The Next Big Thing? 15 Experts Weigh In On Agentic AI In Talent Acquisition

For years, recruitment tech has relied on manual, structured processes when it comes to job boards, ATS systems, screening tools, and more. Automation and AI made hiring more efficient, but they followed rules. They sorted resumes, flagged matches, and streamlined workflows but never truly owned decisions.

Agentic AI in recruitment changes that. Instead of waiting for inputs, it scans data signals, adjusts talent acquisition strategies in real-time, and proactively drives recruiting processes while working alongside recruiters. With agentic AI, recruiting is now predictive, dynamic, and self-optimizing.

That’s why companies are investing. Big time. 

The worth of agentic AI in recruitment is projected to hit $23.17 billion by 2034, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 39.3%. With talent acquisition becoming increasingly competitive, the stakes couldn’t be higher – hesitation costs talent, overconfidence costs money, and precision is everything.

So, how will this reshape recruiting? We asked 15 industry experts to break it down. Here’s what they foresee and how you can stay ahead.

AI will take over admin work so recruiters can focus on strategy

AI will continue to transform talent acquisition over the next year by streamlining hiring processes, enhancing candidate engagement, and reducing bias. AI will get better at proactively sourcing talent, personalizing outreach, and conducting initial screenings with minimal human intervention. 

By analyzing bigger datasets, AI will identify top candidates faster and predict cultural fit more accurately. Recruiters will shift from administrative tasks to strategic decision-making, using AI-driven insights to improve hiring outcomes. However, companies must ensure ethical AI use, maintaining transparency and fairness to build trust with candidates and hiring teams alike.

Bill Banham, Editor, HR Gazette; Host, HRchat Podcast; Co-Founder, InnovateWork & DisruptHR London

AI will predict hiring needs before candidates even start looking

Sourcing talent will become even more proactive and predictive. By analyzing market trends, growth projections, and macroeconomics, companies will start anticipating staffing needs months in advance, positioning employers to snap up top talent the moment they’re available – or even before they actively look.

Joel Cheesman, Co-host, The Chad and Cheese Podcast

Fix hiring processes first — AI alone won’t save you

In recruiting, agentic AI isn’t the revolution vendors promise – it’s just another expensive band-aid. I’ve seen enough “game-changers” to know this one follows the same pattern: faster delivery of wrong candidates, better scheduling of unprepared interviews, and automated rejections no one reads. The real problem isn’t our technology. It’s our broken hiring processes.

Fix those first, then talk to me about your AI agents.

Matt Charney, Editor in Chief, Recruiter.com; CMO, Employer.com

Agentic AI is Moving Recruitment from Automation to Independent Decision-Making

While talent acquisition has embraced digitalization through technologies like automation, AI/ML, Generative AI, and advanced analytics, the rise of agentic AI in the next 12 to 18 months will push recruitment beyond efficiency to true decision-making autonomy. Tasks like candidate sourcing, screening, and assessments will be fully automated by agentic AI, allowing role-based agents to make independent, data-driven decisions at scale. This transformation will impact all stakeholders—candidates, recruiters, hiring managers, business leaders, HR teams, and third-party providers—empowering organizations to identify, engage, and hire the right talent faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Krishna Sai Charan, Vice President, Everest Group

Rushing AI into hiring will backfire. Small wins will matter.

Agentic AI is going to be the buzzword of 2025, but fear not, Talent Attraction, it won’t be coming for your job anytime soon. Agents can be very powerful and useful, but their implementation has to be slow – anyone trying to replace a human being with an agent is going to deal with catastrophic failure, while those companies that slowly but surely stack up small wins are going to waltz into 2026 like superheroes in a Marvel movie made before 2020.

Jim Durbin, Founder, Respondable

Recruiters who resist AI won’t last long

The biggest change that I see agentic AI bringing to talent acquisition over the coming year is the ability to scale up a team’s impact, productivity, and reach with minimal impact to headcount. Our research shows that companies who have used AI longer are seeing more benefits, and those companies will be the first to experiment, explore, and embrace agentic AI solutions. Bottom line: Anyone working in talent acquisition who is passive and unwilling to strive for excellence will not have long before they are replaced.

Ben Eubanks, HR Tech Analyst, Bestselling Author, and Speaker

Hiring is about to get smarter, faster, and more personal

Agentic AI is set to revolutionize talent acquisition in the next 12 months by making hiring more dynamic, efficient, and personalized. We’re moving beyond basic automation to AI that actively adapts, learns, and executes recruiting tasks with minimal human intervention. This means recruiters can shift focus from administrative burdens to strategic, high-value work – like building relationships and enhancing candidate experiences. 

At the same time, talent acquisition is increasingly being asked to play a role in talent management as internal mobility gains importance. AI-driven insights will help organizations identify and develop existing talent, ensuring the right people are in the right roles at the right time.

Craig Fisher, CMO, Cnect; Founder, TalentNet Media; Author, Hiring Humans

Agentic AI will redefine hiring if it can scale ethically and effectively

Agentic AI stands to fundamentally reshape the recruitment landscape, leapfrogging the capabilities of generative AI tools by seamlessly automating context-intensive tasks. Its real competitive edge lies in making real-time decisions within hiring workflows and bringing transformative efficiency without sacrificing critical human oversight. While early applications show immense promise, the true test will be integrating these agentic systems at enterprise scale and ensuring robust data governance and ethical compliance. The potential is undeniable: as this technology evolves, it will redefine how organizations source, evaluate, and hire talent, setting new standards for speed, accuracy, and strategic impact.

Sailesh Hota, Practice Director, Everest Group

AI will handle the busywork so recruiters can focus on people

I think agentic AI will allow recruiters to focus on the human side of the job by freeing up recruiters from repetitive tasks like scheduling, interview notes, parts of sourcing, and even screening calls in certain cases.

This will allow recruiters to focus on making data-driven decisions within their recruitment strategy, and it will increase candidate experience by allowing recruiters to provide a white glove service and helping provide more efficient care.

Joel Lalgee, Founder, The Realest Recruiter; Content Creator, Podcast Host

AI can fix hiring ghosting by improving candidate communication

Agentic AI will impact talent acquisition this year by (finally) overhauling candidate communication. There’s a plague of ghosting in recruiting. AI agents can provide real-time application status updates, answer candidate questions 24/7, and deliver timely feedback. 

The most successful implementations will engage AI to handle routine communications while human recruiters focus on the most meaningful candidate interactions. This hybrid approach would significantly improve candidate experience while maintaining the human connection that’s critical to building a team of people who care and will stay at your company long term.

Katrina Kibben, Founder, Three Ears Media; Keynote Speaker & Recruiting Expert 

Agentic AI will boost recruiters, not replace them

Over the next 12 months, agentic AI will fundamentally reshape talent acquisition, not by replacing recruiters but by amplifying their impact. AI-driven automation will streamline sourcing, screening, and initial outreach, allowing recruiters to focus on what truly matters: building relationships and assessing human potential. 

The best TA teams will leverage AI as a force multiplier, using predictive analytics to identify top talent faster and crafting hyper-personalized candidate experiences at scale. But make no mistake: Hiring is still about people. The recruiters who blend AI efficiency with human intuition will win the talent war.

Adam Posner, Founder & President, NHP Talent Group; Co–Founder, Probably Nothing Talent; Host, The POZcast

Agentic AI will bring recruiting back to its roots

Agentic AI has the potential to revolutionize recruiting like no other technology we’ve seen. For the first time, we go from fighting fires to truly being able to go out and acquire the best talent available. No more busy work. Truly going back to the roots of recruiting, making people feel wanted and desired by your organization and measurably increasing the talent. Agentic AI can deliver the capacity we need to be true talent curators. Conversely, if you love the tactical work of recruiting, you’re now a dinosaur.

Tim Sackett, President, HRU Technical Resources; Author, The Talent Fix

AI is shifting hiring from passive filtering to active talent discovery

AI is transforming talent acquisition by automating tasks, making intelligent decisions, and adapting to dynamic needs. In the next 12 months, it will shift from passive filtering to proactive sourcing — identifying, engaging, and even qualifying top talent autonomously. This evolution will accelerate hiring cycles, reduce bias, and enable recruiters to focus on building authentic human connections.

Ryan Stene, Vice President, Wells Fargo; Strategic Recruitment Operations 

AI is about to disrupt recruiting. Are you ready?

Agentic AI is about to ‘Horse in a Hospital’* talent acquisition—killing inefficiency, slashing time-to-hire, and making recruiters who resist obsolete as fax machines. Baud rate? WTF. 

We’re not talking about glorified chatbots; we’re talking about AI that thinks, acts, and executes. It’ll source talent before you know you need it, personalize outreach better than your top recruiter, and analyze every damn interaction for what works. 

Bias? AI is not perfect, but neither are humans, and at least AI can be trained at scale. Compliance? If you’re not building guardrails, you’re already behind. The recruiters who embrace this shift will become superpowered, closing roles in half the time. The ones who fight it? Dinosaurs – and we all know what happened to them. Cigarettes. 12 months from now? The best recruiters will be AI-augmented; the worst will be unemployed. Red pill or blue pill, you choose.

*John Mulaney reference.

William Tincup, Co-founder, WRKdefined; Venture Partner, Evergreen Mountain Equity Partners

Hiring decisions happen in real time. Agentic AI is making these moments sharper, faster, and more precise.

The experts we spoke to largely agree: Agentic AI in recruitment is no longer a future trend. It’s happening now. Companies that explore, test, and integrate these technologies today will be the ones leading tomorrow. Those who hesitate risk falling behind.

Now is the time to understand how agentic AI fits into your hiring strategy. And if you’re in the market for AI solutions that drive real results, drop us a line. We’re here to help.

FAQs

What is agentic AI for recruitment?

When it comes to recruitment, agentic AI operates autonomously, making decisions in real time. Unlike traditional AI, which waits for commands, agentic AI identifies hiring needs, evaluates candidates, and initiates actions without constant human input. It analyzes workforce trends, predicts talent gaps, and refines hiring strategies dynamically.

For recruiters, this means AI that proactively sources candidates, personalizes outreach, and adjusts hiring processes on the fly without manual intervention. More like a recruitment engine that learns, adapts, and optimizes hiring at scale.

How will agentic AI change our workplace?

• Autonomous talent acquisition: Traditional AI setups suggest candidates, but agentic AI will initiate hiring workflows, schedule interviews, and trigger offers based on predefined success metrics.
• Adaptive workforce planning: Instead of static headcount planning, agentic AI can predict hiring needs, adjust recruitment strategies dynamically, and align talent acquisition with business goals in real-time.
• Hyper-personalized candidate journeys: It will adjust hiring touchpoints per candidate, tailoring job recommendations, outreach, and assessments based on real-time behavioral insights.
• Continuous learning and optimization: Agentic AI will learn from every hire, refining sourcing, screening, and engagement strategies without human intervention.