What Happened to Having a Coffee?

We’ve reached a curious point in recruitment. Candidates use AI to write their applications. Employers use AI to decide which applications deserve attention. Increasingly, the first assessment of whether someone might be right for a job takes place between two machines. And neither of them has met the person.

Recent research suggests this arrangement has another problem. In controlled experiments involving more than 2,200 CV summaries, researchers found that AI models tended to favour applications generated by the same model. In simulated hiring processes, candidates using the same model as the evaluator were between 23 and 60 per cent more likely to be shortlisted than equally qualified candidates using human-written material.

The research doesn’t tell us how widespread this behaviour is in real recruitment. But it raises an uncomfortable question. Have we become so focused on evaluating applications that we’re losing opportunities to discover interesting people?

The People You Weren’t Looking For

Think about the last time you met somebody interesting at an event.

Perhaps you started talking over a coffee, discovered a shared interest or found yourself discussing a problem you were both trying to solve. You asked a few questions, exchanged experiences and realised that this person knew something, or could do something, that might be useful.

You probably didn’t begin by asking about their qualifications or how many years they’d worked in a particular industry. You became interested because of what emerged during the conversation.

Perhaps you exchanged contact details and arranged to meet again. Sometimes those chance encounters lead to new customers, partnerships, collaborations or even careers.

There’s something valuable about that kind of discovery. You meet somebody without a predetermined view of what they might offer, and curiosity creates an opportunity that neither of you had anticipated.

Now consider how differently recruitment often works.

Before an employer has spoken to a candidate, they’ve usually decided what the person should look like on paper. A particular job title, a certain number of years’ experience, perhaps a familiar industry or qualification. Applications are then assessed against those expectations, and people who don’t fit are gradually removed.

Some of those requirements will be essential. Others may be assumptions inherited from the last time the role was filled.

The danger is that someone worth getting to know never gets the opportunity to become interesting.

Are We Using Technology to Eliminate or Discover?

Employers have good reasons to use technology. Popular vacancies can attract hundreds of applications, and nobody has unlimited time to review them. AI can help organise information, identify relevant experience and bring consistency to parts of the process. But the purpose we give that technology matters.

If the objective is simply to reduce hundreds of applications to a manageable shortlist, the system will inevitably focus on deciding who doesn’t qualify. That may be efficient, but it can also reinforce whatever assumptions were built into the original requirements.

What if we asked a different question? Could technology help us discover people we might otherwise have overlooked?

Someone whose experience comes from another industry but whose capabilities are highly relevant. Someone who developed useful skills through an unconventional career. Someone whose previous job title doesn’t reflect what they’re actually capable of doing.

Instead of treating every departure from the expected profile as a reason to reject someone, technology could help employers recognise evidence worth exploring. That’s where the conversation becomes important.

A thoughtful discussion can reveal how someone approaches problems, what they’ve learned, what interests them and where they want to go next. It also gives the candidate an opportunity to understand the employer, the work and whether the opportunity is right for them.

Of course, a conversation over coffee isn’t a substitute for fair assessment. Informal discussions can introduce their own biases, and being interesting or personable doesn’t necessarily mean someone can do the job. Employers still need clear criteria, relevant evidence and consistent ways of assessing capability. But discovery and assessment serve different purposes. One helps us recognise possibilities. The other helps us make informed decisions about them. We need both.

Perhaps We Should Start More Conversations

There’s a certain irony in using increasingly sophisticated technology to prevent people from meeting one another.

AI has enormous potential to improve recruitment. It can help employers understand capabilities beyond job titles, recognise transferable experience and identify connections that conventional screening might miss. But its greatest contribution might be helping us discover who is worth talking to, rather than simply making it easier to decide who isn’t.

Think again about that interesting person you met at an event. You didn’t know in advance that they might have something valuable to offer. The opportunity emerged because you had a conversation.

Recruitment cannot depend on chance encounters, and employers cannot have coffee with every applicant. But we can design processes that create more opportunities for relevant people to discover one another.

We’ve spent years making recruitment more efficient at saying no. Perhaps it’s time we made it better at discovering reasons to say hello.

Who might you be missing out on having a coffee with?