The AI Recruiter
Hiring is turning into software that interviews software. The people in between are paying for it.
Four essays on automated hiring: what a candidate meets at the first gate, who the system quietly filters out, and the arms race it has started. Written for founders hiring their first team, investors backing the vendors, and anyone asking what an interview is for once neither side is human.
The series
- 00Read →Prologue · 7 October 2026
Surviving the rise of the AI recruiter
A first-person bot interview with no nods, no laughter and no verdict, and why candidates now write for the parser instead of the person.
- 01Read →Part I · 9 October 2026
The two-minute void where silence is fatal
Talent teams answer floods of automated applications with automated screeners. What is lost when the first interviewer can’t nod, wait or admit it misheard.
- 02Read →Part II · 13 October 2026
Bias by design
Screening is sold as neutral but trained on past hiring. Gaze tracking, speech recognition and phrasing scores fall hardest on people who differ from the norm.
- 03Read →Part III · 28 October 2026
The tactical playbook
Candidates learn to game the scorers, vendors answer with more surveillance, and the interview becomes one machine assessing another.
The series as a field guide
The argument in two pages, then two tracks, one for each side of the screen:
- If you’re being screened: for executives, senior managers and C-suite candidates who meet an automated interview.
- If you’re redesigning hiring: six design principles for founders and growing companies, ten questions to ask a screening vendor, and where the EU AI Act stands.
Download the free guide (PDF) →
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What the series asks of you
Would your best early hire get past a screen scored against your own job description?
When a screening tool filters people out unfairly, who carries the cost: the vendor, the employer or the candidate?
What is an interview for, once neither side of it is human?
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