AI Is Rewriting Hiring. Humans Still Make the Final Call

Hiring today has become a game of volume. A single job opening can attract hundreds of applications, making it nearly impossible for recruiters to manually review every resume with the same level of attention. 

According to Employ's 2025 Hiring Benchmarks Report, organisations were expected to receive an average of 257.6 applications for every open position in 2025. That growing pile of resumes is one of the biggest reasons artificial intelligence is rapidly finding its way into recruitment teams.

AI is changing the earliest stages of hiring more than any other part of the process. It can process resumes, rank candidates against predefined criteria, conduct assessments and automate repetitive administrative tasks that once consumed a recruiter's day. The promise is straightforward: let machines handle the volume so people can spend more time making meaningful hiring decisions. Yet despite the growing presence of AI, HR leaders believe the technology is becoming an assistant rather than a replacement.

Speaking to AIM, Hardeep Kaur, Director of HR at Blackbaud India, said hiring has evolved into a strategic business responsibility. It is no longer something owned entirely by the HR department. Recruiters, hiring managers and business leaders all share responsibility for bringing the right people into the organisation.

"The onus is never entirely on HR or the hiring team. It's always a partnership between the business, the hiring manager and HR. As much as HR is responsible for getting in talent, the folks in business also have skin in the game," Kaur said.

That responsibility has become even more significant as India's technology industry expands. With nearly 2,800 Global Capability Centres now operating across the country, companies are competing aggressively for AI and digital talent. Hiring is increasingly tied to long-term business strategy rather than simply filling open positions.

Kaur said companies are now thinking several years ahead when they recruit. They are looking beyond immediate vacancies and building teams that align with broader product, technology and business ambitions. "Hiring is more strategic now than it was even a year ago. We are hiring both to meet current needs and to build long-term capabilities aligned with our global AI-first product, technology and business strategy," she said.

The first shortlist increasingly belongs to AI

At Blackbaud, AI is already embedded across several parts of recruitment. It helps process applications, supports assessments and removes much of the repetitive manual work that recruiters previously handled themselves. Rather than spending hours sorting through resumes, HR teams can focus their attention on candidates who meet the organisation's predefined requirements.

"AI is embedded across multiple dimensions—technology, product, hiring and HR. We definitely use AI in our hiring process. A lot of manual work has been removed now with AI helping in processing, asking questions and assessments," Kaur said.

One of the biggest advantages comes during the initial screening stage. When hundreds of people apply for the same role, AI can compare applications against hiring benchmarks and quickly identify candidates who appear to match the requirements. That creates a faster starting point for recruiters without eliminating their role in evaluating applicants.

Blackbaud has also developed internal benchmarks that are incorporated into its AI systems to compare candidates consistently across roles. "We have our benchmarks. We've built those benchmarks into our AI models and that helps us compare candidates," Kaur said.

Kaur said this has made the earliest part of hiring considerably smoother, especially when recruiters are dealing with exceptionally high application volumes. "The initial part where you have hundreds of people applying for positions has become smoother now because we leverage AI with the right assessment criteria and benchmarks to filter candidates," she said.

The distinction is important. AI can identify patterns and rank applications, but it cannot fully understand ambition, leadership potential or how someone may fit into a particular organisation. Those decisions still require conversations, interviews and human judgement.

An ATS is only as smart as the recruiter using it

Applicant Tracking Systems have existed long before generative AI became mainstream. For years, candidates have complained that ATS platforms reject qualified resumes simply because they lack the right keywords. That criticism has often led people to blame the technology itself.

Kaur sees it differently. According to her, ATS remains essential because it brings structure to recruitment. The issue is not whether companies should use these systems, but whether recruiters know how to configure them properly.

"ATS is definitely needed. We can't do away with it because it helps bring structure," Kaur said.

Modern ATS platforms are becoming increasingly AI-enabled. Recruiters can define the criteria, skills and parameters they want for a particular position, and the system can organise and rank candidates accordingly. Instead of relying on generic keyword searches, organisations can customise the requirements based on the role they are hiring for.

"You give them the prompts, the criteria and the parameters, and they'll tell you which CVs meet your requirements," Kaur said.

However, that flexibility also creates responsibility. An AI system is only as effective as the instructions it receives. If recruiters define poor criteria or misunderstand how the technology works, even the most sophisticated platform becomes little more than an automated sorting machine.

Kaur believes this makes AI proficiency increasingly important for HR professionals. "I may have the best tool, but if I don't know how to use it, it's going to remain a very basic tool for me," she said.

That reflects a broader shift within HR. The future recruiter may not need to write algorithms, but they will increasingly need to understand how AI systems interpret information and where their limitations lie.

Recruiters are becoming talent advisers

Sunil Nehra, CEO (IT Staffing) at FirstMeridian Business Services, believes AI's impact extends well beyond resume screening. While talent acquisition remains the most visible use case, organisations are increasingly applying AI to workforce planning, internal talent mobility, personalised learning, employee engagement and performance analytics.

"The most visible impact of AI is in talent acquisition, where it is helping organisations identify the right talent faster, improve skills matching, automate repetitive tasks, and create a more responsive candidate experience," Nehra said.

For Nehra, the real transformation is happening in the nature of HR work itself. As AI takes over repetitive administrative processes, recruiters have an opportunity to spend more time advising businesses on talent strategy rather than simply managing hiring operations.

"The real value of AI lies in enabling HR teams to shift their focus from administrative execution to strategic talent advisory," Nehra said.

That changes the questions recruiters are expected to answer. Instead of asking whether a candidate matches a job description, they may increasingly evaluate whether someone can grow into future leadership roles, adapt to changing business priorities or strengthen organisational culture. Those are decisions that require context rather than computation.

AI can provide recommendations and surface patterns. But interpreting those patterns remains a human responsibility.

The AI skills gap is now inside HR

There is an interesting irony unfolding across corporate India. Companies are investing heavily in hiring AI engineers, data scientists and machine learning researchers. At the same time, the people responsible for hiring them are facing an AI skills challenge of their own.

Nehra believes organisations must invest just as seriously in making HR professionals AI-ready. "The challenge is not a shortage of AI talent alone; it is the need to develop AI-ready HR professionals," he said.

He argues that recruiters of the future will need to combine traditional people skills with digital fluency. They do not need to become AI developers, but they should understand how AI systems work, how bias can emerge and why automated outputs should not be accepted without thoughtful interpretation.

That requires continuous learning rather than one-time training. "Continuous upskilling of existing HR teams will be equally important in creating sustainable competitive advantage," Nehra said.

As AI becomes embedded across workforce management, AI literacy could soon become a core capability within HR departments. Recruiters will increasingly work alongside intelligent systems every day, making it important to understand both their strengths and their blind spots.

"AI literacy is fast becoming a core business capability for HR," Nehra said.

The final decision still belongs to people

It is tempting to imagine recruitment becoming completely automated. Resumes arrive, algorithms rank them and the best candidate receives an offer. The reality appears far more nuanced.

AI is exceptionally good at removing repetitive work. It can reduce the hours spent screening applications, organising candidate information and comparing qualifications against predefined benchmarks. That allows recruiters to spend more time on conversations that machines cannot easily replicate.

Hiring is ultimately about people joining people.

A candidate may look perfect on paper yet struggle within a team's working style. Another may not have the strongest resume but demonstrate exceptional leadership, curiosity or adaptability during an interview. These are qualities that rarely fit neatly into a numerical score.

That is why HR leaders continue to emphasise human judgement despite embracing AI across recruitment. The technology can make hiring faster and more structured, but it does not remove accountability from the people making the decision.

Nehra believes this human element will remain central even as AI becomes more capable. "AI can accelerate outcomes, but it is people who will continue to define culture, inspire innovation and create lasting business value," he said.

The future of hiring, therefore, may not be about humans competing with AI. It may be about recruiters becoming better because AI handles the work that never required human creativity in the first place.

The algorithm can shortlist candidates. But people still decide who walks through the door—and whether they belong once they are inside.