Sept. 1, 2025

🌴245. Why 8 out of 10 Candidates Prefer AI Recruiters

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Show Notes

Today’s episode is a wild update on something I experimented with a few weeks back: my “job interview with the enemy.”

If you missed it, I shared how I jumped on a tool called Tavi.ai that lets you do job interviews with AI avatars. Yep—imagine logging into Zoom and instead of a person on the other side, it’s a robot interviewing you for a role. Clunky? Sure. Fascinating? Absolutely.

When I posted about it, I copped a bit of backlash. People weren’t too happy that I was “promoting” AI in recruitment. And I get it—it’s confronting. But my counterpoint was: why are we so quick to defend the current system? Recruitment is already broken. Ghosting, endless delays, keyword-based screening… dumpster fire, right?

Fast forward to today, and I stumbled across a post from Greg Eisenberg that absolutely floored me. A massive study out of the Philippines compared AI interviews with human interviews. The results? Candidates interviewed by AI got more job offers, higher retention, and preferred the process nearly 8 out of 10 times.

Why? Consistency. No skipped questions, no unconscious bias, no “oh I’m tired at 4pm, let’s rush this.” Plus, reports of gender discrimination were cut in half. For lower-scoring candidates, AI felt less judgmental and more structured—more about substance than small talk.

Mind. Blown. 🤯

This raises huge questions:

Will AI level the playing field in hiring?
What happens when interviews stop being about charm and bias and start being about consistent responses?
Could this rewire who actually gets access to opportunities?

Here's a link to the study.

I’d love to hear from you: Would you rather be interviewed by a human… or an AI?

Thanks for listening, and I’ll speak to you tomorrow.

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Show notes for every episode at https://podcast.leannehughes.com

P.S. Ready to take things up a level? Here are some ways I can help: