High-volume hiring is under more pressure than ever. Candidate expectations have changed, application volumes are rising, and AI has made it easier than ever for every CV to look polished, optimised and highly relevant. The result is a growing challenge for Talent Acquisition teams: when every candidate looks like an A or B on paper, how do you spot the people who are genuinely right for the role?
For organisations hiring at scale, the old recruitment model is beginning to break. Great candidates can get lost in the volume, strong applicants may have already moved on by the time they surface, and many candidates never hear back at all. That does not just create operational inefficiency. It damages employer brand, weakens candidate trust and places unrealistic expectations on recruiters who are already managing peak season hiring, graduate campaigns and fluctuating workforce demand with limited capacity.
The opportunity now is to rethink high-volume hiring around better signals, faster decisions and a more human candidate experience. Leading organisations are exploring how to move beyond CV-based screening, use AI and automation more intelligently, improve candidate communication, and help recruiters focus their time where human judgment matters most. Those that get this right will be able to identify better talent faster, reduce candidate drop-off, protect their employer brand and build a hiring model that can handle volume without losing quality or care.
Tune in to this interactive discussion with senior HR and Talent Acquisition leaders where you will learn how leading organisations are redesigning high-volume hiring for a world where traditional screening signals are becoming less reliable. They discuss how to identify real talent when AI-generated applications are flooding the process, how to prevent great candidates from being missed, how to improve communication at scale, and how to build a recruitment model that works for candidates, recruiters and the business.
The panel discussion, hosted by Shane Kemp, focused on rebuilding high-volume hiring when every CV looks perfect. Key points included the need for transparent, fair assessment processes that go beyond CVs by using tools like Eightfold. Claudio Badea emphasized the importance of designing processes that assess candidates’ capabilities and fit. Yulia Zembel highlighted the use of psychometric tests to refine interviews. Jim Gonnellis stressed the importance of hiring managers’ involvement and understanding job roles. Robert Jaime discussed leveraging AI for immediate candidate engagement and consistent evaluation. The panel agreed on the need for a balanced approach, combining AI with human judgment to enhance hiring efficiency and the candidate experience.
00:00 Hi everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where you’re tuning in from. My name’s Shane Kemp, COO and co-founder here at HR Leaders, and I’m going to be your host for today’s live panel discussion, where we’ve got a really interesting topic. We’re going to be talking about how to rebuild high-volume hiring when every CV looks perfect. I’m sure we are all feeling that right now.
So, just to introduce you to your event platform on Zoom: on the right-hand side, you’re going to have the live chat where you can communicate with each other. Take a moment right now to introduce yourself. Say hi, let us know who you are, what organization you’re representing, and where in the world you are tuning in from. We would love for you to remain in contact long after this event, so make sure you also drop a link to your LinkedIn profile as well.
Now, with all that being said, I’ve got five fantastic panelists to unpack this really important discussion, so let me introduce them. First up, I’ve got Claudio Badea, Early Careers Lead EMEA at Shell. I’ve got Robert Jaime, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Eightfold. Yulia Zembel, Head of Talent Acquisition at Ukrsibbank, part of the BNP Paribas Group. Kevin Walker, former Talent Acquisition and Talent Management Lead over at McDonald’s. And a very familiar face, someone that you’probably seen as part of many panel discussions, Jim Gonnellis, Vice President of HR at Northwell Health.
Good to see everyone! Thanks so much for being a part of this, and we are looking forward to today’s conversation. I know that there are a lot of people in the chat already raring to go. So, Claudio, we’re going to come to you first. AI has made it easier than ever for candidates to produce really polished, professional-looking, tailored CVs. How has this changed what you believe makes a strong hiring process today?
01:53 I’ll start with when Natasha reached out to me. My initial skepticism for this topic was, “Oh no, another session talking about high-volume hiring, with everybody humblebragging about how many applications they’re getting and how difficult it is to deal with as an employer, but not actually wanting to do anything about it.” So that was my initial reaction to hearing about this topic, but after having the conversation, seeing the approach, and looking at the panel, I thought, “Okay, it’s worth having a conversation.”
My answer to the question comes from my perspective in early careers. We have been dealing with a high number of applications for a long time. Yes, there are a lot more applications today than there have been over the last few years, but the answer is actually fairly simple. How do you deal with high-volume applications? You design a process that allows you to fairly assess applications and is transparent so that candidates actually know what they’re being assessed on. You can do that through a myriad of different tools and providers that are out there, including companies like Eightfold—and I’m sure Robert, you’ll share a bit more about that.
It’s about designing assessment processes upfront that allow you to look beyond the CV and create a framework that really assesses the capabilities your business needs. When talking to peers about what they’re actually doing in this space, it’s different. They’re often finding workarounds to this problem by saying, “Okay, we’re going to do more outbound resourcing because all the applications that we’re getting in look the same,” or they rely more heavily on referrals. Why are they doing that? Because it’s a better signal—they know a referral gives them a clearer indicator of the person’s quality, so they rely more heavily on it.
But is that the right answer? Is that the fix for the future? Right now, luckily, we’re in a world where we get a lot of applications and the market is abundant with talent. But what if that shifts again, and talent becomes scarce and more difficult to find? If your process isn’t designed to actually assess applications, your outbound efforts stop working, and your referral pipeline slows down, what do you do then?
I think there are two reasons why we need to fix this ourselves. First of all, as talent professionals, we will benefit from a better candidate experience and from creating the infrastructure that enables us to attract and assess the best talent. Secondly, it’s the right thing to do. Many of us probably have colleagues right now who are applying externally and struggling. I’ve seen so many of my colleagues looking in the external job market for the first time in many years, and they’re finding it so difficult to just get a foot in the door. How is this possible? This person is absolutely amazing. As soon as they get in front of someone, they’re going to hire them, but they just can’t get that foot in the door. So we have a responsibility to fix it, but it’s also good for us.
05:24 What a comprehensive answer! I love that, Claudio. Before I let the other panelists jump in, backstage we also found out that you’re a product of Shell’s graduate program. So this is quite personal to you as well, since you’ve been through the entire process yourself and now you’re the one in charge of redesigning it. When you look back seven or eight years ago to when you were actually hired, what are some of the big changes that you’ve made since then?
05:52 When I was hired, the process was in person—a two-day event where you would come in, sit down, have a nice dinner with the team, and they would explain why you should join Shell. The next day, they would drill you through a range of assessments that all happened face-to-face, whether case studies, e-tray exercises, or a variety of other tools used at the time.
Now the process is a bit more streamlined. Candidates can apply online and get the option to complete our assessments. That includes a virtual job tryout, which gives them a chance to find out a bit more about the company and figure out if this is the right opportunity for them. Then they complete a video assessment, which is a very common tool in the early careers space. Our sourcing team then reviews all of those applications. It’s a very heavy workload, so that is becoming increasingly difficult, but we are still keeping that human element and human judgment in the loop. That’s been one of the major changes.
What we are seeing more broadly in the talent ecosystem is that the same learnings we’ve taken from early careers can be applied to the experienced hire space as well. Last year, we ran the first pilot rolling out the same type of assessment—tailored for experienced hires—at that entry level where we see a high volume of applications.
07:25 I was just going to chime in. On top of assessment and selection, I would say it’s equally important to make sure your recruiters and interviewers are capable of actually delivering that assessment and selection process. Beyond that, I’m always a big fan of a task—something genuinely tangible. You don’t just get that in an interview; some people are just good at interviewing. I’m a huge fan of a tangible task you can walk away with that counterbalances someone sweeping you away with an incredible personality. I would add that on top.
08:02 As an almost lifelong recruiter—which is a difficult point to admit—you do sometimes get overly engaged with one candidate or disengaged with another for whatever reason, losing the consistency needed to evaluate properly. That’s where AI-enabled evaluation brings consistency at scale. It doesn’t just help us manage volume; it also brings fairness to candidates by giving everyone a consistent evaluation.
08:33 I was thinking in general about what makes a strong hiring process. A CV check has never been a reliable indicator of a strong hiring process; it was always just a cheap proxy we used to get a signal on whether a candidate was good or not. Now we just need to change our perspective and change the proxy. The underlying process hasn’t changed: we still need to find the right fit. Whether we use CVs or not, we just need to change this instrument.
09:21 To add to Robert’s point about how we can utilize AI from a recruitment perspective: in healthcare, we hire everything from executives to frontline staff. To Claudio’s point, there are different pockets. For certain roles, we have an abundance of qualified candidates, while for others, we struggle to find qualified talent. It’s not uniform across the board.
The consistency of the hiring manager is always a concern. You may have a hiring manager who knows how to ask the right questions and make those assessments, while another may not be as experienced. That is where the assessment capabilities of AI can assist both hiring managers and recruiters, rather than looking at it solely from the candidate aspect.
Yes, people are using AI for resumes, but in all honesty, candidates have used consultants and writing services in the past, so it isn’t necessarily new. The key is ensuring your vetting process allows you to appropriately vet candidates before interviewing. I also really like Kevin’point about tasks. Someone can wow you during an interview, but once they start, you wonder where that person went. Or the opposite: someone might not wow you during an interview, but when given a task and actually performing, it’s a completely different assessment.
11:18 I completely agree with you regarding high volumes of CVs and candidates. For me, high-volume hiring isn’t only about having a lot of candidates; sometimes we have many open positions where we don’t have candidates at all because we struggle to find them. We really need AI to help find candidates in those cases. Maybe we aren’t talking enough about how to use AI for candidate sourcing and attraction, rather than just filtering methods.
12:00 Absolutely. The ability to infer skills from career context rather than just what is written on a resume is crucial. Sure, you can utilize AI to manage scale and volume, but for niche roles where you aren’t finding candidates easily, AI can infer skills from capable people whose resumes don’t capture everything explicitly. It can be super impactful there as well.
12:25 Just on the assessment and selection piece: McDonald’s was really good at this. You need to know your organization really well, spending time to build out frameworks around the behaviors that matter and the traits you look for in terms of potential. That helps inform how you structure evaluation alongside technical competence, which always has to be there. Aligning those behavioral skill sets with your performance frameworks tees you up for success because you’re hiring and managing performance against the same standards. Having a firm grip on who you are and what you value is massively important, and I’m not entirely sure everyone does that; people often just look for another technical expert without considering the broader behavioral traits or potential behind them.
On the topic of polished CVs: maybe because there was no AI wizardry at screening when I started, you had to eyeball every CV. A polished CV has never held much currency for me personally. I just need to quickly see location, skill set, and experience to make a raw assessment of the fundamentals. Once you’ve satisfied low-hanging fruit like internal mobility and referrals, you go out to market to build an audience.
From there, it’s about narrowing down that audience to who you actually want to spend time with. For me, it’s only ever been a quick read on the basics before jumping into the relationship piece: Who do I really need to get to know, and how? Ultimately, we need to tell a story back to the business: “45 days ago, you asked for X; here it is in human form, with an assessment of their behaviors, potential, and cultural fit.” Those are the hurdles you position to feel confident they’ll succeed in 30, 60, or 90 days, or over six months, a year, or several years.
14:55 You’ve given some wonderful examples, team, and I’m glad we opened this up. We can now take this a bit more tactically. Jim, I’d love to come to you on this. When you’re looking at candidates who appear equally strong on paper, and your organization receives hundreds or thousands of applicants for a single role, what signals do you trust most at Northwell Health to identify genuine capability and long-term potential?
15:35 It depends on the role. If a role requires a very specific set of skills and knowledge, you want to ensure the individual possesses them by asking the right questions. In our process, recruiters vet candidates first before passing them to hiring managers for a more in-depth subject-matter interview.
Recruiters must thoroughly understand the role. In healthcare, for example, we hire thousands of nurses across the organization, but not every nurse position is the same. A nurse at a community hospital operates very differently from a nurse at a tertiary hospital assisting with organ transplants. Understanding those role nuances starts with the recruiter, which is essential both for assessing candidate skills and explaining the expectations clearly to candidates.
Sometimes candidates perform wonderfully in interviews and seem like a great fit, but once they start, they’re shell-shocked because they didn’t fully realize what working in a high-pressure environment like an emergency department entails. Beyond skills and knowledge—which most candidates reaching late-stage interviews possess—the key is assessing cultural and team fit. Whether hiring attorneys, executives, or frontline team members, if the cultural fit isn’t there, it won’t be a successful hire. Both the employer and candidate must understand expectations right from the start.
18:45 Motivation and potential are probably the hardest things to surface compared to actual credentials.
18:52 That’s why I spoke earlier about internal mobility as a great instrument: we already know their potential, so we can accurately assess it.
19:07 One thing CVs have lost with tailored resumes becoming so accessible is genuine signal. A few years ago, my advice to students was, “Tailor your CV to the company and explain why you’re applying through a tailored cover letter or specific details on your CV.” Now, that advice is almost counterintuitive. Showing more of your authentic personality actually helps you stand out more, because anyone can generate a tailored cover letter. The signal a well-tailored CV used to give us—showing time, intent, and research—is gone. How do we redesign our processes to measure how genuinely interested applicants are in our company? I don’t have the full answer, but I’m always thinking about how we can measure whether someone is truly excited to interview with us and accept the role.
20:21 To that point, I think we look much more for authenticity. Over 20 years ago, when I was graduating law school, the standard uniform for interviews was a white shirt, a blue or red tie, and a blue suit. I remember wearing a blue shirt once right before an on-campus interview, and the career services dean leaned over—I thought to offer encouragement—and asked, “Where is your white shirt?”
We’ve moved past that. Candidates can bring their authentic selves in appearance and demeanor, which is important because it shows who they truly are. As employers, we also need to be open and authentic about who we are.
21:30 On a related point: because candidates assume ATS bots are parsing their CVs, everyone is fighting to throw in every possible keyword. They list things they might have been near, but lack actual depth. The biggest signal I tell my hiring managers to look for is depth. Someone might list “L&D” as a keyword, but when you dig deeper with follow-up questions, their actual responsibility starts to unravel.
We used to use the STAR method, which works well because candidates without depth can’t provide a well-rounded answer. Depth is becoming increasingly important when people can generate a CV tailored to a job description with AI.
Another indicator is the questions candidates ask, which ties back to Claudio and Jim’s points about appetite. Is this applicant just firing off 100 applications because the market is tough, or do they genuinely care? The questions candidates ask reveal why they believe they can help. Companies go to market because they need help solving a problem or driving ambition. I want to see if the person has thought about how they will actually fix or advance things in the role. If they have no questions or haven’t considered how they will drive impact, it tells me whether they’re serious or if we’re just one of a thousand applications.
24:06 What are some good questions you would recommend candidates ask at the end, Kevin?
24:10 I love when questions focus on how they can genuinely help. If a candidate says, “This is the area where I think I can support your goals, and here’s how I see myself contributing to your end game,” my eyes light up. That shows they’ve thought about how to move the business forward based on what they’ve learned about the role.
24:48 It’s also about consistency and asking meaningful follow-up questions. When you get a surface-level answer, knowing how to probe deeper to get what you need at scale is the challenge—making sure every STAR-based interview yields the depth you’re looking for.
25:14 We still need balance. BNP Paribas has a very strong brand, and people naturally want to work for the group. However, if we want to hire the best talent, we still need to headhunt them and sell the role. We have to balance filtering tools with showing genuine interest in the candidate as well.
26:10 I love these answers. Everyone in the chat taking notes can level up their recruitment efforts far beyond the CV. Reverse-engineering this advice is also incredibly valuable for job seekers. Robert, you’re in an interesting position at Eightfold—you have a world-class solution that many organizations use, but you’re also “customer zero” using it internally. From your perspective at Eightfold and across your customer base, where does AI add the most value in high-volume hiring, and where should human judgment always remain central?
27:24 AI should always handle tasks that scale, like the consistent evaluation of volume I mentioned. That’s how we leverage it: ensuring immediate engagement at the top of the funnel, which is difficult for humans to do at scale. As soon as someone applies, the evaluation process can start immediately. With our AI interviewer, a candidate can apply and be engaged in an evaluation 10 minutes later. By the time a recruiter checks their queue, they have a pre-evaluated candidate with a strong match score and can focus on relationship-building. Something that used to take a week to schedule now happens instantly.
Human judgment comes later in the process when assessing motivation, potential, and genuine interest in the company. To get the most value, you must structure your process around AI capabilities—immediate engagement, automated preliminary assessments, consistent evaluation, and inferring skills from career context. For niche roles with small applicant pools, inferring transferable skills helps surface hidden potential.
On the interviewer side, tools like our Interview Companion help interviewers stay consistent, capture key feedback in real-time so insights aren’t lost, and suggest relevant follow-up questions. Early adopter customers are seeing massive reductions in time-to-hire by leveraging immediate engagement and process consistency.
30:46 It also greatly enhances the candidate experience. Candidates often submit applications and wait weeks—or longer—to hear back. Having rapid interaction and acknowledgement sets a positive tone. Onboarding effectively starts the moment a candidate submits an application; that initial interaction impacts their first 90 days and overall experience with the organization.
32:01 I agree. It improves both the candidate and recruiter experience. We recently launched an AI screening tool, and we noticed candidates prefer being screened late in the evening or on weekends. Previously, recruiters had to stay late or candidates had to compromise on timing. Now, candidates can complete screenings at their convenience while recruiters maintain normal working hours, balancing flexibility for everyone.
32:50 It’s interesting how AI is involved at every pivot point. It’s partly why there are fewer job openings, it’s the tool ballooning application volumes with polished CVs, and it’s also the remedy on the employer side making sense of the noise. It’s a full loop!
AI excels at one-to-many tasks with large data sets: CV screening, content creation, administrative tasks, scheduling, and video creation. It speeds things up without dropping quality, though a human lens is still necessary—you shouldn’t post an AI-generated job ad or outreach message without refining it, or people will spot it instantly.
Where it pivots to humans is in one-to-one interactions. If you’re building a relationship, you shouldn’t rely on AI. We should enjoy the human element of connecting with people while we still can, before it becomes bot-to-bot interactions!
35:17 To share a practical use of AI in our space: we hire for a wide range of roles, and aligning business requirements across trading, IT, and other functions can be challenging. Recently, we transcribed job briefing meetings between hiring managers and recruiters. By analyzing that text, we compiled a clear “candidate archetype” outlining what good and great look like for specific functions. This gives us much better insights entering the market and stronger alignment during conversations with senior leadership. Transcribing briefing conversations is a simple, highly practical tool.
I completely agree with Kevin regarding where not to use AI: relationship building. I can immediately tell when a LinkedIn message was generated by AI—especially with those distinct em dashes! Using AI for direct outreach can cost you credibility.
37:12 And don’t use AI to make final hiring decisions. AI should support human judgment, not replace it; that’s how we build and implement our tools. We don’t auto-reject candidates; our goal is to uncover potential and surface applicable skills within our applicant pipeline.
37:47 We are having such a deep conversation that trying to cover five major questions in 45 minutes was ambitious! Let’s explore one more question in detail. Yulia, I’d love to come to you on this. What do hiring managers need to do differently to make better hiring decisions now that they have access to AI-enabled and agentic tools?
38:29 I can share the work we’ve done over the past year with our hiring managers. First, we redesigned job profiles. Before posting an ad, we must be clear on the ideal candidate profile—especially soft skills and what they will face in their first 90 days. Screening tools fail if the profile itself is unclear.
Second, we rethink how hiring managers conduct interviews and test tasks. Traditional take-home tasks don’t work the same way anymore. Recently, while consulting on a Head of Talent Acquisition search, we saw two types of candidates on testing tasks: those weak in AI who submitted mediocre tests, and those proficient in AI who submitted flawless, polished tests. It was hard to evaluate genuine TA capability versus AI prompting skills.
Because of this, we now administer psychometric tests earlier in the process—after initial screening but before deep competency interviews—to give hiring managers structured behavioral insights to tailor their interview questions.
Third, structure is crucial. Hiring managers must stick to competency scorecards and structured questions focused on interpersonal skills rather than relying on unstructured, CV-driven conversations.
Finally, we invest heavily in training hiring managers. Beyond providing playbooks and workshops, we actively onboard new hiring managers so they are equipped with robust evaluation strategies alongside recruiters.
43:24 When you mentioned bringing the assessment earlier in the process, is it given to all candidates or just later-stage ones?
43:32 We don’t give it to every applicant. It’s administered to successful candidates who have passed the initial AI screening and recruiter screening, right before the competency-based interview.
43:52 Nice.
43:53 Leveraging our own product, we can present comprehensive initial assessments upfront—combining screening, functional evaluations, and coding assessments into a single session with our AI interviewer.
I would also advise talent leaders to treat candidate data as a strategic asset. Applicants who weren’t selected previously aren’t “rejected candidates”—they are potential future hires whose skill gaps may have closed since they last applied. One of our clients found that nearly 50% of their current hires come from re-engaging their existing talent network. Reconnecting with candidates who are already familiar with and excited about your brand saves significant sourcing effort.
45:19 Super advanced. Kevin, Jim, anything else to add on this point?
45:25 It comes down to consistent partnership. Hiring managers can’t just toss a job description over the fence once finance approves it and disappear until second-round interviews. They need to be actively engaged: co-defining roles, reviewing screening and outreach approaches, and understanding why candidates progress or get filtered out. That partnership should continue through pre-boarding and onboarding so new hires land with momentum rather than a whimper.
46:55 I 100% agree with Kevin. Both recruiters and hiring managers must deeply understand the role and clearly communicate expectations to candidates.
While there’s much discussion about how AI might replace jobs, we should focus on how it enhances our roles. AI frees recruiters and hiring managers from repetitive tasks so they can focus on higher-value decisions, ultimate candidate experience, and better hiring outcomes.
48:06 Panelists, you’ve shared so many practical insights today. Whether in recruitment, screening, candidate experience, or overall HR leadership, your examples have given everyone actionable takeaways.
A big thank you to our amazing panelists for sharing their wisdom, and thank you to everyone in the chat for your engaging comments. Special thanks to our partners at Eightfold and to Robert for joining us.
At the bottom of your screen, you’ll see a link to explore the Eightfold AI Interviewer for high-volume hiring to see how you can create consistent screening while reducing manual workload.
Join us next Thursday as we discuss scaling AI across the full hiring journey. Click the link in the chat to reserve your spot, and be sure to follow HR Leaders on LinkedIn for daily content and event highlights. Enjoy the rest of your day, and we look forward to seeing you soon!
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