AI Court Is Now In Session

In partnership with

Last Week’s Poll Results

Do You Think It's OK To Reject a Candidate on The Weekend

• Yes - 55%

• No - 45%

This was way closer than I expected, I’d be curious to know what makes almost half of recruiters feel this way, although I guess it continues to drive the point home that there is no universal or perfect way to do this job

This Week’s Breakdown

The Workday Lawsuit took a very interesting turn this past week didn’t it? I’m going to assume most of you have been following the case, or at least aware of it, but if not that link can provide some helpful context.

Last week though it was determined that Workday must now hand over a full list of customers who turned on its HiredScore AI tools by August 20. A federal court ruled Workday can’t narrow the eligible plaintiff pool, and must include everyone whose application was ever influenced by HiredScore AI.

That means every client, every ATS deployment, every workflow that ever turned on that AI is now data for the plaintiffs.

I am lucky to have never been with a company that uses Workday, but you don’t have to use Workday to feel the ripple effect. States are going to continue to look at laws around AI use in hiring, candidates are going to continue to ask for transparency, and a lot of legal teams are going to be questioning the tools you may be planning to implement.

Real Talk for Recruiters

For those of us building candidate experiences daily:

• Your intuition, your judgment, your fairness? That’s the actual value when AI fails and will continue to matter even as people say AI is going to replace you.

• Tools like HiredScore were sold as efficiency boosters, but now they’re legal landmines and you hopefully are not.

• Defensive hiring practices start with auditing your tech, not doubling down on automation as your answer to all problems. If your company is over relying on AI already, this is the kind of thing that may make you have to pause.

And if it’s not, check out my Linkedin post about ChatGPT absolutely refusing to correct itself when I was asking for help the other day.

I think the Perplexity CEO may want to rethink that 6 month prediction

Small Budget, Big Impact: Outsmart Your Larger Competitors

Being outspent doesn't mean being outmarketed. Our latest resource showcases 15 small businesses that leveraged creativity instead of cash to achieve remarkable marketing wins against much larger competitors.

• Proven techniques for standing out in crowded markets without massive budgets

• Tactical approaches that turn resource constraints into competitive advantages

• Real-world examples of small teams creating outsized market impact

Ready to level the playing field? Download now to discover the exact frameworks these brands used to compete and win.

Download now for free here.

Recruited in the Wild

Seen on LinkedIn, overheard in Slack, or posted without shame.

Hello?

Oh I’m sorry for being so unprofessional, what I meant to say is

Hello dear readers, this is Mike Peditto writing to you!

So by now we’ve probably all seen this post that set recruiting Linkedin ablaze last week. It made it to r/recruitinghell, r/linkedinlunatics, it was being shared, mocked, lambasted and every other adjective possible. I technically even broke my own advice from last week by participating, but hey….I’m a work in progress.

I probably don’t even need to say a ton about this, that hasn’t already been said…but I once again must ask

Is this still a good time? Why are we doing this? We don’t have to work so hard to make everyone hate us do we?

Horror Stories

True recruiting nightmares from the field.
Want to share yours anonymously for a future issue? 

Submit your story Here - It won’t even ask for your name or email don’t worry!

I was coordinating a panel interview for a niche technical role that took two months to source for. Five person panel. Everyone was remote. I triple-confirmed the calendar invites, rescheduled three times to get them all aligned, and even personally messaged them that morning.

The call starts… and it’s just the candidate and one interviewer.

The others? Never showed. Never clicked the link. One responded later with “Oh I thought it was next week.” Another said, “The link didn’t work on my phone.”

The worst offender? Our VP of Engineering, who replied 45 minutes later with “Sorry I was heads down, did we still need to do this?”

The candidate sent a “thank you but no thank you” email later that night.

I lost a unicorn candidate because five adults with Outlook access couldn’t be bothered to read a calendar.

Why is this one so common? why why why why why?

Cope of the Week

Because it’s either this or scream into a pillow.

I’m not gonna lie to you, I love the Workday lawsuit story.

Not because I’m rooting for chaos (ok, maybe a little), but because there’s something strangely validating about watching the systems that were marketed to replace us get dragged into court.

You want a real cope this week?

You’re still here.

AI got the funding. AI got the headlines. AI got the hype.

But when it mattered?
AI also got subpoenaed.

Meanwhile you, the flawed, empathetic, overbooked human, are still the one your team counts on to make sure the interview actually has an interviewer in it.

That’s not just job security. That’s proof.

So cope hard this week knowing that no matter how many tools they throw at the hiring process, they are nowhere close to actually replacing you

Were you sent this Newsletter? Want to read more?

Forward this to someone in TA who's barely holding it together.