LinkedIn’s Hiring Assistant tool, which has been available to a small group of customers since it was announced last year, will be globally available in English by the end of September, the company announced — serving as the latest example of artificial intelligence tools that promise to reshape recruiting.
Hiring Assistant is an AI agent that aims to help recruiters with candidate sourcing and screening, among other tasks. LinkedIn said it took insights from customers over the past year to make the tool more conversational and responsive — fully “agentic,” in other words, the company said.
“Hiring Assistant doesn’t just listen — the product asks clarification questions, offers recommendations, and adapts based on context,” according to expansion announcement.
The tool can perform prescreening through InMail, LinkedIn’s messaging platform, and peruses LinkedIn profiles, application resumes and answers to screening questions to evaluate applicants, the company said. It’s also expected to connect with applicant tracking systems outside of LinkedIn.
Hiring Assistant is but one example of AI tools aimed at reinventing recruiting. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, said Sept. 4 it is building the OpenAI Jobs Platform in a bid to enter the recruiting fray.
The platform seems aimed at companies seeking AI talent and will also use AI to help employers “find the perfect matches between what companies need and what workers can offer,” according to the announcement.
Little else was said about the OpenAI platform — but it may reflect the ways recruiting has begun to shift amid the rapid pace of AI development.
Job boards, for example, remain a highly popular option for employers and candidates alike; nearly 7 in 10 employers told iHire they conduct all or most of their hiring through job boards, and nearly a third said their reliance may only increase in the next year.
But employers also expect job boards to evolve with the times, iHire said. Employers said they want job boards to include messaging, prescreening questions, skills assessments, interview scheduling options and more — all of which AI tools often purport to offer.
Hiring managers may want to remain judicious in their use of such tools, however. An April report from Express Employment Professionals and Harris Poll revealed that applicants may avoid companies that rely on generative AI in their recruiting processes; 73% of job hunters surveyed said the benefits of using generative AI are not worth the risks.
