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Artificial intelligence has taken the recruiting profession by storm. According to AllAboutAI.com, a whopping 85 percent of employers have integrated AI into their recruiting workflows. That number may be high, but whatever the correct figure is, it’s already having a significant impact. And now, with the advent of agentic AI, the technology is poised to assume a much greater role. Even those who believe AI can free recruiters up to do what recruiters do best, are worried about where it will all end.
It is an unsettling situation to be sure, but this expansive application of AI is not the greatest threat to the future of recruiters. Their role, their profession, their employability – all are under attack from another source. The HR Department.
In the majority of employers today, the recruiting operation remains firmly under the control of the HR bureaucracy. To them, it is simply an ancillary function, not a core responsibility. Indeed, a survey conducted some years ago by SHRM found that HR Departments saw recruiting as an entry-level job where new hires could safely gain their sea legs before being reassigned to the really good stuff, like benefits administration, compensation management, and compliance.
What has that meant for recruiters?
It’s not the VP or Director or Head or Manager of Talent Acquisition but the CHRO who determines headcount and the budget for recruiting operations. Oh sure, there are exceptions to that rule, but that’s exactly what they are: exceptions. And historically, the HR Department has both under-funded and under-staffed those operations in good times and slashed and burned them in hard times.
And, hard times is where we’ve been for several years. A recruiter writing on LinkedIn reported that “2024 has been hell for recruiters.” He predicted that 2025 would be better. It wasn’t. Although survey data focus on cuts to tech, operations and sales workers, countless posts on LinkedIn have confirmed that recruiters are also getting the axe. And not just a few, but a lot.
It’s the smart move as every business school graduate in the world knows; when hiring is down, you don’t need recruiters. Every CFO knows that. And now that HR finally has its coveted “seat at the table,” it too espouses the orthodoxy of modern business and moves quickly to ratify the cuts. It’s the ultimate in a gimme business case.
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Of course, there are some who will say that today’s jettisoning of recruiters is nothing more than normal business behavior. What goes down always eventually goes back up. The recruiters who are laid off today will be rehired tomorrow or as soon as business gets better.
That may have been true in the past. It isn’t any more.
The current pressure to downsize recruiting teams is likely to be much more long-lasting if not permanent. We are, after all, in the midst of a fundamental restructuring of the workplace. AI is replacing workers in a huge number of fields so there are fewer “human openings” for recruiters to fill. According to the World Economic Forum, by the end of this year, 92 million workers worldwide will have lost their jobs to the technology. In the U.S., National University estimates that almost a quarter of companies (23.5 percent) have replaced workers with ChatGPT or similar AI tools. And according to a report in Fortune, SHRM research has found that “nearly 20 million jobs are on the chopping block to be replaced by AI.”
But, the technology is not the real culprit here. The real culprit is the obsolescence of the HR Department. Its process fixation and administrative mindset have made its jobs prime candidates for automation and replacement by AI. That reality has put the Department in self-preservation mode. At the same time, funding for so-called “overhead functions” is getting ever tighter, which means cuts have to be made. So, to preserve its own budget, HR slashes that of its ancillary function – the recruiting team.
While it’s true that AI will reduce the number of openings recruiters have to fill, the data above make clear that those cuts will largely take place five-to-ten years in the future. The HR Department’s abandonment of recruiters is happening right now. As early as 2023, tech companies were cutting 50 percent of their recruiters, according to The Wall Street Journal. And reporting in The HR Digest featured this (likely unintentional) truth from an HR professional: “HR layoffs are thinning out recruiters and admins to lean on AI tools.”
It would be ironic were it not so dysfunctional that these cuts are happening at a time when recruiting is more important than ever to the success of business enterprises. The severe shortages of qualified workers in a range of technology-dependent fields – fields that will only multiply as the use of large language models and other applications of AI expands – are now damaging research and development, operational efficiency, customer relations and sales. The War for Talent has entered a new and much more potentially disruptive phase.
That fact notwithstanding, the HR Department is likely to continue its attack on recruiters as the danger to its own agency increases. So, what can recruiters do? Beyond being aware of the threat, is there anything recruiters can do to protect themselves?
Unfortunately, there’s not, at least not directly. But, outside forces are on their side. As the critical importance of talent becomes more visible and its shortage in the workforce becomes a Board level concern, it’s likely that two things will happen: first, the HR Department’s abnormal behavior will be seen as misguided and fundamentally at odds with the success of the enterprise and second, that behavior will be terminated and the role of recruiting will be elevated. After all, you can’t manage the resources you don’t have.
Food for Thought,
Peter
Peter Weddle has authored or edited over two dozen books and been a columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He is the founder and CEO of TAtech: The Network for Talent Technology Solutions.
