AI Can Supercharge Your Hiring But Can Wreck it Just as Quickly

Written By Kelly O'Brien

My Thoughts on AI in Hiring

AI can be an incredibly powerful tool in hiring. There are fantastic platforms out there that help you save time exponentially, reduce admin, improve candidate experience, and make faster decisions. But without the right structure, you risk automating guesswork.

AI is as good as the inputs you give it. Without foundational recruitment knowledge, a clear hiring strategy, well-defined roles, and thoughtful prompts, you can easily embed inefficiency, bias, or non-compliance into your process. Hiring teams often expect AI tools to think for them but without clarity, the output is no better than a rushed interview.

AI doesn’t replace strategy, it reveals the gaps in yours. AI surfaces flaws in your hiring process quickly, such as missing scorecards, unclear briefs, poorly defined values. If your process is vague, AI will only amplify that. The right structure makes your tools smarter.

Local compliance isn’t optional. AI won’t warn you when you’re breaking the rules. Especially across Europe, where employment laws and GDPR vary by country, AI-generated hiring flows can unintentionally cross legal lines. This is where strategic human input still matters. An AI tool might help you write a job advertisement but some might not flag if that ad violates:

  • Gender discrimination laws in Germany

  • Pay transparency rules in France

  • Auto-rejection protections in the UK

AI as a shortcut? Only if you’ve built clarity first. Some tools are branded as a quick fix but shortcuts without structure cost more later. Many promise scale, but scaling chaos is expensive. Startups need sustainable systems before speed. If your hiring strategy is unclear, AI could just move you faster in the wrong direction.

The human touch still matters. Candidate experience is emotional. AI can speed things up, but how someone feels during a hiring process still depends on communication, tone, and inclusion.

(inspired in part by LinkedIn’s Winning Formula for the Future of Recruiting)

- Kelly Duggan

Kelly O'Brien