Is AI replacing me?

I will not post that picture in the newsletter, I will not post that picture in the newsletter, I will not post that picture in the newsletter, I will not post that picture in the newsletter!

Seriously though, by the time you read this it’ll probably be old news and I committed to 0 Coldplay CEO/HR jokes that you have heard 109898907 times by now, take this quick intro as my acknowledgement and let’s talk about what I wanted to talk about anyway!

This Week’s Breakdown

Ok that is out of the way, and now I want to talk about something way more fun…

“AI will replace recruiters in 6 months.”
Cool. Can I clock out now?

That’s the claim from the CEO Perplexity, a ChatGPT rival I used to prefer who has apparently never hired anyone in his life…

…except, of course, the Technical Recruiting Lead they currently have open as of the publishing of this issue.

According to the CEO: “A recruiter’s work worth one week is just one prompt: sourcing and reach outs”

Let’s be real: these aren’t serious takes. They’re headlines designed to sound “visionary” while being completely disconnected from the messiness of actual hiring.

They think recruiting is just:
1. A series of Boolean searches
2. Auto-scheduling and email templates
3. Click "hire"

But if you’ve actually recruited, you know the job is 80% getting humans to agree with each other, and 20% apologizing that they never do.

Here’s what this narrative misses:

• You’re not replacing recruiters, you’re automating logistics. That’s admin work, not human judgment.

• AI can rank resumes. It can’t make a VP and a hiring manager agree on what they’re hiring for.

• “But it can write job descriptions!” Great, now they’re just vague and robotic.

And let’s talk about how dismissive this whole thing is:
It’s not just erasing a profession, it’s diminishing the actual value recruiters bring to the table despite what people on r/recruitinghell have to say.

If he didn’t see actual value in recruiters he wouldn’t be hiring a lead right now. And if you’re interviewing for that lead right now, I hope you are putting his feet to the fire about this and asking his plans for you in 6 months!

Recruiting isn’t valuable because we post jobs and send emails

It’s valuable because we navigate dysfunction, balance competing priorities, and bring empathy into a process that routinely fails people.

If that’s replaceable at your company within 6 months…

so is your company

Recruited in the Wild

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

Let me start here because it is not an attack on any 1 individual or post but something we all need to remember:
I know that most people sharing resume and interview advice online are genuinely trying to help. Some are doing it for content. Some just want to feel useful. Some might even believe they’ve cracked the code.

But here’s the problem:

They present their preferences as universal truths, and suddenly, job seekers are juggling a 97-point checklist of contradictory “rules” like:

• “Make sure your resume is a PDF.”

• “Don’t go over one page.”

• “Include your ZIP code or get filtered out.”

• “Remove the year you graduated.”

• “Actually, put the year back in.”

Every one of these has been posted with confidence. With certainty. And I get it, nuance doesn’t go viral. “Depends on the context” doesn’t get shares.

But this is why people hate us.

(Well 1 of the reasons, but 1 that I support them on)

We claim to want equity and fairness in hiring, we say we hate being called gatekeepers, and then we turn around and gatekeep with made-up nonsense like font choice or resume format.

The truth?

There’s just a bunch of flawed humans making imperfect decisions, pretending it’s all from a guidebook we were trained on.

We say we’re evaluating objectively.
We post like there’s a rubric.
Then we write on LinkedIn that if you send a word doc we’ll delete your resume!

We want to pretend hiring is scientific and fair.
But the more we argue about it online and present our opinion as a hard rule or fact, the more we show it’s just vibes and power dynamics.

And if we’re not honest about that, we’re just feeding the very confusion and cynicism we pretend to be solving.

Horror Stories

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

Submit your story Here -We need submissions! Thank you to those who have sent in stories (several by some of you) but I know you’re reading this and have 1 you didn’t share yet!

You ever start an interview and immediately regret it?

I had a screen scheduled with a candidate who joined and was just in the middle of driving on a highway. This isn’t the 1st time it happened, and I did what I usually do which is ask them to safely pull over so we can give the conversation the full focus it deserves.

However this time instead of just doing that they replied “this is the only time I have so let’s do it now!”

I reminded them it’s not safe for them, or honestly for me because I did not want to be responsible either, and reassured them it’s no problem at all to reschedule.

They said fine, and they will reschedule…

…except 45 minutes later, I was tagged in a post on LinkedIn that read called me out of touch and privileged. Not everyone has the luxury of sitting at a desk all day, and that while I was doing that I was preventing them from bettering their life.

I mean, maybe they were on the way to work and it’s a bad job and I should have just let them do the interview? But also, a little discussion can go a long way.

Needless to say, I didn’t reschedule, but your issue about always being the villian last week really brought this nightmare back up for me!

Cope of the Week

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

It’s hard not to spiral when yet another Tech CEO casually announces that your job will be obsolete in 6 months. Especially when the job they're erasing is one they’ve never actually done.

So here’s your weekly reminder:

They don’t understand your job.
They couldn’t do your job.
And they still need your job done.

I think we’ve all been laid off from a company and seen them struggle to hire afterwards, those are not 2 unrelated incidents.

Recruiting isn’t broken because it needs AI.
It’s broken because people refuse to admit it’s human.
Messy, emotional, conflict-filled… human.

Keep showing up. Keep being the human they think they can replace.
They’ll figure it out when the “prompt” doesn’t show up to the intake meeting.

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

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