This week I visited IHR Live Manchester listening to conversations about AI, hiring, candidate screening and what recruitment is apparently going to look like over the next few years.
There was some genuinely interesting stuff. A few brilliant speakers. Some clever technology. But I left with a slightly uncomfortable feeling that I couldn’t quite shake.
A huge amount of the day focused on speed, automation and risk. One of the talks referenced research around falsified applications, identity fraud and the increasing challenge of knowing whether candidates are actually who they say they are. With AI making applications easier to generate and harder to verify, it’s obvious why employers are responding with more screening, more checks and more technology.
That part makes complete sense.
What interested me more was the imbalance in how trust was being discussed. Most of the conversation centred around how employers learn to trust candidates, but there was far less discussion around how candidates learn to trust employers.
And I think that matters more than we realise.
Recruitment processes have become strange over the last few years. They’re often incredibly polished, but also strangely impersonal. Candidates move through layers of assessments, automated communication and multiple-stage processes without ever really understanding what’s happening or why. Some companies now seem so focused on efficiency that the process itself starts to feel cold.
Ironically, one of the talks that seemed to connect most strongly with people in the room had very little to do with AI at all.
The neurodiversity and accessibility session was probably one of the most practical conversations of the day. It wasn’t trying to sell a platform or convince people that technology was the answer to everything. It was focused on how hiring processes actually feel for human beings moving through them.
The speaker talked about how many people who need adjustments never ask for them, and how large numbers of candidates quietly self reject before they even apply. Not because they aren’t capable, but because the process already feels inaccessible, unclear or overwhelming.
What struck me was how small most of the suggested changes were. Explaining logistics properly beforehand. Avoiding vague interview questions. Giving candidates options. Being clearer about expectations. Using proper scoring criteria instead of relying on instinct. None of it was revolutionary, but all of it felt important.
It reminded me that inclusion is often operational more than ideological. It lives in process design, communication and consistency. It’s rarely the big statement on the careers page that makes the difference. It’s the small moments where somebody either feels considered or they don’t.
There was another talk from EssilorLuxottica that I kept thinking about afterwards as well. What I liked about it was that it wasn’t framed around transformation for the sake of transformation. It was much more grounded than that. The focus was on simplification, consistency and making better use of what already existed.
That probably resonated with me because it applies to so many operational problems, not just recruitment. Businesses often end up carrying layers of unnecessary complexity that have quietly built up over time. Extra approvals. Extra stages. Extra systems. Extra workarounds. Nobody intentionally creates a difficult process, but eventually organisations become so used to the friction that they stop noticing it.
The speaker made a comment along the lines of “people will tell you what isn’t working if you make it easy enough for them to say it”, and honestly that was probably one of the most useful observations of the day.
Because despite all the conversations around AI, automation and intelligent hiring, the talks that seemed to resonate most were still the ones rooted in human experience.
AI is clearly going to continue reshaping recruitment. That was impossible to ignore yesterday. But I don’t think the businesses that stand out over the next few years will simply be the ones with the fastest systems or the most advanced tooling.
I think they’ll be the ones that remember there are still people on the other side of the process.
People who want clarity.
People who want communication.
People who want to know what’s happening.
People who want to feel like they’re interacting with an organisation that sees them as more than a workflow.
The technology matters. Of course it does.
I’m just not convinced the human part matters any less because of it. If anything, probably the opposite.Start writing here...