Latest news with #AIrecruitment
New York Times
11 hours ago
- Business
- New York Times
A.I. Sludge Has Entered the Job Search
Katie Tanner, a human resource consultant in Utah, knew the job would be popular: It was fully remote, was at a tech company and required only three years of experience. But she was still shocked by the response on LinkedIn. After 12 hours, 400 applications had been submitted. By 24, there were 600. A few days later, there were more than 1,200, at which point she removed the post. Three months later, she's still whittling down candidates. 'It's crazy,' she said. 'You just get inundated.' The number of applications submitted on LinkedIn has surged more than 45 percent in the past year. The platform is clocking an average of 11,000 applications per minute, and generative artificial intelligence tools are contributing to the deluge. With a simple prompt, ChatGPT, the chatbot developed by OpenAI, will insert every keyword from a job description into a résumé. Some candidates are going a step further, paying for A.I. agents that can autonomously find jobs and apply on their behalf. Recruiters say it's getting harder to tell who is genuinely qualified or interested, and many of the résumés look suspiciously similar. 'It's an 'applicant tsunami' that's just going to get bigger,' said Hung Lee, a former recruiter who writes a widely read newsletter about the industry. Enter the A.I. arms race. One popular method for navigating the surge? Automatic chat or video interviews, sometimes conducted by A.I. Chipotle's chief executive, Scott Boatwright, said at a conference this month that its A.I. chatbot screening and scheduling tool (named Ava Cado) had reduced hiring time by 75 percent. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
New hiring trend used by Woolworths, Bunnings labelled 'dehumanising'
If you're looking for a job at the moment, you might find the hiring process looking a little different compared to previous decades. You might have normally sent off your CV, and if you ticked enough boxes, you'd be invited for a one-on-one interview with HR and then progressed to a formal interview with the hiring manager. But you now could have to go through a few rounds with artificial intelligence before you even get assessed by a human. Some of the biggest companies in Australia have jumped on the bandwagon, like Woolworths, Bunnings, and the Australian Open. A spokesperson for Bunnings told Yahoo Finance it's been a game-changer in sifting through thousands of applicants in seconds. "Each year, we receive a high volume of applications for roles from a diverse group of people, from those applying for their first job to those joining our team as part of their retirement plan," they said. Aussie job warning ahead of 'huge' shift: 'Can't even imagine yet' Centrelink age pension changes coming into effect from July 1 $1,000 ATO school fees tax deduction that Aussies don't realise they can claim But not everyone is on board with this new reality. A job ad was recently shared on Reddit, and while the salary was enticing at nearly $160,000 a year, many were put off by the hiring process. If your CV made it through the first round (where it would likely go through an AI vetting process), candidates would then be invited for an online chat interview with an AI bot. If you got to the next round, you'd have to complete a short video interview, again with an AI bot. The fourth round is when you finally get one-on-one time with a Aussies joked they would just use AI themselves to complete those AI rounds, but others said it was a bleak update in the world of recruitment. "If they were actually interested in hiring you, they'd speak to you in person. Don't put up with this dehumanising crap," one commented. "If I saw my dream job advertised with this criteria, I'd bin it," added another. "Hard pass. Totally one-sided. No respect," wrote a third. It's unlikely this will be a passing fad. JobAdder recently revealed the average recruitment agency in Australia is juggling more than 2,170 resumes in just one quarter. The workload is pushing some recruiters to their "breaking point" as they struggle to comb through every single CV to see if they're right for a particular role. However, AI has been touted as a huge solution to drastically reducing this burden. "AI gives people tools and time to make better hiring decisions and offload some of the grunt work, so candidates don't get ghosted," JobAdder CEO Martin Herbst said. "If we keep hiring the old way, great talent will keep slipping through the cracks, and recruiters will burn out. Everyone loses. Something has got to give.' Roughly 62 per cent of Aussie organisations reported using AI "moderately" or "extensively" in their recruitment processes last year, according to the Responsible AI Index. They could be using AI to screen CVs to see whether candidates match the requirements, or for video interviews, chatbots, or just to schedule a meeting. Bunnings told Yahoo Finance AI is used in the "early stages" of the application process and allowed the company to "review every candidate" that sent in their CV in a much shorter time frame. "We rely on the expertise of our internal recruitment team when selecting candidates and all applications are reviewed by our team, followed by in-person interviews to ensure their skills and experience make them a good fit," the spokesperson said. Jobseekers are able to do the chatbot interview whenever it suited them, could be on their phone or laptop, and they could redo their answers as many times as they liked. Woolworths was hit with a massive hiring surge during the pandemic, where the supermarket giant had to recruit 27,000 people within 10 weeks. It turned to for help so "they never had to go through that as a team again". Within one week, the AI chatbot was able to interview more than 10,000 applicants. The AI Smart Interview is able to meet with one million candidates a year and hire 50,000 of them. Not only that, but every single candidate received personalised feedback, which is a rarity in the job hunting process these days. Tennis Australia has to fill thousands of roles every year for the Australian Open, and it was estimated that process took 7,000 hours to assess and recruit all the candidates. However, this process was drastically reduced thanks to AI interviews shortlisting the best applicants. People around the world have been posting videos showing what some AI interviews looked like and they weren't pretty. They can glitch in the middle of the chat and candidates weren't sure whether they were meant to wait until it fixed itself, or end the call and potentially ruin their chances. Leo Humphries encountered this recently when he applied for a job at a large US company and said it was a bizarre experience. "At first, I wasn't sure how to feel," he told Newsweek. "I think in the moment I just felt a sense of disappointment." The chatbot started out perfectly fine, but then it started saying: "For our first question, let's circle back. Tell me about a time when, when, when, let's." He initially thought it was a prank, but then realised it was just an error in the system. "I wasn't given too much explanation beforehand, so it definitely caught me off guard," he in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data
Associated Press
03-06-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Where AI Meets Empathy: How Huntica's Actor-Led Interviews Are Re‑wiring Talent Acquisition
Wilmington, DE June 03, 2025 --( )-- With unemployment in the United States hovering near historic lows, the talent war is only getting fiercer. According to the Society for Human Resource Management's 2024 Talent Acquisition Benchmarking Report, recruiters now spend an average of 44 days filling a role, up from 31 days just two years ago (Source 1). Meanwhile, a CareerBuilder Candidate‑Experience Survey 2023 found that 60 % of applicants abandon the process when it drags or feels impersonal (Source 2). Yet 66 % say a positive experience is the deciding factor in whether they accept an offer (IBM Smarter Workforce Institute, 2024 – Source 3). Enter Huntica, the virtual‑interview platform from Boson Group Inc. spearheaded by Co‑Founder and Chief Product Officer Dmitry Gopalov. Huntica merges natural‑language AI with prerecorded performances by professional actors, allowing candidates to converse with an avatar that waits, nods and even cracks a gentle joke—capturing the warmth of a live meeting while giving hiring teams structured, bias‑checked data. 'Technology should compress the timeline, not compress the human,' Gopalov says. 'We built Huntica so every applicant feels heard, and every recruiter sees clean analytics they can trust—no more guessing from gut feel.' Huntica's Impact at a Glance: Time Spent by Recruiters on First-Round Screens: Previously, recruiters spent around 10 hours per vacancy. With Huntica, that time has been cut by 70%, saving 7 hours per position. Average Time-to-Hire: What used to take 44 days now takes just 16 days — a 64% acceleration in hiring speed. Candidate Drop-Off Mid-Process: Huntica has helped reduce mid-process candidate drop-off from 26% down to 7%, ensuring stronger candidate engagement and process completion. Source 4: Boson Group internal usage study, Q1 2025. Nearly 68 % of U.S. employers expect to use AI in hiring by the end of 2025, according to Deloitte's 2025 Global Human Capital Trends Survey (Source 5). That appetite feeds a global recruitment‑software market already worth about US $3 billion and projected to grow 9 % annually through 2030, says Grand View Research (Recruitment Software Market Report 2024 – Source 6). 'The winners will be the platforms that prove you can automate the dull work and preserve empathy,' Gopalov adds. 'That balance is table stakes for Gen‑AI compliance, brand reputation and—frankly—basic decency.' Huntica is already live worldwide but continues to prioritise U.S. clients, working with enterprise and mid‑market organisations across technology, retail and logistics. The company plans further expansion in Europe and Asia‑Pacific later this year. Huntica, a Boson Group solution, blends conversational AI with professional actors' performances to deliver authentic, bias‑aware virtual interviews at scale. Founded in 2024 and headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria, Huntica helps organisations cut time‑to‑hire, boost candidate satisfaction and improve diversity outcomes. Sources Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), '2024 Talent Acquisition Benchmarking Report.' CareerBuilder, 'Candidate Experience Survey 2023.' IBM Smarter Workforce Institute, 'Global Recruiting Trends 2024.' Boson Group internal usage study, Q1 2025. Deloitte, '2025 Global Human Capital Trends Survey.' Grand View Research, 'Recruitment Software Market Size Report 2024.' Contact Information: Huntica Dmitry Gopalov +359883388311 Contact via Email Read the full story here: Where AI Meets Empathy: How Huntica's Actor-Led Interviews Are Re‑wiring Talent Acquisition Press Release Distributed by
The Guardian
13-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
People interviewed by AI for jobs face discrimination risks, Australian study warns
Job candidates having to conduct interviews with AI recruiters risk being discriminated against if they have non-American accents or are living with a disability, a new study has warned. This month, videos of job candidates interacting with at-times faulty AI video interviewers as part of the recruitment process have been widely shared on TikTok. This article includes content provided by TikTok. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. The use of AI video recruitment has grown in recent years. HireVue, an AI recruitment software company used by many employers, reported in February that, among 4,000 employers surveyed worldwide, AI use in hiring had risen from 58% in 2024 to 72% in 2025. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email Australian research published this month estimates the use is significantly lower – about 30% in Australian organisations – but expected to grow in the next five years. However, the paper, by Dr Natalie Sheard, a University of Melbourne law school researcher, warns the use of AI hiring systems to screen and shortlist candidates risks discriminating against applicants, due to biases introduced by the limited datasets the AI models were trained on. In her research, Sheard interviewed 23 human resources professionals in Australia on their use of AI in recruitment. Of these, 13 had used AI recruitment systems in their companies, with the most common tool being CV analysis systems, followed by video interviewing systems. Datasets based on limited information that often favours American data over international data presents a risk of bias in those AI systems, Sheard said. One AI systems company featured in Sheard's research, for example, has said only 6% of its job applicant training data came from Australia or New Zealand, and 33% of the job applicants in the training data were white. The same company has said, according to the paper, that its word error rate for transcription of English-language speakers in the US is less than 10% on average. However, when testing non-native English speakers with accents from other countries, that error rate increases to between 12 and 22%. The latter error rate is for non-native English speakers from China. This article includes content provided by TikTok. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. 'The training data will come from the country where they're built – a lot of them are built in the US, so they don't reflect the demographic groups we have in Australia,' Sheard said. Research participants told Sheard that non-native English speakers or those with a disability affecting their speech could find their words not being transcribed correctly, and would then not be rated highly by the recruitment algorithm. This prompted two of the participants to seek reassurance from their software vendor that it did not disadvantage candidates with accents. Sheard said they were given reassurances that the AI was 'really good at understanding accents' but no evidence was provided to support this. Sign up to Afternoon Update Our Australian afternoon update breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Sheard said there was little to no transparency around the AI interview systems used, for potential recruits, the recruiter, or the employer. 'This is the problem. In a human process, you can go back to the recruiter and ask for feedback, but what I found is recruiters don't even know why the decisions have been made, so they can't give feedback,' she said. 'That's a problem for job seekers … It's really hard to pick where liability lies, but absolutely vendors and employers are legally liable for any discrimination by these systems.' There had yet to be a case of AI discrimination that reached the courts in Australia yet, Sheard said, with any discrimination issues needing to go to the Australian Human Rights Commission first. In 2022, the federal merit protection commissioner revealed 11 promotion decisions in Services Australia in the previous year had been overturned, after the agency outsourced the process to a recruitment specialist which used AI automated selection techniques including psychometric testing, questionnaires and self-recorded video responses. It was found that the selection process 'did not always meet the key objective of selecting the most meritorious candidates'. Sheard said the returned Albanese Labor government should look to a specific AI act to regulate the use of AI, and potentially strengthen existing discrimination laws to guard against AI-based discrimination.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Pioneer AI Foundry Highlights Commercial Milestone of Venture Partner, Cykel AI's Autonomous Recruitment Agent "Lucy"
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - May 13, 2025) - Pioneer AI Foundry Inc. (Cboe CA: JPEG) ("Pioneer" or the "Company") is pleased to acknowledge a significant milestone by its venture partner, Cykel AI PLC (LSE: CYK) ("Cykel") with the initial uptake in paid subscriptions for Lucy, Cykel's autonomous AI recruitment agent. As reported by Cykel AI, (full release) the company has commenced monetization of its agentic recruitment solution with early adopters converting to paid subscribers across both Starter ($59/seat/month) and Pro ($249/seat/month) tiers. Usage analysis reveals that more than half of Lucy's task activity involves autonomous candidate sourcing-demonstrating strong early demand for AI-powered recruitment workflows. Lucy is built on Cykel's proprietary TaskOS framework, a modular infrastructure for building scalable AI agents. This development follows the March beta launch of Samson, Cykel's AI research agent, and reinforces the company's mission to commercialize autonomous digital workers across verticals. Darcy Taylor, CEO of Pioneer AI Foundry, commented: "We are encouraged by the strong early traction Cykel AI is seeing in its subscription-based rollout of Lucy. The insights gained from real-world usage-especially the outsized demand for autonomous sourcing-underscore the value of targeted agentic workflows that solve acute business needs. Pioneer learnings from Lucy's early adoption help inform how we approach product-market fit and pricing strategies for our own beta-stage agents, such as Kora Pilot." ABOUT CYKEL AI Cykel AI creates autonomous digital workers that perform complex business tasks without human supervision. The Company's expanding portfolio includes Lucy (recruitment), Samson (research analysis), and Eve (sales), all built on TaskOS - Cykel's proprietary AI agent infrastructure. Cykel's digital workers operate alongside human teams, enabling businesses of all sizes to transform their operations at scale. For further information, please contact: investors@ ABOUT PIONEER AI FOUNDRY INC. Pioneer AI Foundry Inc. is a next-generation agentic AI venture builder, focused on developing and commercializing autonomous, revenue-generating AI agents. Through its wholly owned subsidiary, Crowdform, Pioneer operates as a venture studio and IP incubator focused on AI agents at the intersection of decentralized finance (DeFi) and the Solana ecosystem. In 2025, Pioneer launched the private beta its first direct-to-market product, offering an autonomous AI trading agent purpose-built for crypto markets. Kora pilot reflects Pioneer's strategy to bring agentic AI solutions from concept to commercialization. In addition to in-house development, Pioneer has formed successful partnerships with leading AI companies globally, with several projects fully deployed and in market delivered through operating companies in which Pioneer is a significant shareholder. These partnerships focus on the intersection of revenue-generating agentic AI and DeFi. For additional information, visit or ON BEHALF OF PIONEER AI FOUNDRY INC. "Darcy Taylor" CEO & Directorir@ Certain statements in this release are forward-looking statements, which reflect the expectations of management regarding the matters described herein. Forward-looking statements consist of statements that are not purely historical, and such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in the statements. No assurance can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will occur or, if they do occur, what benefits the Company will obtain from them. These forward-looking statements reflect management's current views and are based on certain expectations, estimates and assumptions which may prove to be incorrect. A number of risks and uncertainties could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including factors beyond the Company's control. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release. To view the source version of this press release, please visit Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
