“Everybody is already using AI to recruit,” said talent acquisition expert Tim Sackett, speaking at SHRM26 in Orlando. “If you use any of the big ATS providers and recruiting systems it has AI baked in. You have been using some kind of machine learning or algorithmic AI.”
The bigger issue, he argued, is understanding what AI can actually do amid an increasingly noisy marketplace.
“Part of the challenge around AI in HR is that there is so much noise. Most people don’t really know what the true capabilities are,” he said. “At the end of the day HR is being sold technology. HR is not a buyer of technology. One of HR’s weakest competencies is understanding technology. That’s something we need to improve.”
Despite claims of rapid adoption, Sackett believes many organizations are overstating their AI maturity, explaining that roughly three-quarters of HR leaders believe they have adopted AI more quickly than every other function. “That doesn’t ring true,” he said. “Having a chatbot on your careers site is not full adoption.”
Current usage remains relatively modest, he said. “Right now, about 12% of users are using AI apply, 9% are using AI scheduling. Most companies are not far in adoption,” he said.
Sackett encouraged talent leaders to start identifying business problems rather than shopping for vendors.
“Right now, it is not about which AI to buy — it should be about you looking at your process, your people, and asking ‘What can AI do better than us right now?’ Then go out and decide which tool is best for you.”
Reimagining Talent Acquisition
Sackett framed AI as a way to increase the value generated across the employee lifecycle.
“When an employee starts, their value is negative — think about the hiring process, recruitment costs, and the time it takes getting them up to speed,” he said. “The entire goal of functional HR is to increase the value of talent.”
Recruiting, he noted, is ripe for redesign. “When we think about AI in the recruiting process, we could replace every function in talent acquisition with AI right now,” he said. “AI can do intakes, post jobs, source, match, screen, interview, background check, onboard.”
That does not mean it’s time to replace recruiters, he said. Instead, it means rethinking how work gets done.
“We have a moment in time that we get to revamp what we do in recruiting,” Sackett said. “The way we recruit today should not be the same way we recruit in 18 months. If it is, more than likely your competition will have passed you.”
The next phase of AI will be led by agents that can initiate candidate outreach, schedule screenings, and coordinate interviews across systems. As organizations move “from a SaaS economy to an agent economy,” Sackett said, HR buyers are being forced to adapt.
Several providers are already moving in that direction. LinkedIn’s Hiring Assistant, for example, “is a classic case of an agent wrapped into a co-pilot wrapper,” Sackett said. “The agent can move from the intake meeting and post the job for you. The feedback I get is that it works well.”
Indeed recently launched Sourcing Assistant, an AI-powered feature designed to help recruiters find candidates faster by analyzing real-time signals across more than 370 million profiles on Indeed, including workers with transferable and adjacent skills who may otherwise be overlooked.
And conversational AI platforms such as Paradox, recently acquired by Workday, are similarly expanding capabilities while adding transparency and guardrails.
Where AI Delivers Immediate ROI
Sackett believes organizations should focus first on areas with low risk and immediate returns.
“Candidate scheduling is easy. It’s a no-brainer. It’s the easiest thing to turn on if you want to try AI,” he said.
Conversational apply, matching, screening, and scheduling are producing some of the fastest gains. Traditional career sites convert only 3% to 5% of visitors into applicants, but conversational apply tools can dramatically improve that process by guiding and nudging candidates.
“If you just turn on the two easiest things — conversational apply and AI scheduling — you will see a 40-50% drop in time to hire,” Sackett said.
AI-powered candidate matching is also helping recruiters prioritize outreach. Meanwhile, AI candidate screening may have the biggest impact in improving diversity, he said.
“If 100 people apply for a job, your best recruiters may look at 25 resumes and send three or four to the hiring manager. Seventy-five percent of people didn’t get a sniff,” he said. “With AI candidate screening 100% of applicants would get a chance to be seen. You can’t argue a better diversity hiring measure than that. Everyone gets a shot,” Sackett said.
What Happens When Recruiting Work Disappears?
As AI absorbs more administrative work, recruiters will need to redefine their value. “If 75% of your work in recruiting went away tomorrow, what would you do?” Sackett asked.
The answer, he argued, lies in higher-value activities: proactively pursuing top talent, eliminating the “black hole” of candidate communication, building community talent pipelines, and creating more effective assessment systems.
Ultimately, Sackett believes recruiting must evolve from process management to talent expertise.
“Recruiters must rethink the entire function,” he said. “Where do we want human contact in the hiring process? Humans should be at the center of the moments that matter.”
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