PTP Key Takeaways:
- 2026 hiring trends include a wave of similar, AI-perfected resumes from AI-prepped candidates.
- Many organizations already using AI still struggle with siloed systems that don’t solve pain points like reducing time to hire or improving candidate follow up.
- Effective end-to-end AI hiring process rewires have helped some companies resolve these issues and more.
- Candidates are getting ghosted at every step of the process at higher numbers than ever.
- Effective AI interviewing that’s fully integrated into systems and workflows is solving foundational problems on both sides.
When it comes to AI, candidates and recruiters are in agreement: It’s very handy for them and they don’t want the other side using it.
Yet at the same time, both sides are using AI, and in much greater numbers at the close of 2025 than the beginning. At this stage, you could argue it’s essential for recruiters and HR to manage the volume of applications that’s coming faster (and more keyword-laden) than ever before.
73% of recruiters say AI is already improving their time to hire, per May data from Resume Now. 94% say it’s effective at finding the top candidates, and 94% find it effective overall (with about half saying “very effective” vs “somewhat effective”).
The same survey also found that 79% of hiring pros think there should be regulation on AI use in job application materials by candidates, and a majority (54%, per Insight Global) still care when applicants use it.
Candidate numbers are similar. An Express Employment Professionals-Harris Poll found that 78% of applicants believe using AI is appropriate for them, though 84% said they’d rather humans review all their materials.
Hypocrisy all around?
A better explanation may be that we trust our own use of AI to be reasonable and checked, while fearing the worst-case scenarios from others and systems at scale.
In today’s PTP Report, we look at the state of AI in recruiting at the end of 2025. We profile AI use by candidates and recruiters, look at a playbook for effective, best-case AI in recruiting workflows for 2026, and consider the candidate experience from professionals who have been through it.
Love it or hate it, are you ready for the world of AI-powered hiring in 2026?
Among 2026 Hiring Trends: Volume + AI, Ghosting, and Homogeneity
We’ve been posting a lot on PTP lately about the surge in volume that tech job postings are seeing.
This is expressed in numbers like the following:
- 11,000 applications received per minute by LinkedIn this summer, up 45% from the prior year
- 400–600 applications regularly submitted to tech job postings in the first 24 hours, some reaching 1,200+
- +71% candidates screened by greenhouse recruiters from 2023–2024
Paired with additional survey numbers like these:
- 66% of candidates saying AI seems to have significantly increased the competition
- 62% of resumes now including AI-generated content
- 62% of firms reporting having already fired candidates for lacking skills in their application materials
- 61% of firms finding more overstated skills on resumes since the AI boom
- 61% of candidates reporting being ghosted even after an interview
- 44% of candidates having abandoned a job prospect because of poor communication
[For citations on these stats and more detail on many of these points, check out the recent newsletter from PTP’s Founder and CEO on AI-driven challenges facing recruiters at the eve of 2026.]
All told, it paints a pretty harrowing picture of a system in transition. And with over a million layoffs and counting in 2025, more and more candidates making use of AI to perfect both resumes and cover-letters, and AI-driven application systems capable of applying to over 5,000 jobs for a single candidate with minimal time commitment over a few days, and the system is in danger of overload in several areas.
For many, it’s already a highly painful situation, with jobs being pulled down under an onslaught of resumes where the vast majority of submissions lack even base qualifications. Companies, even with AI recruiting tools, are struggling to get the talent they need while applicants fail to get interviews or even effective, honest communication on the state of the process.
Candidates may prefer human interviews to AI, but far more are getting frustrated by getting no contact (or review) at all.
Webinar Highlights: The Future of Hiring in 2026
To address this topic, PTP hosted a webinar last week titled Incorporating AI Automation into Hiring: The 2026 Hiring Playbook.
Moderated by Marty Peterson, Co-Host at Viewpoints Radio, it featured Managing Partner and Co-Founder of The Cervantes Group Tim Mullen, PTP Founder and CEO Nick Shah, Pete & Gabi VP of Sales and Client Success Clancy Ryan, and PTP Associate Account Executive Ryleigh Hemingway.
In a space where AI adoption is so high and some companies are seeing it bring big improvements, why are so many teams still struggling to get their heads above the water?
Siloed systems in HR are still proving problematic, even with AI screening in place. Manual outreach continues to be a significant bottleneck for hiring teams, with candidate follow-up often being the thing that gets dropped.
And with hiring managers and recruiters running their own systems independently, efforts get duplicated or caught in review between. This has seen metrics like time-to-hire reach 30–66 days, even as the technology exists to radically accelerate it.
At The Cervantes Group, they’ve found success with an automated talent acquisition approach. By redesigning their workflows to take advantage of an end-to-end AI hiring process, they’ve managed to handle far greater volume while also reducing burnout and not losing essential human involvement and decision-making.
“We’re always almost growing faster than we can handle,” Tim Mullen said of the change. He knew they needed more than just screening tools, or outreach; they needed a complete AI orchestration of their hiring flow.
This has seen them move from paper-and-spreadsheets to a system that’s wholly combined, from jobs portal through to ATS. And in the process, their CDAs have almost tripled what’s scheduled on their days without feeling overwhelmed or increased burden.
With added volume, and speed, it can be very difficult to maintain the candidate experience, but Pete & Gabi’s Clancy Ryan stresses the importance of this area with AI.
With AI-powered interview automation, scoring, shortlists, and CRM/ATS updates, combined with SMS, call, and e-mail outreach, he’s seen time to hire get slashed by 40%. They’ve had companies cut screening time by 68% and boost response rates by 42%.
But 94% of candidates will still accept or reject an opportunity, Ryan says, based on their whole application experience.
“So poor journeys will taint the brand and your company’s experience. Today we have chaos, with that flood of AI resumes.”
The goal of automation at Pete & Gabi is to create what he calls a silent engine, “turning that chaos into a signal.”
You can check the full webinar here.
Candidates on AI Hiring Automation
For candidates, AI in the hiring process can be both frustrating and unnerving, and it can also feed into the growing sense that the process is increasingly inhuman.
Ghost job postings are an ongoing problem also feeding this experience. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that job postings have unnumbered hirings by more than 2.2 million a month, since the start of 2024.
In August, openings totaled 7.2 million while hires were at 5.1. Consistently, portals are flooded with openings that fail to respond. These come from a number of sources, from scams to jobs never pulled down to companies scouting for jobs that may only open in the future.
To this end, getting any kind of real communication back—be it AI or human—is preferable to the black hole of submit and hear nothing.
In August, Time ran a piece on AI candidate screening, titled When Your Job Interviewer Isn’t Human, sharing stories from candidates who underwent AI interviews.
One thing all agree on: It shouldn’t be a surprise to get an AI interviewer. It should be transparent and clearly communicated.
One candidate interviewed in the piece was caught off guard by getting AI but said it “wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”
This AI asked questions, gave time for the candidate to ask her own, but also struggled with nuance, proving to be “cold, but efficient.”
And then the candidate never heard back.
Effective AI recruitment implementations, as discussed above, can and should resolve all of these issues.
They should:
- Provide far better candidate communication, from immediate confirmation of receipt to status updates to scheduling to confirmations to follow-up
- Be transparent about AI use from the beginning
- Use natural, conversational AI capable of reading tone, understanding candidate questions, and adjusting on the fly
Ultimately, they should keep the candidate informed while also helping companies stay ahead.
This was my own experience when I had an interview with an AI recruiter named Rebecca. She was surprisingly warm and friendly (though unreal, of course) and adjusted very effectively to my answers and follow-up questions. There were small gaps, or pauses, but in the end, it was unexpectedly natural and superior to filling in forms, waiting an extended time, or undergoing some of the awkward interviews I’ve been through with humans in the past.
On the technical side, Software Manager Robert King called that the process “fairly natural,” and that the AI’s “analysis of my response was quite good—I was impressed with that.” He praised the effective audio rendering and its ability to parse even what he called “his ramblings” to extract relevant meaning.
Java Engineer Khalid Alhomoud had a similar experience, noting some small pauses, but saying that it was “a good experience” and that it always knew what he was talking about. “The follow-up questions were spot-on. Because it knew what to ask next based on my previous response.”
PTP’s Ryleigh Hemingway reported similar feelings when she was screened by an AI interviewer before getting her role at the company.
While she had initial reservations about AI, she’d been through nine months of job searching full of black hole experiences. She’d also tired of waiting weeks for responses, estimating that 75% of her exchanges included never hearing back on next steps.
With the AI process, Hemingway ultimately found it “refreshing.” She was quickly won over by the AI’s ability to adapt, and even better, by the continued and speedy responses she got from the company.
Interviewed on a Wednesday, she was on-site the following Monday and hired the day after. Since then, she says, she’s become a believer.
And having now experienced the other side of things, she also understands the chaos and volume recruiters are facing, making it far too easy for candidates to just get dropped.
Conclusion: Creating an Effective AI Hiring Pilot Program
At PTP, we’ve seen AI hiring automation mean more efficiency and quality on all sides, from a concise “one-pager” to 80% faster shortlists to a 60% lower cost to hire.
Using a system that captures consent and, within 30 seconds, texts the applicant, it can also solve one of the critical hiring issues of today: a lack of effective and timely communication.
If your company is in need of solving any of the problems discussed here, start by looking at your own needs holistically. No solution is likely to be a one-stop answer to resolve all problems, but we have seen effective implementation of purpose-built AI solutions truly transform hiring from its current state.
At PTP, we began by looking at our own pain areas, and first deployed AI for outreach, to enable our recruiters to build better relationships with candidates. Our goal was to decrease the rush, and shift time back to core activities for our experienced recruiters, giving them back space to breathe.
If your business has similar needs, or wants help mapping AI solutions to your stack, talk to us.
You can email us at automation@ptechpartners.com, or check out the full documentation from the webinar here: https://www.ptechpartners.com/ai-first-implementation-handbook/.
References
91% of Employers Now Use AI to Hire—And Say It’s Making Hiring Faster and Smarter, Resume Now
Ghosting is on the rise. For Gen X job seekers, it can hit especially hard., Business Insider
Job seekers say they may not apply to companies that use generative AI in hiring, HR Dive
When Your Job Interviewer Isn’t Human, Time
‘Ghost job’ postings are adding another layer of uncertainty to the stalling jobs picture, CNBC
FAQs
Are candidates really okay with AI in hiring, or do they hate it?
Most candidates today across surveys indicate that they prefer human hands at every step of the process, even as the majority deploy AI themselves. (The same is true in the reverse.) That said, the greatest frustration for applicants today is a lack of communication and transparency in the entire hiring process, as well as the increasing volume of submissions for many openings. AI implementations that improve communication and retain human contact at key moments have shown the promise of attaining the best of both worlds.
Our own hiring process is chaotic—how would you recommend we start with finding a more effective AI solution?
We believe the answer is not in tools, but in process, and clear oversight of where your specific pain points are. At PTP, we recommend beginning with a single pilot role, for example, mapping the entire process and how it can be effectively improved, to end the chaos, reduce both time to hire and cost, improve communications, and allow recruiters to better use their time.
If you’re interested in such a pilot, you can email us: automation@ptechpartners.com.
How can we use AI without increasing bias and exposure to regulatory issues?
This begins with selecting a partner who can address both of these concerns with you, in detail, from the start. AI contact is regulated in varying ways, and at PTP we ensure and capture consent, and work to keep your process and system as transparent as possible and compliant with all regulations.
