Back 
It’s a sunny Monday afternoon. I’m enjoying a bowl of pasta over my lunch break – fork in one hand, my phone in another – because watching anything that lasts over 30 seconds feels like too much of a commitment. Four scrolls in, a badly designed, AI-regurgitated ad stops me mid-bite.
Curiosity wins. I tap through. And there you have it – it’s a company that’s built an AI recruiter, who can apparently find you a job by just having a conversation with you and then connecting you with a hiring manager – no application needed.
We’ve all heard about AI stealing your jobs. Apparently, it’s now helping you find one too.
Or at least, it’s claiming to.
Do AI recruiters really work?
On paper, they do. They promise you a world where you don’t spend two hours tailoring your application, rewriting the same answers into an ATS, uploading your CV only to retype it again, and then waiting three weeks to be ghosted by a careers portal that looks like it was built in 2009.
And honestly? Some of that promise holds up. AI is genuinely good at the grunt work – tailoring cover letters for different employers, refining your CV to make it ATS-friendly, and preparing for an upcoming interview. Anything that removes the soul-crushing repetition of modern applications is hard to argue against. It
But that’s not where the argument ends.
Can it decode cultural cues to see if you’d feel at home in a place? Can it spot potential that doesn’t come perfectly wrapped in the right keywords? Can it understand why a role that looks perfect on paper might feel completely wrong in real life?
Unless there’s a new update I’m unaware of, the answer is a big, fat no.
The human touch
For all the talk about AI changing recruitment, the best bits of recruitment have always been deeply human. It’s mutual trust that underpins every decision. It’s judgment that sees beyond the obvious. It’s empathy that knows life and its curveballs.
A good recruiter doesn’t just place people for the sake of it. They advocate for them. They remember that on the other side of every job search is a person who’s nervous, hopeful, and trying to make one of the biggest decisions of their life.
No algorithm has figured out how to do that yet.
So, yes. AI can, without a doubt, make recruitment better. It can strip out the admin, speed things up, make journeys feel smoother and help people find opportunities faster. But used badly, it just automates the worst parts of the process and dresses them up as innovation. Because let’s be honest, a faster rejection is still a rejection nonetheless.
It’s never been about AI versus humans. It’s about AI doing what it’s good at, so humans can focus on what only they can do. And that’s the part worth getting right.
