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Hi ya, 

Surprised to see me in your inbox on a Thursday?! Well, here I am!  

This is a ✨special edition deep dive✨ of I Hate it Here. Every now and then, you may get one of these from me! 👏

This special edition deep dive is sponsored by Spark Hire. 

What's a deep dive?

Deep dives are opportunities for me to collab with specific companies in the HR/People space on topics of joint interest to them, me, and even you! The sponsoring company provides invaluable input on the topic but this edition itself is written, edited, and published by your fave gal, me! 

Today, I'm discussing how AI flooded the hiring funnel, why lean HR teams are paying the price, and how better systems can bring some structure and humanity back to hiring.

Let's get into it!

AI has done something truly magical, but not in the way you’re initially thinking.

Yeah, it may have made some annoying tasks easier, but it also created a whole other challenge:

It gave literally everyone the ability to look qualified enough.

And when everything looks good, nothing is good.

All of a sudden, LinkedIn profiles read like TED Talk transcripts and somehow, every candidate is “results-driven,” “passionate,” and a “cross-functional collaborator.”

Incredible. No notes.

Well, except now traditional screening might not work anymore… 🙃

Welcome to what I'm gonna go ahead and call the AI Slopocalypse. 

It's real, and you've absolutely noticed it in both your professional and personal lives. 

AI slop is dominating the internet right now because we've prioritized quantity over quality so aggressively that we've completely lost the plot!

Every application kinda reads the same, like your JD was put through AI and a resume generated just for that role. 

Not only is this somewhat frustrating, but it's also breaking the hiring process. 

👀 When AI floods your funnel with applications that look good on paper but tell you absolutely nothing about the actual human behind them, you lose your ability to identify real talent. 

Now, you're stuck playing a game of "spot the authentic candidate" while your hiring managers are checking out, your HR team is burning out, and great candidates are slipping through the cracks because they got lost in the noise.

So what the hell do we do about it? 

Well, the way I see it, you've got two options. 

You can run a leaner process, or you can create capacity to handle the chaos. 

And given that teams are getting smaller, budgets are getting tighter, and nobody's coming to save us, leaner is looking like the reality for a lot of teams.  Including mine!

This is where Spark Hire comes in…but we'll get to that later.

First, let's talk about the three massive inefficiencies that are making recruiting an absolute nightmare right now and what you can do to solve them without losing your mind or the very necessary human touch that makes hiring work.

AI didn't just increase application volume…it completely erased differentiation. 

When resumes and cover letters are increasingly generated or optimized by AI, traditional screening methods stop working.

You can't surface real signals anymore because everyone's using the same keywords and polished language that sounds impressive at first glance, but ultimately means nothing.

I've seen a lot of this firsthand lately. 

You post a role and get like 300 applications within 48 hours. Sounds great, right??? 

Except when you actually dig in, maybe 50 of those people are remotely qualified, and of those 50, you have no idea who can actually do the job versus who's just really good at prompt engineering. 🫠

*Cue anxiety attack*

Your ATS ranks candidates based on keyword matches that don't matter, then your hiring manager glances at the top 10 resumes and picks whoever went to a name-brand school or has the fanciest job title. 

And BOOM, you've just made a hiring decision based on speed, gut feel, or whoever applied first!

This is actually a disaster, folks.

💡 How to solve it: You need structured screening that goes beyond the resume. Period. 

Video interviews give you an actual signal about communication skills, enthusiasm, and whether someone can think on their feet. Bonus points if it’s a one-way video where candidates answer pre-set questions on their own time.

I know what you’re thinking… 

But candidates don't hate this technology, by the way! 

➡️ What they hate is being left in the dark about where they stand in the process, which happens a lot. 

But when you give them a chance to actually show who they are beyond a document that might've been written by an algorithm, they appreciate it.

Nearly 70% of candidates say their experience during the hiring process shapes how they expect to be treated as an employee down the line. 

So if your screening process feels like a black hole where resumes go to die, you're setting terrible expectations for anyone who does accept your offer.

Back when you had 15 people on a product management team, you could run an 8-step hiring process.

Multiple phone screens, panel interviews, homework assignments, final round presentations…the whole effing circus!

But that hasn’t been the reality for quite some time.

Team sizes are dramatically changing shrinking.

Look around…companies are getting rid of people and not hiring them back! (I have a spiral about this for another day and another deep dive trust meeee).

Teams across the board are getting leaner, and if you're still trying to run that same exhaustive process with half the people, you're going to lose.

Speed is now a candidate experience issue. Long, manual screening processes cost you great candidates and frustrate HR teams. 

In fact, 66% of candidates say a positive experience directly influenced their decision to accept a job offer. 

On the flip side, almost half have turned down offers after a poor experience. 

And you know what creates a poor experience faster than anything? 

Making someone sit through a dozen rounds of interviews over two months while your competitors move in three weeks.

💡 How to solve it: You need to front-load your screening and make every single step count. 

If you can gather substantive information about candidates earlier in the process through structured video interviews, targeted assessments, collaborative evaluation tools, even projects then you can cut out redundant steps without sacrificing quality. 

You can get hiring managers involved asynchronously instead of blocking their sacred calendars for hours of back-to-back interviews. 

You can move faster without rushing judgment or cutting corners.

When managers can engage asynchronously and provide structured input early in the process, hiring teams move faster, stay aligned, and make better decisions without adding meetings or slowing momentum. 

But if your systems make it hard for them to participate and they have to sit through every phone screen or wait for you to send them notes from interviews they weren't in, then yeah, they're going to slow everything down. 

Not because they don't care, but because your process is a hot ass mess.

And I hate to be the bearer of bad news but you won't have enough people to run an 8-step interview process anymore!!!! See my note above. So you need to define what you want the outcome to be and engineer a process that works for everyone. 

That means being ruthlessly strategic about what information you need at each stage and cutting everything else!

To be clear, technology isn't the enemy of candidate experience. 

It’s the misaligned, clunky hiring tech that we don’t like. 

When tools add friction instead of clarity, it’s no surprise when they worsen acceptance rates and hiring quality.

For example, maybe your ATS doesn't integrate with your scheduling software, or your hiring managers are leaving feedback in email threads, Slack messages, and random Google Docs that nobody can find later. 

💩 Hiring becomes a mess, and candidate experience ends up in the toilet.

Candidates hate being left in the dark more than anything. 

Nobody likes applying and never hearing back, and nobody likes jumping through hoops with no explanation of why or what happens next.

When you give them clarity, transparency, and actual human support? They're fine with technology. They might even prefer it because it respects their time.

They want the options that respect their time!

💡 How to solve it: You need systems that work together and create a cohesive experience for everyone involved, which includes candidates, hiring managers, and your HR team. 

When screening is consistent and evaluation happens in one place, you reduce bias and create more predictable experience for candidates, even at scale.

This is especially critical for smaller organizations that don't have entire departments dedicated to recruiting! 

You've got HR generalists juggling 47 other responsibilities, and if your hiring tools aren’t simplifying the process, you're making their jobs harder for no reason. 

Whether your systems are smooth or nightmarish, they definitely notice.

And can we talk about the word "efficient" for a second?! 

🫣 Because everyone uses this word and, to be honest, I'm TIRED of hearing it.

"HR needs to be more efficient." 

"We need efficient processes." 

"How do we make hiring more efficient?" 

Efficiency for efficiency's sake makes me want to vomit. 

✨What we actually need is effectiveness.✨

We need systems that help us make better decisions faster without burning people out or treating candidates like numbers in a database.

(But fine, if we're stuck with the word "efficient," let's at least use it correctly.)

Alright, enough doom and gloom! 😅

Let's talk about what this actually looks like when it works, because it can work, and when it does, it's kinda beautiful.

💭 Imagine this: You post a role and get 200 applications, but instead of manually sifting through resumes that all say the same thing, you route qualified candidates through a structured video screening where they answer questions about their experience, approach to problem-solving, and why they're interested in your company. 

You watch these interviews on your own time and within a week, you've identified your top 10 candidates based on actual signal about who they are and how they think, not just what keywords they stuffed into a document.

Your hiring manager reviews those same video interviews asynchronously, then leaves feedback directly in the platform. 

Everyone's on the same page about who to move forward with, and you schedule final interviews only with candidates you're genuinely excited about. 

⏱️ The whole process takes three weeks instead of three months. 

Candidates appreciate the clarity and respect for their time, and you make a hire that sticks because you actually knew what you were getting.

That's what happens when AI is used alongside the human touch and your systems are all doing what they're supposed to do.

AI can help you manage volume and surface patterns you might miss, but humans still make the final call based on judgment that no algorithm can assess. 

When candidates have a positive experience, they're more likely to accept your offer, refer other great people, and show up ready to contribute! 

Our job as HR feels like it's radically changing in real time. We're being looked to as architects of new structure without knowing what the future looks like. 

That means trying things we’ve never done before.

If you're sitting there thinking, "Great breakdown, Hebba, but I still have 150 applications to screen by Friday," I get it! 

So now that we've thoroughly diagnosed the problem, let's talk about Spark Hire. 

They were built specifically to solve this exact problem. 

With Spark Hire, teams can screen up to 5x faster and hire 50% faster. 

That's what happens when you can evaluate candidates through video interviews instead of playing phone tag for three weeks! 

You get substantive information about communication skills, cultural add, and problem-solving ability, all while involving hiring managers asynchronously so they're not stuck in endless meetings. 

⏲️ You can make faster decisions without rushing judgment or cutting corners.

This is especially critical for lean HR teams at organizations with 50-500 employees, aka the ones who are hiring regularly for roles that require strong interpersonal skills and cultural fit but don't have the budget or bandwidth for massive recruiting departments. 

So if you're sick and tired of drowning in AI-generated applications that tell you nothing useful, Spark Hire can help.

HOWWWW you may ask??

They've developed a FREE Hiring Toolkit, which gives you access to a series of custom GPTs you can use to bring more clarity to hiring. The GPTs help you prep for your hiring manager kickoff call, create clarity post-kickoff, and develop a rock-solid hiring plan from there.

Think of it like your own personal hiring assistant, except one that actually makes things easier and doesn't add a bunch of workflow babysitting to your plate.

So basically, the dream. 

The AI Slopocalypse is real, but we don't have to let it win.

Start hiring smarter today

Thanks for reading this deep dive! Reply with any thoughts you have.

XOXO,  

Hebba Youssef

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