Hiring

By Jean Gallagher McCauley · July 2026

I still read every resume by hand. I'm starting to think that makes me the exception.

I can do it because I don't hire at massive volume. And when a role is specialized, I don't post it and wait. I go find the person. That's a luxury most hiring teams don't have, and it's not where hiring is going.

Candidates are using AI to apply for jobs. Companies are using AI to review those applications. The first round of hiring is becoming machine to machine.

What the resume is becoming

The resume is becoming less of a signal and more of an output. The job description is becoming less of an invitation and more of an input. A candidate feeds the posting into a tool, the tool produces a tailored application, and the company's screening software scores it against the same posting it was generated from.

Both sides are optimizing for the machine in front of them instead of the person on the other side.

I understand why. Candidates are tired of applying into a void. Companies are buried in volume. A single posting can pull a thousand applications in a week now, and no recruiting team is staffed to read a thousand of anything. Everyone is trying to save time. But the result is strange.

The candidate is behind one pane of glass. The company is behind another. Hiring was already imperfect. Now it feels even more distant.

If you're the candidate

You have to get through the machine, so write for it. Clean formatting, real keywords from the posting, no graphics that choke a parser. That part is table stakes now.

But the machine only decides who gets read. A human still decides who gets hired. The resumes that survive both filters are the ones with specifics no tool can generate: the number you moved, the team you built, the thing that broke and how you fixed it. AI can format your experience. It can't have had it for you. Generic AI output reads as generic to the recruiter too, because she's now seen four hundred versions of the same tailored resume this month.

And the biggest lever isn't in the application pile at all. When the front door is a machine, the side door is a person. Referrals, direct outreach, and the recruiter who already knows your name skip the machine-to-machine round entirely.

If you're the hiring team

Use AI where volume genuinely crushes you, and keep humans where judgment lives. Screening a thousand applications for baseline qualifications is machine work. Deciding whether someone's restructuring experience translates to your stage of company is not. The teams that automate the second part are going to make expensive mistakes and call it efficiency.

And if a role is senior or specialized, consider not posting it into the flood at all. Go find the person. It's slower per role and faster per hire.

Where this leaves us

AI can make parts of hiring faster. I'm certain it's not making hiring more human. The advantage now goes to the people, on both sides of the glass, who remember there's a person on the other side.