How AI will Change Recruiting in 2025 and Beyond

Five Certainties About What's Coming

January always means a score of articles predicting what 2025 will bring to our profession. Rather than offer predictions, I have listed below and discussed four significant certainties that will take place over the next 18 months. These are spread over 18 months, as one year is not long enough for them to get full traction, but two years may be too long. AI is evolving fast, and this year promises profound advancements in how AI models learn. Watch OpenAI and Anthropic (Perplexity) as they release new models this year that can reason and create.

Here are the five significant changes.

#1. Not new, but vastly more capable. AI Agents will become powerful and valuable for many recruiting tasks. This shift is happening faster and with greater depth than we might realize. Read Glen Cathy’s article outlining the AI agent's future.

#2. AI will handle much of the sourcing, screening, early assessment, and conversation with candidates under human oversight. New tools and applications will appear regularly, offering increasingly more capabilities, including making initial recommendations on who to hire and explaining why. While many firms initially resist adopting them, the speed and cost savings they offer will inevitably prevail.

#3. During the 2018–2019 cryptocurrency market downturn (often called the “crypto winter”), the handful of recruiting-oriented blockchain providers went silent. However, a comeback is occurring, and blockchain will become mainstream for credential validation. Storing certificates and licenses on distributed ledgers will ensure verifiable, fraud-resistant records. One specific recruitment-oriented blockchain tool is Chrono.Tech.

#4. Skilled, AI-savvy recruiters will remain essential. As AI tools accelerate processes and expand capabilities, recruiters who can integrate them ethically and effectively will guide organizations through upcoming transitions. Recruiters primarily focused on sourcing, screening, and interviewing will find it hard to stay employed.

#5. Candidates will increasingly use AI to apply for work, tailor their resumes, answer assessment questions, and interact with chatbots. This has already challenged traditional recruiting practices and will only worsen. Recruiting must move away from resumes, conventional application processes, and shallow screening processes. They must adapt and experiment with simulations, open-ended questions, and other methods AI cannot duplicate, as described in my recent article on how to ensure candidate authenticity.

I discuss these (and more) in detail below for paid subscribers.

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