How AI is bringing true ‘consulting’ back to recruitment

For years, the recruitment industry has operated under a slight misnomer: many “recruitment consultancies” do very little actual consulting. Instead, the typical recruiter’s day is consumed by administrative grunt work: formatting CVs, writing emails, and chasing down leads. But as AI continues to mature, the industry is on the precipice of a major shift.

We sat down with recruitment leaders at our quarterly Automation & AI User Group to discuss why they believe AI is bringing true consulting back to recruitment.

The end of recruitment admin

Industry experts predict that within the next few years, the manual tasks that currently dominate a recruiter’s workflow will be entirely automated. AI is already stepping in to summarise job intake calls, auto-generate follow-up emails, and format or anonymise CVs with the click of a button.

By stripping away this admin, AI is forcing a return to the fundamentals of the job. The future of recruitment lies in face-to-face relationship building, brand development, and strategic consultation – the deeply human elements that technology cannot replicate.