Hold On to Your Butts: The Future of Hiring Doesn’t Care About Your Comfort

The actress Bette Davis, in the film All About Eve, delivered the forever famous line, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.” Depending on your age—or cinephile status—you may not remember it. 

For the uninitiated, Jeff Goldblum delivered a more recent turn of the phrase, in Jurassic Park, famously saying, “Hold on to your butts.”

Hold on tight. Things are shifting—quickly.

AI isn’t coming; it’s already here. While Talent Acquisition jumped in early, many of the real game-changing possibilities for recruiters and hiring teams are just starting to unfold. It’s time to stay ahead of the curve, because the only question left is when AI will fully bloom.

I want to walk you through some of the changes I see coming—soon. Why? Because fighting this shift isn’t going to work, but adapting and thriving will. If you don’t want AI running circles around you, it’s time to pay attention.

The Current Situation

For starters, let’s make sure we understand the basics. I predict that in the next six to 18 months, AI will completely replace recruiters’ daily tasks—things like sourcing and screening, initial communication and interview scheduling, ongoing candidate engagement, job description research and optimization, etc.

Sure, you could argue that AI isn’t doing those things better than humans yet, but it’s doing them faster and cheaper. Balance sheets don’t usually have a column for “better” anyway. Employers know it’s just a matter of time before AI catches up in that department. The smart recruiters, the ones who’ve already set their egos aside, are using AI to assist them in just about every way possible.

So, what comes next?

The Future

Two takeaways will, I think, make all the difference for us as we shape this industry's future. And by future, I mean ~12 months from now.

The first is that the introduction and consistent application of the human touch (which is our hallmark) will move from execution to strategy. We can be the ones who think, plan, and guide.

This leads to number two, a very important opportunity for us: the creation, improvement, and communication of employer brand, which is all about being human. This will play an increasingly larger and more important role in the recruiting and hiring process. 

Let me start to pull this all together.

Employer Brand as the Key Differentiator

As AI makes the recruiting process more efficient and candidates receive a seamless experience from most companies, employer brand becomes the decisive factor.

AI will take over all our repetitive, time-consuming tasks, homogenizing the candidate experience. Soon, every candidate will have roughly the same experience with every company, every time. In fact, this is already happening in many cases. Candidates are researching potential employers’ reputations before they even think about applying. Or more accurately, AI is serving up that research for them, tailored to their goals and capabilities. When everything else is the same, the employer brand is going to increase in value exponentially.

Companies with hiring strategies truly geared toward attracting top talent have known this for a long time and will only benefit more from it as AI adoption grows. Take a few examples:

• Southwest Airlines emphasizes its brand identity in its hiring process, ensuring candidates feel connected to its culture even before they apply.
• @Izydor Nowakowski provides an excellent perspective on how Google leveraged “a skillfully and consistently built employer’s brand, which not only encourages young people to apply but also reassures already working people in the perfect choice of their employer” to become the world’s highest-valued employer brand.
• Link Humans recently interviewed HubSpot’s Hannah Fleishman, Inbound Recruiting Manager, who underscored the importance of employer brand: “76% of candidates start their job search on Google by googling you. The majority of candidates we talk to, if you ask them, ‘Why do you want to work at HubSpot?’ It usually comes back to culture.”

Company culture, reflected in the employer brand, is what sets organizations apart. It's incredibly important to candidates and is one area where tech can’t replace human input. 

As HBR notes: “AI notoriously fails in capturing or responding to intangible human factors that go into real-life decision-making — the ethical, moral, and other human considerations that guide the course of business, life, and society at large.”

So, what does this all really mean for recruiters?

It means that recruiters should think like marketers. To attract top talent, you’ll need to execute the same strategies marketers use—lead generation, nurturing, engaging, and converting candidates just like marketers do to attract future customers.

New Roles in a Recruiter-less World Career recruiters need to step out of their comfort zone and embrace new skills. The landscape is changing rapidly. No, it’s not time to start a new career in real estate. It’s time to seize a huge opportunity—to re-teach companies how to acquire talent, design strategies that effectively incorporate AI, and build teams capable of executing them.

Employer brand—if it has even been a priority—has often been treated as an afterthought, passed among marketing, HR, and operations. AI, however, will open the door for TA teams to truly take control and elevate it to a core function of recruitment. TA teams are better suited for this change because they understand the candidate journey inside and out—something traditional marketing teams don’t have the same insight into. They’re used to working with limited resources, which makes them creative and adaptable in getting things done. Their direct interaction with candidates gives them a huge advantage in delivering a more personal and effective approach to employer branding and AI-driven hiring.

So, what will those teams look like? Here’s a glimpse of possible emerging roles:

• Employer Brand Strategists: These professionals will focus on crafting, maintaining, and evolving the employer brand, ensuring it’s aligned with the company’s values and resonates with target talent.
• Candidate Experience Designers: Experts responsible for curating a seamless, AI-driven candidate journey, ensuring it’s both efficient and human-centered, despite heavy AI involvement.
• Candidate Culture Advocates: Focused on living and breathing the company culture, engaging with potential hires through social channels, events, and other platforms, and creating an emotional connection with the employer brand through community-building.
• Talent Insight Leaders: Talent market researchers who strategically guide leadership on long-term talent planning and focus on key metrics related to talent acquisition as well as employer brand perception and employee value propositions (EVPs).
• Job Ads Specialists: Responsible for running targeted job ads across various platforms (social media, job boards, and other digital channels) to ensure high visibility and engagement from top-tier talent.
• Recruiting SEO Strategists: Focus on optimizing the company’s job postings, career site, and other recruitment content to ensure they rank high in search engines, driving organic traffic from ideal candidates.
• TA Event Coordinators: Organize both virtual and in-person recruiting events, job fairs, and networking opportunities to build relationships with potential candidates and showcase the company’s culture and opportunities.
• Employer Brand Communications Managers: Ensure consistent and compelling messaging is shared internally and externally, enhancing the company's reputation as an employer of choice while keeping candidates and stakeholders informed.
• Candidate Engagement Marketers: Focus on building long-term relationships with talent pools, re-engaging former candidates, and creating advocacy programs where previous hires or candidates promote the company’s employer brand.
• Recruiting Social Media Specialists: Manage the company’s hiring presence on social media platforms, creating engaging content that promotes job openings, highlights company culture, and attracts top talent through targeted campaigns.

Additionally, there will be a growing need for AI-human collaboration in roles that involve:

• Ensuring ethical hiring practices
• Interpreting AI-generated insights and recommendations
• Identifying system improvements
• Training teammates on AI

The bottom line is, your value to the organization will go far beyond the tasks you handle today. As the human touch shifts from execution to strategy, creating a forward-thinking vision for talent attraction—one that leverages AI and employer branding—will be where your talents and experiences make the greatest impact.

What else is happening in hiring?

• Here's What Hiring Managers Are Looking For, According to a New Survey by @Catherine Fisher
• Anthropic Says Its Chatbot Could Alter Hiring Plans
• Layoff Rates Remain Depressed, Below Prepandemic Levels

Dan’s CornerWe had an amazing FRBR conference this week and the recordings will be up on our Youtube page next week. We're already gearing up for another one on December 10th—so be sure to Sign up, you won’t want to miss it! Coming up next is our exciting webinar, Managing Your Recruiting Career - Multigenerational Perspectives on October 25th. Join us for a thought-provoking panel with industry leaders like Gerry CrispinSteve Levy and Amy Miller  as they dive into how recruiting has evolved across generations. Sign up now!