The weekend morning rolls around and before my summer bike ride I am in need of a sweet treat (what can I say, I’m all about balance). And I find myself driving 30 minutes across town to my favorite little bakehouse on Willy Street in Madison. There are a lot of places to get a quick morning pastry. I’m one perusal of pre-packed boxes and a trip through the self checkout away from my morning sugar rush. But that’s not what I’m making the drive for. It’s the stay awhile. Offer of complimentary coffee. Conversation about how the business got started and what value they were trying to bring to the neighborhood.
Convenience is great, until it costs you the good stuff.
If we’re being honest, AI has made us lazy. The better the tool, the more we trust it to do the work for us. We stop digging deeper. We assume the output is right. And in hiring, that means missing great candidates.
AI can scan thousands of resumes in seconds, answer applicant questions 24-hours-a-day, and go beyond keywords to match candidates to roles based on skills and experience. Heck, it can analyze salary and benefits packages based on industry standards to negotiate the final offer before we even finish our morning cup of coffee.
The problem? AI can still miss the mark. Not because it’s “broken,” but because hiring isn’t always a science. A candidate can be a perfect fit yet never make it through the filter because their resume doesn’t hit the right keywords. Career pivots and nontraditional experience get overlooked. Or the algorithm ranks the wrong people higher simply because they happen to use the preferred phrasing.
That’s why the human touch matters. Reviewing the results. Asking deeper questions. Having real conversations that bring the full picture into focus. AI is a tool – a good one – but it can’t replace the insight you get from actually talking to someone about their story.
Because the right candidate might apply to your job and not make it past the bots. Because the bots just flat out miss the narrative.
For us? “We use AI to find efficiencies, but our true north is always: how do we have more conversations with the right folks?”
Remember, nobody likes a lazy jane (unless it’s a scone, of course).
Until next time,
Your Spherion South Central WI & Northern IL team