I’ve been in the HR and recruiting technology space for over 26 years now. Mercy me. And while I’ve seen a lot of transformation of the industry and the technologies offered, it can still feel like we’re creating a lot of exciting things of tomorrow-land that aren’t really solving recruiting and hiring problems of today-land. In fact, maybe making some of them worse. But it doesn’t have to be.
An old industry friend, Eric Sydell, CEO at Vero AI, summed it up nicely in a LinkedIn post recently:
Everyone knows hiring is broken.
The proliferation of digital hiring tools has dehumanized the experience and broken the social contract between candidates and employers in which:
- Candidates invest valuable time in each single application
- Employers invest valuable time in evaluating those applications and giving feedback/communicating with their applicant pool
When experienced candidates have to apply to 500 jobs before getting a single response, who can blame them for using AI to automate their job search and applications?
The solution is not to throw out tech or AI. The solution is to use tech and AI to engineer human-centered, authentic, transparent, trustworthy experiences.
And if you’re a TA Leader looking at AI recruiting technologies, you should review these basic questions that Mark Dawkins posted on LinkedIn.
Nope, don’t throw out the tech or AI. There are a lot of exciting things happening in our space, and each year our CandE Benchmark Research asks participating employers about the many things, including the technologies they leverage. With more and more focus on AI recruiting technologies, here’s what we’re seeing this year (so far) in our data (see chart below):
- Nearly 40% of employers across industries said they’re using “screening, matching, and/or ranking candidate applications for further screening or disposition” and another 21% said they’re considering for this year and next. This is higher than the anecdotal data we’ve shared in the past year. It’s also important because, if they work with their vendors to train and optimize the tech to mitigate bias, it will help alleviate the application surge that humans just can get to efficiently or effectively enough, while identifying more qualified candidates.
- Basic chatbot recruiting automation continues to be adopted across industries. This also gives a positive sentiment bump to candidate experience, but always in the context of consistent and timely communication from pre-application to onboarding.
- Sourcing candidates from external sources with a virtual assistant has surged and is up 68% from 2024 (from 22% to 37%). The matching algorithms continue to get better.
- Conversational AI chatbots that answer candidate questions is up 21% from 2024 (from 19% to 23%). This also gives a positive sentiment bump to candidate experience. Again, this also gives a positive sentiment bump to candidate experience, but always in the context of consistent and timely communication from pre-application to onboarding.
- Sentiment analysis of candidate and/or employee open-ended feedback is up 18% from 2024 (from 17% to 20%). And one of many things that Survale’s Talent Survey Experience Platform can help with (including the CandEs).
Other CandE data points of note this year:
- Interestingly only 17% of employers said they are using AI chatbots that schedule candidate interviews in 2025, but 25% said they’re still considering for 2025/26. (We only asked about conversational AI overall in 2024 without separating out AI interview scheduling. We’ve always asked about interview scheduling in core recruiting tech without specifically calling out AI and 75%+ of employers said they use interview scheduling).
- Assessing candidates with job simulations for job performance prediction was only at 11% in 2024, but is up 64% in 2025 (from 11% to 18%).
- Because more employers have pushed back into in-person career fairs, and the fact that hiring has slowed, virtual career fairs that match candidates and screen/interview are down 31% (from 26% to 18%).
Once we wrap up the collection stage of our benchmark research this year, we’ll start writing up this year’s research reports to be released before the end of 2025.
Again, there are a lot of exciting recruiting technologies on the market, and many more on the horizon still being developed. With any employer’s recruiting tech stack, if the right optimization is there, and the systems are being fully utilized and processes constantly improved on, and all parties have beneficial experiences (for candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers), the quality hires are being made, there’s a positive business impact – then we’re solving problems. That’s when the humans and the tech can make hiring magic. And when you’re asking for feedback about the hiring magic, you know where to come.
| Recruiting AI Technologies | 2025 “Considering for 2025/26” | 2025 “Yes” | 2024 “Yes” |
| Screening, matching, and/or ranking candidate applications for further screening or disposition | 21% | 39% | NA (Didn’t ask in 2024) |
| Basic chatbot recruiting automation (binary Q&A “customer-service” on career site) | 32% | 38% | 50% |
| Sourcing candidates from external sources with a virtual assistant | 11% | 37% | 22% |
| Generative AI that analyzes job postings for unintentional bias and offer recommendations on how to create job listings with more inclusive language | 11% | 29% | 28% |
| Conversational AI chatbots that answer candidate questions | 27% | 23% | 19% |
| Assessing candidates to identify team personality and culture fit | 9% | 23% | 24% |
| Sourcing your existing internal candidate database/s with a virtual assistant | 19% | 20% | 22% |
| Sentiment analysis of candidate and/or employee open-ended feedback | 18% | 20% | 17% |
