by Optimum
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Right now, AI is writing CVs and AI is screening them. Two machines are talking to each other before a human ever enters the room. And yet, when I speak to the best recruiters I know, they’re not becoming more automated. They’re leaning harder into the conversation, the phone call, the human-to-human moments that no algorithm can replicate.
At the same time, candidates are getting frustrated. Not with AI itself, but with what it’s enabling: recruitment processes that lean on automation and somehow still take longer, with worse communication, than the processes we ran a decade ago. That’s the trap!! AI was meant to speed things up and free up time for the parts of recruitment that actually need a person. Too often, it’s doing the opposite by adding steps, adding silence, and adding friction, while the human touch quietly disappears from the process altogether.
For hiring managers and clients, this matters more than it might seem. Your employer brand isn’t just what you put in a job ad. It’s what a candidate experiences between clicking “apply” and hearing back from you, and increasingly, that experience is where you’re winning or losing good people before you’ve even met them.
So what does good look like? A few things that, in our experience, never fail.
Be transparent about the process from the start. Tell candidates how many stages there are, roughly how long it will take, and where AI is being used along the way. Uncertainty breeds disengagement. Clarity, even about a long process, builds trust.
Don’t ask for more than you need. If cover letters aren’t being read, don’t request them. If video interviews aren’t being watched, question why are they still a step in the process. Every extra requirement is a tax on a candidate’s time and goodwill, and candidates notice this.
Assess the touchpoints outside the formal interview. Does the candidate know your brand, or are you just one of forty companies they hit “apply” on this week? This is a genuinely useful signal, and it’s easy to test. If you’re not sure, ask them to look you up and call you back. If they’re genuinely interested, they will. If they don’t, that tells you something too, and it’s better to learn it before you’ve invested hours in the process, not after.
HR, don’t be afraid to advocate to hiring managers who are dragging their heels. Good candidates are having multiple conversations at once. A week of internal delay on your side can cost you the person you actually wanted, and it damages the experience for everyone still in the pipeline. Speed isn’t just a courtesy to the candidate, it’s a competitive necessity.
Use AI, but use it well. This is not an argument against AI in recruitment. Used properly, it’s a genuine advantage. But flat, generic job ads written by AI and left unedited tend to attract flat, generic applicants: the bulk, apply-to-everything crowd, rather than people genuinely drawn to the role and the business. AI should be sharpening your process and freeing up time for better conversations, not replacing the parts of recruitment where judgement, nuance, and relationship-building actually happen.
AI is very good at scale and speed. It is not good at reading whether a candidate lit up when they talked about a project, whether they’ll fit a team’s culture, or whether they’re being straight with you about their motivations. That’s still, and will remain, a human skill.
The businesses that get this right won’t be the ones that avoid AI, and they won’t be the ones that hand the whole process over to it either. They’ll be the ones that use AI to handle the volume and the admin, so their people have more time, not less, for the conversations that actually determine whether someone takes the job and stays in it.
For hiring managers, the practical takeaway is simple: look at your current process through a candidate’s eyes.
- Where is AI adding speed and clarity?
- Where is it adding steps without adding value?
- Where have the human touchpoints, the ones that build trust and reveal genuine interest, quietly gone missing?
Fixing those gaps is where the real advantage sits, well before you get to your competitors’ vacancies.
This is exactly why, here at Optimum, we meet our candidates before we represent them. A resume can tell you what someone has done. It can’t tell you how they’ll come across in a room, how they communicate under pressure, or whether their personality will genuinely fit your team. A face-to-face conversation often surfaces the detail that never made it onto the page. For example the system they’ve actually used day-to-day but didn’t think to list, or the project they’re proudest of that quietly got left off because it didn’t fit the CV format. That’s the kind of insight AI can’t extract, and it’s the kind of insight that helps our clients make the right call, not just a fast one.
Alicia Sumich, Group Manager – Business Development
