Hiring efficiency: How AI recruiting tools save time and improve performance

AI is changing almost every aspect of our working lives. And with change comes apprehension. There’s a ton of fear about the impact that AI is going to have on how we work. And that’s really pronounced within recruitment, as well.

But we believe that AI is going to be very good for recruitment and for recruiters. For a very simple reason: recruiting is one of, if not the most, human-centric parts of any company. So while new tools can optimize and accelerate core processes, we will always need people at the heart of them.

“Recruitment” isn’t about the tasks you perform; it’s about the outcome—getting great people into your company quickly. This outcome will always be relevant. It will always be an organization’s priority to make sure they’re bringing on the top candidates for their positions. And there’s no way to hire the right humans without a human touch.

But you also need the right technology. AI is already making recruiters’ lives easier, and their work more impactful.

We surveyed 380 TA pros from around the world and asked them how they’re using AI within their roles and what the results have been. Discover what they had to say and what this looks like for the future of the industry. 

Spoiler alert: AI-powered teams are more productive and a lot more efficient. 

Key takeaways:

• AI-powered recruiting teams are more productive, saving time on admin-heavy tasks like note-taking and scheduling.
• 89% of recruiters using AI says AI helps them save time, while 74% believe AI positively impacts job security.
• AI enables recruiters to focus on human-centric work, improving the quality of conversations, candidate experience, and decision-making.

What is hiring efficiency?

Hiring efficiency is the ability to move quality candidates through your recruiting funnel as quickly, fairly, and cost-effectively as possible. It’s about minimizing friction—both for recruiters and candidates—while ensuring the quality of hire remains high.

When hiring efficiency is strong, teams experience:

• Shorter time-to-hire
• Lower cost-per-hire
• Less recruiter burnout
• More consistent candidate experience
• Higher-quality hires at scale

AI recruiting tools are becoming essential to achieving these outcomes.

The hidden costs of human-powered admin

Recruiters’ time has always been spent on laborious tasks like sourcing candidate profiles, scheduling interviews, summarizing applicants’ experience, and filling out feedback forms. These repetitive administrative tasks are incredibly time-consuming and take away from the real value that recruiters can provide: building relationships.

Manual tasks add inefficiency to the recruitment process. When recruiters are too focused on taking notes during screening calls, for example, they lose out on the chance to really uncover signal from the candidate during the conversation. 

Then recruiters are wasting hours per week writing post-call reports. You could be using that time to work on high-leverage, human-centric tasks like building relationships with candidates or advising hiring managers.

The only way for recruiters to get their time back is by delegating some of those manual, lower-level tasks. And now, they can delegate them to AI.

How AI tools make hiring more efficient

The full benefits of AI are still being discovered, but we’re already seeing it’s having a massive impact on recruiters’ efficiency. Our survey respondents stated the main benefit they get from AI is saving time (89%). 

Other AI recruiting software benefits that survey respondents mentioned include:

• Ability to make more data-driven decisions (32%)
• Improved candidate experience (28%)
• More visibility into what’s actually going on in the hiring process (23%)
• Reduced time-to-hire (17%)
• Reduced cost-to-hire (6%)

Because of the time they save, AI helps recruiters accomplish more. In fact, 42% of AI-enabled recruiters say they would lose "massive" amounts of productivity if they could no longer use AI in their hiring process. 

Hannah Wardle of Quora says, “we’re getting feedback within 10 to 20 minutes from interviews now, which is just ideal for a recruiting team that works with time-to-hire targets.”

Perhaps most importantly, AI helps recruiters have more meaningful conversations by streamlining the note-taking and analyzing process while they screen candidates. Jen Brown, Director of Recruiting at Omada Search, says that tools like Metaview make her better at her job: “I am better at catching small nuances in conversation and going back to dig deeper without losing my train of thought while typing.”

How AI boosts hiring efficiency

Many recruiters are using AI assistants to organize unstructured conversational data captured during the hiring process. We analyzed aggregated, anonymized Metaview product data to understand how recruiters are leveraging their AI Assistants. 

Here are the most common things we found recruiters are asking AI for help with:

• 26% = summarizing candidates’ experience and responsibilities
• 11% = understanding candidates’ specific skills, qualifications, and technical expertise
• 9% = recalling what candidates mentioned about compensation and benefits
• 8% = understanding candidates’ motivation for wanting the role
• 6% = questions related to scheduling, availability, and logistics

Because Metaview understands recruiting nuances, it summarizes conversations better than a generic AI note-taker would. It’s designed to extract the data you need to make more-informed hiring recommendations, and to automate manual workflows.

And because you don’t have to take notes yourself, you can have better conversations—ones really based on human interaction and not checking boxes.

Metaview also integrates seamlessly with all of the tools already in your recruiting tech stack, whether it’s your ATS, video conferencing tools, or scheduling platforms. Kaitlin St. Auban, Senior Technical Recruiter at OpenPhone says, “Metaview is a game-changer for recruiters and panel members! It integrates with ATSs and has improved our scorecards tremendously.” 

Information is nothing without action, and Metaview helps hiring teams pull out the insights they need to make more informed decisions based on the facts.

The future of recruiting is powered by AI

Right now, we’re in the “early majority” stages of AI adoption in recruiting. We’ve moved beyond the “innovators” and “early adopters” and are now discovering deeper impacts of AI-driven recruiting. 

When you’re thinking about your AI recruitment strategy, focus on three steps:

1. Individual performance: Break down workflows within your organization and team and understand where you can leverage AI to improve functionality and productivity.
2. Detection: Now that you have AI embedded in your recruiting workflow, what are the issues, trends, and insights you can pick up now thanks to previously unknowable data?
3. Decision-making: Think about how AI can impact and improve your recruiting decisions.

The general idea of robots “coming for your job” is scary — but we found that most recruiters aren’t actually afraid of AI technology. In fact, 74% of recruiters and recruiting leaders believe that AI has had or will have a positive impact on their job security. 

Moreover, 93% of recruiters and recruiting leaders believe that AI skills are necessary to their roles. The future of recruiting is certainly powered by AI. 

Instead of just digesting candidate responses and feeding that back to the hiring team, recruiters can focus on judging a candidate's suitability for the role and selling the company to the candidate. Recruiters are able to evolve their role into one of expertise and provide a deeper understanding of the process to both potential candidates and hiring teams. 

They can do the human-centric part of their job best.

AI-enable your recruiting process

AI is only going to become a larger part of the recruitment process. And that’s no bad thing. With tools like Metaview in your workflows, AI is going to do what it’s supposed to: help with repetitive and tedious tasks. This leaves the creativity, innovation, and expertise up to the humans.  

Now’s the perfect time to start experimenting. Set aside dedicated time to play around with AI tools and start building up your intuition.

To learn more about how, read our full data report on the impact of AI in recruitment. And when you’re ready to supercharge your own recruitment process with AI, try Metaview for free.

The impact of AI on recruitment

The full benefits of AI are still being discovered, but we’re already seeing it’s having a massive impact on recruiters’ efficiency. Our survey respondents stated the main benefit they get from AI is saving time (89%). Other AI recruiting software benefits that survey respondents mentioned include:

• Ability to make more data-driven decisions (32%)
• Improved candidate experience (28%)
• More visibility into what’s actually going on in the hiring process (23%)
• Reduced time-to-hire (17%)
• Reduced cost-to-hire (6%)

Because of the time they save, AI helps recruiters accomplish more. In fact, 42% of AI-enabled recruiters say they would lose "massive" amounts of productivity if they could no longer use AI in their hiring process. Hannah Wardle, Global Head of Recruiting at Quora says of using Metaview, “We’re getting feedback within 10 to 20 minutes from interviews now, which is just ideal for a recruiting team that works with time-to-hire targets.”

Perhaps most importantly, AI helps recruiters have more meaningful conversations by streamlining the note-taking and analyzing process while they screen candidates. Jen Brown, Director of Recruiting at Omada Search, says that tools like Metaview make her better at her job: “I am better at catching small nuances in conversation and going back to dig deeper without losing my train of thought while typing.”

But conversations go two ways — and AI also improves the candidate experience. High-quality conversations allow top talent to shine and weed out passive candidates. Conversations are also, as Siadhal says, “maybe the only differentiator there will be in how you recruit the best talent.”

The future of recruiting is powered by AI

Right now, we’re in the “early majority” stages of AI adoption in recruiting. We’ve moved beyond the “innovators” and “early adopters” and are now discovering deeper impacts of AI-driven recruiting. When you’re beginning to think about your AI recruitment strategy, our CEO Siadhal says you should focus on three steps:

1. Individual performance: Break down workflows within your organization and team and understand where you can leverage AI to improve functionality and productivity.
2. Detection: Now that you have AI embedded in your recruiting workflow, what are some issues, trends, and insights you can start to pick up now that you have access to previously unknowable data?
3. Decision-making: Think about how AI can impact and improve your recruiting decisions.

The general idea of robots “coming for your job” is scary — but we found that most recruiters aren’t actually afraid of AI technology. In fact, 74% of recruiters and recruiting leaders believe that AI has had or will have a positive impact on their job security. And that’s because AI recruiting tools now allow TA teams to move out of the “commentator” role and into a “pundit” role.

Instead of just digesting a candidate's answers to questions and feeding that back to the hiring team, recruiters can focus on judging a candidate's suitability for the role and selling the company to the candidate. Recruiters are able to evolve their role into one of expertise and provide a deeper understanding of the process to both potential candidates and hiring teams. They can do the human-centric part of their job best.

The future of recruiting is certainly powered by AI — 93% of recruiters and recruiting leaders believe that AI skills are necessary to their roles. Ninety-three is a huge percentage. But Siadhal can do you one (or seven) better. He says, “I’m 100% convinced that AI is going to be a really massive opportunity for helping recruiting as a profession up-level and for helping the best recruiters do the best work of their lives.” 

Streamline your process and hone your expertise by AI-enabling your recruiting process

AI is only going to become a larger part of the recruitment process, but that’s not a bad thing. With tools like Metaview in place within your workflows, AI is going to do what it’s supposed to — help with repetitive and tedious tasks. This can leave the creativity, innovation, and expertise up to the humans.  

When you’re looking to get buy-in for AI within your organization, Siadhal suggests you “build up some budget” for it. This doesn’t mean a financial budget but a time budget. Work with your team to set aside dedicated time to play around with AI tools and start building up your intuition.

To learn more about how, read our full data report on the impact of AI in recruitment And when you’re ready to supercharge your own recruitment process with AI, try Metaview for free.