The Breakthrough Hiring Playbook – Issue 6
After ten years in recruitment, I’ve never seen so many tools available to recruit..
Like most people, I started my recruitment career with a hard physical phone, pen, paper, and a CRM. No email automation tools like SourceWhale, no AI like ChatGPT, no power diallers, no Lusha. It was simple. I would find emails using company websites and then use free credits on email checkers to verify them. I’d hunt down phone numbers to cold call through email replies, 118 118, or by editing the last few digits of the company switchboard number nine, eight, seven, six, until I got through. It sounds crazy now, but that was the process and it worked. We didn’t know any different.
Hiring was just as straightforward.
A recruiter would share a CV, add a few notes, and if the client liked what they saw and heard, and the candidate matched the role, they’d meet them in the office. If a second opinion was needed, we’d book another face to face interview or run a short coding test on site in a spare meeting room. If we still weren’t sure, maybe the candidate would meet the rest of the team informally over lunch or a coffee. The process wasn’t broken. It was human, efficient and it worked.
Fast forward to today and there are tools that can tell you everything from a candidate’s personality to their probability of passing a probation period.
Some even claim to know what they had for dinner or what their favourite colour is by how they describe their recent coding project.
Everyone’s using a different set of AI products to make the same decision, based on different priorities. But most of what they’re trying to do was previously handled through human interaction, instinct, and experience.
So, what are the options hiring teams have now when it comes to AI?
Here are five AI tools in recruitment right now and what they actually do:
HireVue – Uses AI powered video interviews to assess candidates’ speech patterns, tone, and facial expressions to evaluate fit and predict performance.
Pymetrics – Applies neuroscience based games and AI to assess cognitive and emotional traits to match candidates with suitable roles and company cultures.
Eightfold – Uses AI to analyse millions of CVs and job descriptions to rank candidates by suitability, even surfacing passive candidates you haven’t found yet.
Hiretual (now HireEZ) – AI powered sourcing tool that scans the web, job boards, and internal databases to recommend and reach out to relevant candidates.
X0PA AI – Focuses on predictive analytics, helping companies reduce bias, improve efficiency, and make hiring decisions based on long term success indicators.
Now, do I think these tools are clever? Of course. Do they save certain businesses time and probably money? Yes. But let’s be clear, it’s too simplistic to apply these tools across the recruitment world and assume they work equally well everywhere.
Let me give you two extreme examples.
Say a business needs to hire 100 first line support engineers. These tools will no doubt outperform me on their own. There’s simply not enough time in the day for one recruiter to screen, qualify, test, and manage that volume at the pace the business needs.
But now let’s take another scenario.
Imagine a company needs to hire three multimodal AI engineers. These engineers need to have a very specific academic and research background, have built custom RAG pipelines using LangChain and Haystack, have published in NeurIPS and need to collaborate closely with ten other engineers in a fast paced team working on token streaming models and LLM inference at scale.
This time, I win, every time.
Why? Because I’ve spent years building this network. I know exactly who to call. I’ve got the personal numbers of candidates who don’t use LinkedIn, who don’t post their CVs on job boards, who were referred to me by people they trust. That’s my edge. That’s my USP.
So while AI might get the win in scenario one, in scenario two it’s not even close. At least not yet.
You probably think I’m going to say this, but the honest truth is, for now, the human recruiter wins when it comes to highly specific, niche IT hiring. I can hear people saying, “Well of course he’s going to say that.” But the facts back it up. Clients are still paying experienced recruiters a lot of money, and that demonstrates clear value.
Many businesses wouldn’t be able to scale, hire, or replace talent without us. Phewwww!
Now, I’m not saying I want to go back to using a Rolodex and faxing CVs like some of my old boss’s bosses. Times have changed. And in the future, those AI tools above will no doubt improve and could even change the entire way we hire. I’m pro AI after all I wouldn’t choose to focus on it day in day out. But just because its AI doesn’t mean its actually good.
AI should be used in recruitment today. It helps streamline admin, makes things quicker, and improves efficiency. If you aren’t using any AI in your hiring stack, you’re probably already at a disadvantage.
I’m not naive. AI is going to impact how we recruit. But as AI evolves, so will hiring.
Saying Yes, means saying No to something else..
Review your process. Take the time to look at each role you’re hiring for and ask where AI helps and where it hinders. Every job is different. Every requirement is unique. Saying yes to one tool often means saying no to something else.
If you go for an AI chatbot to run first interviews, you say yes to saving time but you say no to having a conversation that digs into a candidate’s real motivations.
If you use AI to rank CVs, you say yes to speed but you might say no to spotting that candidate who tailored their CV to the job description and forgot to mention that they’ve actually built a tool that matches your roadmap on GitHub.
I believe AI wins when:- You are hiring at scale
- You need speed over precision
- You are assessing repeatable, measurable skills
- Your candidate pool is large and fairly similar
- You need to reduce time spent on screening and admin
I believe I win when:- You need a niche technical skillset
- You want someone who fits your team culture
- You need someone who isn’t actively looking
- You value judgement over data
What could you start using today?
If you’re not using any AI tools in your hiring process yet, you don’t need to panic. But you do need to start. That doesn’t mean replacing your recruiter (thanks), it means improving how you operate.
Here are five AI driven tools or workflows you can start using today that will actually help even if you’re a small team or just hiring a few roles a year:
1. Create consistent, branded offer letters in seconds Use tools like Notion AI or ChatGPT to generate templated, professional offer letters based on role, salary, and benefits. No more copy pasting from old Word docs that still have someone else’s name in them.
2. Draft inclusive, role specific job adverts Use Textio or ChatGPT to write job ads that attract the right candidates, avoid bias, and focus on clarity. Especially useful when you’re stuck in “must be a rockstar developer” mode.
3. Speed up candidate screening with custom GPTs Create a GPT trained on your company culture, product, and JD. Ask it to summarise CVs, flag standout profiles, or suggest top questions to ask. Great for founders or hiring managers with limited time.
4. Build first round interview guides instantly Tools like InterviewGPT or even prompts inside ChatGPT can generate tailored questions based on the skills and experience you need. Stops interviews turning into 45 minutes of “Tell me about yourself.”
5. Write better feedback and follow ups Give ChatGPT your interview notes and ask it to help you write feedback that’s fair, honest, and constructive: especially if you want to keep the door open for the future. No more “we went with someone else” emails that make you look lazy.
You don’t need to overhaul everything overnight. But if you’re hiring in 2025 and not using AI to make some of your process faster, clearer, or more candidate friendly, you’re leaving time, money, and probably good candidates on the table.
Start small. See what works. And just like a good recruiter, iterate and improve. Next time you hire, ask yourself: where does AI help? Where does human input matter more? And what’s the right blend for this role. Because in 2025, the best hiring strategies are not AI versus recruiter. They’re AI and recruiter, working together.
