How AI is reshaping recruiting at every level

• Key Insight: AI may be the reason nearly all surveyed employers are abandoning traditional recruiting strategies.
• What's at Stake: HR departments struggling to source candidates as experienced tech professionals remain scarce.
• Supporting Data: 72% of surveyed employers experiencing a specific category of talent shortage.
  Source: Bullets generated by AI with editorial review

In the race to build an AI-savvy workforce, many organizations are being forced to rethink their whole strategy  in recruiting both talent and HR leaders.

Ninety-seven percent of organizations have changed the way they approach hiring and recruiting due to AI-driven skill gaps and talent shortages, according to a recent survey of more than 3,000 hiring leaders from onboarding, payroll and benefits platform Remote. As AI becomes increasingly embedded in the workplace, HR and benefits teams are rethinking how they identify talent, evaluate skills, and use technology to support their teams' decision-making.

"The biggest question right now is how we actually acquire these AI capabilities and how we can really make sure that we build a future-proof skill set through incoming talent," said Anastasia Pshegodskaya, director of talent acquisition at Remote. "We should not only be bringing in people who can do the job in the moment, but people who have the AI and automation knowledge that can set up the company for success longer term."

Read more: AI in employment decisions: Critical questions emerging from the Workday and Meta cases

According to Pshegodskaya, AI has fundamentally changed talent mapping and sourcing strategies. The survey's findings found that 72% of companies reported struggling with talent shortages because experienced AI professionals remain scarce, forcing organizations to rethink where they find candidates and how they evaluate talent. As a result, many HR leaders have had to abandon traditional recruiting tactics. For example, leaders have started to target people already leading in AI adoption at other companies rather than relying on active applicants, as well as prioritize skills like AI adaptability and the ability to integrate AI into daily functions over more conventional requirements. 

HR and benefits departments aren't just prioritizing AI in their recruiting efforts either, Pshegodskaya said. Leaders are also leading by example relying on their own AI skills throughout the recruiting process to help facilitate interviews and oversee their talent pool.  

"The nature of our roles is changing and evolving," Pshegodskaya said. "And while I don't think that all the roles will be just replaced by AI, I do genuinely believe that the work of HR and benefits professionals will be different."

New recruiting strategies to better support benefit leaders

Beyond recruiting, prioritizing AI is also transforming HR by making it easier to analyze large datasets, automate complex benefits analyses, and generate insights that once required significant time and cross-functional effort, helping teams make more informed decisions and tackle problems that were previously too resource-intensive to address. 

After experimenting with a range of AI tools over the past year, Remote has seen their own workforce benefit from focusing on AI. According to the survey's findings, the company has seen HR productivity increase by 30%, enabling leaders to make more hires than they could a year ago.

Read more: How AI can enhance managers' leadership skills

"I genuinely believe that AI can help to make better informed decisions and solve the recruiting issues and problems we would put on the back burner previously because of how complex they were," Pshegodskaya said. 

Still, Pshegodskaya acknowledged that not every strategy will yield the same results for every organization or every talent pool. She encouraged leaders not to shy away from trying out as many configurations as possible before landing on one approach. 

"It really starts with making sure that you continuously experiment as a team," Pshegodskaya said. "Normalize the fact that not all experiments will bring you the results that you expect and try and fail and try again until you succeed."