almost always leads to more demand. When cars became more fuel efficient, people drove more. When more roads are built, congestion gets worse. We’re already seeing this play out with AI. It’s easier to send AI-driven outreach to candidates and candidates can apply in mass. Companies and candidates are finding it difficult to navigate all the noise. This follows something called Jevons Paradox if you really want to nerd out. This will only continue to escalate as infrastructure costs get cheaper and AI tooling gets better.
We’ve adapted to technology shifts before to become search-enabled, mobile-enabled, social-enabled, and now we’ve arrived at the AI-enabled future. With each shift, new skills and roles have emerged that differentiate great from good — boolean search, email versus phone for strategic outreach, talent pipeline networks, and recruitment marketing.
We find ourselves in this new era with uncertainty on the conditions that we’ll be operating in, both in the near-term (agents and co-pilots) and the long-term (AI humanoid robot helpers, anyone?).
To navigate this period of uncertainty, we’re sharing specific skills that will differentiate good recruiters from great recruiters and our predictions for how AI could reshape recruiting teams.
Skills that will be essential for recruiting
Relationship-building: recruiters with deep networks across the company and with candidates will be crucial. Will the best talent respond when your recruiters reach out? Will they trust them when they make the case to take a leap of faith to consider a new opportunity? AI will be able to find most candidates, but the special 100x candidates will continue to be accessible only through trusted relationships. This will be the competitive advantage.
Deep domain expertise: AI is confident about answering questions and capturing information. It doesn’t, at least in the near-term, have the skill to ask nuanced questions to probe for motivations and culture that are relevant for specific teams, managers, and roles. Over time, AI will learn more and more about each domain we operate in, and the differentiation will be in how successful recruiters can deliver compelling narratives to candidates.
Creativity: the human differentiator will be our ability to think creatively about how to best attract and hire talent. Additionally, prior technology shifts have largely benefited technical teams, but AI makes it possible for everyone to use natural language to solve their own problems through user-generated applications and integrations.
AI proficiency: recruiters that understand how to use these new tools in creative ways will be essential. This is the combination of deep domain expertise, skills to build strong prompts, and an understanding of what AI tools are best suited for different use cases. The best recruiters will continue to invent new ways of operating and engaging with candidates.
How recruiting teams might evolve
It’s inevitable that new org structures, roles, and essential skills will emerge in recruiting.
Human-to-Human Teams
These teams will focus on relationship building, advising, and coaching hiring managers and candidates. These culture carriers deeply understand the business, know how to navigate org charts, can utilize their network to influence decisions, and easily identify dots to connect across talent initiatives. When everyone is using AI, differentiation will come through how we maximize the value of human interactions and relationships.
AI is tuned for logical connections and synthesizing possibilities based on what has been done in the past. Humans are tuned to read between the lines to understand body language, emotional cues, and solve for future possibilities.
Within these teams, there could be a shift from functional specialization to candidate segment specialization (by career stage and decision factors) and a new focus on creating personalized candidate journeys around these segments. New roles could emerge, such as:
Career Guides/Coaches: great recruiters are excellent at pattern matching and imagining dots connecting that don’t yet exist. These roles will be filled with people that invest disproportionate time building strong relationships with hiring managers across the company and with candidates. They play the long game and focus on helping educate managers on possibilities for how to evolve their teams, and advise candidates about potential paths into roles at the company based on their motivations and timing.
Talent Business Partners: embedded within the company, these folks build a deep understanding of where business is headed and what talent exists internally and externally. This is a melding of talent strategy, internal mobility, retention, and workforce planning.
Human Verification: as AI becomes more accessible and embedded, there will be a need to validate that the person being interviewed is who they say they are versus a machine or someone else.
Candidate/Human Experience Designers: winning companies will be those that create memorable candidate moments. As the assessment process itself becomes more automated, the pre-funnel experience is where companies can stand out, such as educating top talent on their work culture, business, and values. As interactions with AI and software become more ubiquitous, this role can create high-touch, personalized moments that deepen human connection and build genuine relationships.
Human-to-Machine Teams
These teams will focus on collaboration, onboarding, and training of their AI teammates and workflows, and they’ll be built with deep domain experts at the cross-section of recruiting craft and technology. They’ll be composed of people that understand what great looks like in recruiting with the skills to solve challenges with AI capabilities.
It’s possible that some organizations will build these teams within what we’ve known as IT functions, but there’s an opportunity for People/Recruiting teams to take ownership of these, given the human and privacy/compliance implications of these teams. New roles could emerge, such as:
AI Architects (strategy): design the ecosystem of tools and integrations while measuring performance.
AI Conductors (execution): workflow engineers and operations specialists that orchestrate automated recruiting agents to execute recruiting initiatives. In the near-term, focus on high-volume recruiting and executing at massive scale.
AI Coaches (training): optimize AI recruiting capabilities. Just like an intern who’s new to an industry, team, or role needs coaching, AI will need to be continuously trained on the skills, experience, and attributes that make someone great for a particular role. It will also involve teaching different techniques for finding and evaluating talent. AI will also have to continuously be trained on how to effectively deliver candidate messages in the company’s tone and brand voice.
How to balance learning with execution
We want to acknowledge that the pace of change continues to accelerate which is exciting, exhausting, and overwhelming all at once. Our suggestion for navigating this learning curve is to stay curious but be focused.
Stay curious and explore multiple ways to learn:
Start small and experiment with time-boxed learning periods (30-60 minutes weekly).
Follow industry leaders by subscribing to newsletters, podcasts, and follow thought leaders in your space (such as Benedict Evans and Hung Lee).
Attend events and conferences, and join communities to stay plugged into the latest developments.
Take courses on emerging technologies with platforms like Coursera or Udemy. They offer great introductions to AI and machine learning.
Innovation often comes from cross-pollination—look at how other teams in sales, engineering, and customer success are leveraging new technologies and apply those lessons to your work. Grab coffee with peers on these teams.
Share findings and use cases within your own team via Slack channels or carve out time in team syncs.
Use AI for brainstorming and ideation. AI can catalyze creativity by generating possibilities you might not have considered. Using a well-crafted prompt structure, you could use examples like these to expand your thinking:
“identify the riskiest aspect of our current idea. Now, brainstorm ways to turn that risk into a unique selling point…”
“identify potential weaknesses or shortcomings of [proposed solution to outlined problem]. How might they be addressed?"
“from the perspective of a key user or stakeholder, what improvements could be made to…"
Focus by allowing AI to do your most manual tasks, so that you can concentrate on things that have a higher impact:
Use AI to surface insights from customer feedback, market data, or competitor analysis. You can then leverage the trends and data to influence hiring managers and executives on hiring pace and decisions.
Save time during and after meetings by using AI transcription solutions within Zoom or Google Meet, or tools like Fathom or Granola so that you can move projects and work forward.
Look for other places where AI can help with a series of manual tasks, like extracting data or synthesizing a number of sources, and explore solutions like Make.com to connect multiple AI tools into one workflow.
The path forward
Individuals who will thrive in this new era will maintain a beginner's mindset and make time to experiment with new tools. There are no experts today—but you can position yourself as a source of knowledge. By developing proficiency with AI and forming thoughtful opinions about its applications, you can help shape your organization's technology roadmap. Don't wait for leadership to request your input—if you do, they may make assumptions about automation that could affect your team's future.
In addition to helping shape how your company uses this technology, you’ll also have more time to spend on the things that only humans can do—understanding the nuance of candidates and roles and being a trusted advisor to hiring managers.
Every technology shift creates opportunities to rethink how work is organized and how new roles will be designed. We’re at the very beginning of the biggest shift we’ve ever seen, and we’re excited for the future our recruiting community will create together.
—
Mike, Adam & Jill
🎉 Placement Highlights
Chloe Hemingway joined General Catalyst as Director of Executive Talent for Global Resilience.
💫 “Becoming a Trusted Advisor” Training Now Open to the Public
Based on popular demand from our community poll, we're thrilled to announce that our most requested training—"Becoming a Trusted Advisor"—will be available publicly for the first time this June!
Why This Matters: In today's competitive talent landscape, recruiters who can transition from being tactical contributors to strategic advisors significantly increase their impact on hiring outcomes and business results. This skill gap was identified as the #1 training need across our community.
You'll Learn How To:
Build domain expertise to guide and influence hiring decisions
Use data to back recommendations effectively
Communicate effectively with different stakeholder types
Frame recommendations and tradeoffs strategically to drive better decisions
Who Should Attend: Anyone in talent looking to enhance their strategic impact and improve stakeholder relationships
Format: Two sessions: Day 1 is 2 hours, and Day 2 is 90 minutes. Both sessions are virtual with practical frameworks, breakout activities, and relevant recruiting case studies.
Day 1: June 3: 9am-11am PT
In this session we will teach you the skills and frameworks for becoming a trusted advisor
Day 2: June 10: 9am-10:30am PT
After having a week to put your new trusted advisor skills into action, we will reconvene to answer questions, problem solve your specific use-cases, and put some of the frameworks to use in your day-to-day work.
Investment: $950 per participant (20% discount for teams of 3+). Register here!
🚀 April Leadership Moves in the Market:
Rachael Hood, former Head of Executive Talent Acquisition at Cruise, joined Moloco as Director of Executive Recruiting and Strategic Talent Programs.
Brittany Jacobson, consultant, joined Veeam Software as Director of Recruiting Operations.
Darius Minaee, former head of Talent Acquisition at Plaid, joined LinkedIn as Senior Director of Talent Acquisition for R&D.
Alla Mezhvinsky, former Head of Talent Acquisition at Instacart, joined Glean as VP, Talent and Workplace.
Sunny Zhang, former Principal at Rich Talent Group, joined Sequoia as an Executive Talent leader.
Justin Swisher, former Director of Global Recruiting at Apollo.io, joined 11x as Head of Talent.
Mary Shekinah, former TA Enablement Leader at Kimberly-Clark, joined Tide’s Recruiting team.
Maple L, former Technical Recruiting Manager at Valon, joined Clay’s Recruiting team.
Lauren Valencia, former Sr. Director, Global Head of Talent at Airbase, joined Socket as Head of Talent.
Patrick O’Neill, former Head of Technical Recruiting at Notion, joined Thrive Capital as VP, Recruiting.
Sam Pullman, former Talent leader at Ramp, joined Alchemy’s Talent team.
Kelli Presto, former talent leader at Pyka, joined Speak as Head of Talent Acquisition.
Neal Rosenblum, former Director, Talent Acquisition at Pure Storage, joined ChargePoint as Sr Director of Global Talent Acquisition and Workforce Planning.
Brian DesRoches, former Director of Recruiting at firsthand, joined Dandelion Energy as Director of Recruiting.
Candice Smith, former Head of Talent at The New Club, joined Obvio’s Talent team.
Farrah Zanganeh, former Sr. Director of Talent and People at Peachy, joined Tend as Sr. Director, Talent Acquisition.
Chris Shaw, former Head of Talent at Character.AI, joined Chainguard as VP of Talent.
Eric Strathmann, former Head of Talent Acquisition and Ops at Bloomerang, joined EverDriven as Director, Talent Acquisition.
Michael Pompette, former Director of Talent Acquisition and People Operations at aiXplain, joined a stealth startup as Talent Acquisition.
Ian Maron-Kolitch, former Head of HRBPs & Workforce Development at ABL Space Systems, joined Apex - Spacecraft Manufacturing as Head of Talent & People Operations.
Tina Wig, former Head of Global Talent Acquisition at Moveworks, joined Microsoft AI - Copilot as Director of Talent Acquisition.
Sarah Newman, former Head of Talent at Zip, joined Elad Gil as Head of Talent.
Dana Schafer-Smith, former Lead People Program Manager at Grammarly, joined Kleiner Perkins as Director, Technical Recruiting.
Bryan Liu, former Head of Talent at Convex, joined Sierra’s recruiting team.
Catherine Etter Bailey, former Talent Acquisition Partner at Two Sigma, joined Agentio as Head of Talent.
Greg Clayman, Founder of Zero to One Ventures, joined Turnkey’s Talent team.
Dave Bowers, Principal Talent Acquisition Consultant, joined Relativity Space as Senior Manager, Technical Recruiting.
Katy Ferry, former Executive Recruiter at Samsara, joined Abridge as Director of Recruiting.
Jonathan Nguyen, former Director Talent Acquisition at Rivian, joined him & hers as Director Talent Acquisition.
Andy Thompson, former Founder of Bitcoin Talent Co, joined spawn.co’s Ops, People, and Talent team as a full-time employee.
José Benitez Cong, former Chief People Officer at Humane, joined Airbnb as Global Head, Core Recruiting.
Brian Tao, advisor at Syelo Ventures, joined Edia as Director, Talent Acquisition.
Phil Haynes, former Head of Global Talent Acquisition at Amplitude, joined Dataiku as VP of Talent.
Did we miss your career change? Let us know: hello@gbdtalent.com
📖 What We’re Reading & Listening to:
How to Build a Talent Sourcing Machine with a GTM Engineer’s Mindset - Alexey Geht, Medium
Reinventing enterprise models in the age of generative AI - Accenture
The Power of Human Experiences - José Benitez Cong
The End of Hiring as We Know It? Welcome to the AI-Driven Talent Marketplace - Johnny Campbell
If Anthropic Succeeds, a Nation of Benevolent AI Geniuses Could Be Born - Steven Levy
The Cybernetic Teammate - Ethan Mollick
Inside Anthropic's Race to Build a Smarter Claude and Human-Level AI - Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Wall Street Journal
Recruitment < Talent Acquisition < Talent Engineering - Dave Owen, LinkedIn
You Can't Spell AI without HR: The Surprising Secret to Scale - Bain & Company
Google Prompt Engineering Guide - Lee Boonstra
Automation vs. AI workflow vs. AI agent - Alexandre Kantjas
OpenAI Academy - OpenAI
The Rise of the “Team of One” - Q Hamirani
The Recruitment Renaissance Manifesto: Sixteen Theses for the AI Revolution - Felix Wetzel
Job Descriptions Built for Hiring, Performance, and Business Success - Will Ducey
Candidate Fraud: Your complete guide to detecting and safeguarding against fake candidates - Benjamin Sesser, CEO of BrightHire
Make product management fun again with AI agents - Tal Raviv
📚 Playbooks:
Your Guide to Evaluating and Selecting an ATS: A guide with helpful process frameworks, and evaluation templates to help you make an informed decision about selecting the ATS that is the best fit for your company.
Navigating an IPO: A guide to help you navigate your team through the IPO process. It includes tools and tactics to prepare your team, proactively communicate to pending candidates, and evolve your recruiting operations to support the shift in business.
Photo credit: UX Indonesia on Unsplash