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The Real Bottleneck -
We keep adding AI to recruiting with the assumption that faster recruiting activity will produce faster hiring.
I'm increasingly convinced those are two different problems.
AI has dramatically improved how quickly I source, review applications, research, schedule, and communicate with everyone I engage with every day - full stop.
But many of the hiring problems I see happen somewhere else:
The role wasn't calibrated properly.
The team never clearly defined what “good” looks like.
Interviewers are measuring different things.
Feedback takes days or weeks (sound familiar?)
Every stakeholder gets another interview because nobody is confident enough to make the decision.
Automating that system doesn't solve the underlying problem. In some cases, it just gets candidates into the bottleneck faster.
The recruiting teams that get the most value from AI won't simply be the ones with the most tools.
They'll be the ones with the clearest hiring systems.
That's why I know recruiting operations, role calibration and candidate evaluation become more important as AI gets better, not less.
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When a customer calls to book an appointment, the rep needs an answer immediately. Checking calendars, cross referencing routes, and manually figuring out which technician is available while someone is on the line creates delays and errors.
We designed a booking flow where the rep picks a date and the system filters to that day immediately, showing the AI recommendation for the best technician available. The rep does not have to leave the platform or put the customer on hold. The answer is already there. They confirm and move on.
The AI factors in the technician's schedule, working hours, and how much travel time the appointment adds to their route before surfacing a recommendation.
Giving the code editor a much-needed AI upgrade. 🔥
This is such an amazing design! Wow!
At CRITER.AI, we’re building AI that helps migrants avoid expensive legal mistakes and visa bans by auditing Australian visa applications against immigration law. We’ve been getting a healthy amount of investor interest, but there was one recurring piece of feedback: our pitch deck was lackluster.
Fair enough. As a lawyer, my creativity usually goes into finding the legal issue everyone else missed, not deciding which shade of blue says “invest now.”
So we set out to change that. We chose Contra over its competitors because the caliber of people looked considerably stronger.
When I posted our request for a pitch-deck redesign, I expected a few people to reach out with quotes. As of today, we have had 303 applicants.
For a bootstrapped business, working through that volume was simply impossible. So we created a challenge:
“Here is my pitch deck. Pick the slide you think needs the most work, and show me what you can do.”
What followed was fascinating.
101 applicants (around 1/3) never replied. Of those who did, around 10% simply reiterated what they had already said. One person replied that, with 250 applicants, they were not going to bother trying. lol.
Several asked whether the test would be paid. 12 sent a quote for the work to be paid first, after which I could decide whether to go further.
Less than 25% of the applications were obviously AI-generated. We are by no means AI-phobic, but the Claude watermark was perhaps a little too much. You know who you are dude!
2 people had trouble opening the Google file we sent. I’m still not entirely sure why.
7 people were so impressed by the work they did that they watermarked it, labelled it “draft,” or otherwise made it impossible to download for further review.
12 people reached out through LinkedIn rather than the app; a further 18 emailed; and 1 person even called me.
18 people not only sent an example slide; they also signed up for our free immigration-advice beta test.
From 303 applicants, we narrowed the field to 15 people who were simply too good to ignore.
Every one of those candidates took the time to understand what we were trying to do, what CRITER.AI is about, and spoke to us as people rather than as another job listing. Two spotted mistakes in the pitch deck that we would not have noticed without them. Another created a 3-minute Loom presentation explaining the changes they made and why they mattered. Most went beyond the requested single slide. One applicant redesigned the entire pitch deck and sent it watermark-free.
It was a difficult decision, but the person we chose had just that little bit more talent than an exceptionally strong group. They not only showed that they understood what we wanted and impressed us with the slide they redesigned; they also suggested another slide we had never considered relevant, then created it using information we had not even provided.
They took our AI immigration-law business and made our pitch deck speak to investors on a human level.
Can't wait to come back to resign our website, social media and other design work.
Lovely and impressive!