AI in Talent Acquisition: Where to Invest Your Time and Money
67% of HR professionals believe AI has a positive impact on recruitment.
World Economic Forum – Future of Jobs Report 2025
AI in talent acquisition is everywhere. If you're not using it, you're already behind. The challenge isn't whether to leverage AI but knowing where to invest your time and resources. With so many platforms and tools available, it’s easy to get lost in the hype.
At HighlightTA, we are all about building the best on-demand talent team. We’ve tested various AI tools to enhance our processes, and we’re sharing what actually works so you can focus your efforts in the right places.
Where AI Can Make an Impact
We’ve identified three areas where AI adds real value in recruitment:
📌 Pre-Screening and Sourcing – Finding top talent faster
📌 Interviewing – Reducing admin work and improving insights
📌 Offers and Onboarding – Speeding up processes and creating a better candidate experience
Here’s how AI fits into each stage.
Pre-Screening and Sourcing
Recruitment starts long before a candidate is sourced. From securing budget approval to drafting job descriptions, the process is packed with steps that can slow everything down. AI can help, but not every task needs an AI tool.
Job Descriptions: AI tools like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Gemini can refine job descriptions, improve inclusivity, and align with hiring manager feedback. The best way to use AI here is by uploading a previous job description that matches your company’s brand and tone. Let AI clean it up, but don’t rely on it completely. Without careful review, AI-generated descriptions can become bloated and miss the real requirements of the role, which is really evident in today's job market, where straightforward postings are often made unnecessarily complex.
AI Note-Taking: Tools like Metaview have been game-changers for recruiter productivity, allowing teams to focus on conversations instead of taking notes. When integrated with our ATS, Ashby, structured templates ensure notes are consistent and easy to reference later. One key benefit is the ability to create a custom template and have Metaview follow it, making it easier to capture key details accurately. This ensures that all notes are stored in the ATS as a single source of truth, eliminating any second-guessing about whether a skill was a must-have or just a nice-to-have.
AI Sourcing Tools: We’ve tested a range of AI sourcing tools and found some really interesting options out there. One standout is Juicebox, which works great for technical roles but falls a little short when sourcing for general positions. It offers strong filtering capabilities, and its AI matching does a solid job of identifying potential candidates. One of the coolest features is how it provides reasoning behind matches, making recruiters look like rockstars when presenting candidates to hiring managers.
However, the biggest challenge isn’t finding the right candidates, it’s getting them to respond. Even when AI identifies the perfect fit, you still have to manually reach out via email or LinkedIn to start a conversation. The best way to get a faster response rate is using LinkedIn InMails, and that’s where things get expensive. The reality is that LinkedIn’s monopoly in the market means that, for many roles, paying for InMails is still the best way to get in front of candidates quickly.
AI can help with sourcing, but engagement still requires strategy, effort, and budget.
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Application Filtering: Sorting through hundreds of applications is one of the biggest hiring headaches. AI-driven filtering tools, like Ashby's AI agent, scan resumes and applications based on key criteria such as experience, education, and specific skills. They can be a huge time-saver but are only as good as the data they are fed. A poorly defined candidate profile leads to poor results.
We’ve found that using knockout questions, like location, willingness to be in-office, and work authorization, can significantly reduce the number of applications recruiters need to review. It’s also worth noting that many companies now highlight that every application will be reviewed by a human. This can help attract top talent, as AI filtering still has limitations.
AI is getting better at identifying strong candidates on paper, but recruiters know a great resume doesn’t always mean a great hire.
Talent Market Insights: AI-powered tools can analyze industry reports, datasets, and hiring trends faster than a human ever could. Tools like Notetaker LM summarize key insights, making it easier for recruiters and hiring managers to stay ahead of market shifts. This is awesome for key insights for hiring managers.
As AI becomes more prevalent in interviews, we’re seeing more companies implement policies and guidelines on its use for candidates. We’ll be writing about this soon, so watch this space.
📊 92% of HR leaders plan to increase AI use in at least one area of HR (Eightfold AI).
Interviewing
AI is changing how companies run interviews, reducing manual tasks like scheduling, note-taking, and feedback collection. The key is knowing which AI tools actually help and which ones add more noise.
Automated Note-Taking: Metaview has been invaluable for capturing recruiter-candidate interactions and keeping the process efficient. One thing to watch out for is AI sometimes painting a rosier picture than reality. Recruiters should always read the summarized notes before saving or submitting to ensure they align with their actual experience of the candidate. Keeping this in check helps maintain a high-quality candidate pipeline and prevents hiring managers from spending unnecessary time interviewing mismatched candidates. We chose Metaview because it integrated with our ATS and the pricing is very reasonable compared to other options out there.
One-Way Video Interviewing & Filtering: This is an interesting area that we haven’t explored in depth yet, but we’ve come across a few tools that could help speed up hiring for junior or high-volume roles. When the focus is on communication, attitude, and coachability, one-way video interviews can provide an efficient first layer of screening.
There have been some solid advancements in this space, particularly in reducing bias by allowing evaluations with video turned off. Many platforms now offer customization options, including branded videos, company links, and interactive elements to create a more engaging candidate experience. While it’s not something we’ve fully tested yet, it’s an area worth keeping an eye on as the technology continues to evolve.
AI-Powered Scheduling: Features like direct booking links within ATS platforms have significantly reduced recruiter scheduling time. If you're selecting an ATS, it’s worth evaluating its scheduling capabilities, as a strong system can eliminate the need for extra coordination tools.
However, if you’re locked into a long-term agreement with your ATS provider, it may be worth exploring their available integrations. Scheduling is one of the most time-consuming parts of recruitment, and any efficiencies gained here can ease the load on your TA team. The key factors to consider include calendar integrations, direct booking options for both individual and panel interviews, candidate availability booking, and the overall experience for both candidates and hiring teams.
Feedback Scorecard Creation: AI can generate interview scorecards based on job descriptions and intake notes, helping hiring teams stay aligned on what they’re looking for. This speeds up decision-making and keeps evaluations consistent across multiple interviewers. These scorecards can also be integrated into tools like Metaview, creating a fully streamlined process that keeps evaluations structured and easy to reference.
📊 67% of HR professionals believe AI has a positive impact on recruitment (World Economic Forum – Future of Jobs Report 2025).
Offers and Onboarding
Extending offers is one of the best parts of recruitment. AI can help hiring teams close candidates faster and create a seamless onboarding experience.
Standardized Closing Strategies: AI can analyze past offer data to identify trends and best practices for closing candidates, helping ensure consistency across the team. In high-volume hiring situations, it can be useful to create structured closing scripts to cover all key points upfront. This helps reduce back-and-forth during the offer process and streamlines communication, making it easier to secure top talent efficiently.
Offer Letter Drafting: AI can technically generate offer letter drafts to speed up the process, but it’s not something we use at HighlightTA at this stage. A well-structured template and a strong ATS for sending offers, combined with human oversight, remain the best approach to ensure accuracy and personalization.
AI Chatbots for Onboarding: Traditionally used for customer service, AI chatbots are now streamlining new hire onboarding. They provide immediate answers to common questions, reducing the workload on HR and talent teams.
One example is Chipotle’s AI virtual assistant, Ava Cado, which transformed their hiring process for high-volume store workers. It reduced the average time-to-hire from 12 days to 4 days and increased application completion rates from 50% to over 85%. This kind of transformation highlights how AI can drastically streamline recruitment, especially in high-volume hiring. However, applying AI to more high-impact corporate and leadership roles is a different game and still heavily relies on the expertise of experienced recruiters.
Final Thoughts
AI is making a big impact on talent acquisition, helping streamline processes and improve hiring outcomes. The key is knowing where AI adds value and where human oversight is still essential. AI agents are emerging across many of the areas we've covered, and it will be interesting to see how they evolve and shape recruitment in the future.
What we do believe is the future of hiring is on-demand talent teams. Companies need flexible solutions that scale with demand, save money, and adapt as hiring needs change. At HighlightTA, we are always exploring how AI can support this model while ensuring it aligns with real-world recruitment challenges. We trial and test everything with our own hiring before recommending it to clients, making sure it delivers real results.
And just to be clear, we aren’t being paid by any of the companies mentioned above. In fact, we’re paying them. This is a completely unbiased opinion based on what actually works.
We’re always testing new tools and strategies to improve hiring. If you have insights or tools you love, let’s connect.