AI is helping organisations move faster with their hiring processes, but it’s also making trust harder to establish.
This theme ran throughout our recent roundtable discussion, which brought together an esteemed group of senior people leaders to explore how organisations can build trust across the workforce lifecycle without compromising excellence.
We were privileged to partner with HireRight, a leading global provider of background screening, verification, and workforce solutions, and were joined by Lisa Lee and Richard Homer to share their screening experience with the attendees.
The conversation was candid and wide-ranging. Below are the three takeaways we believe will be most relevant for employers.
Keep pace with AI, but keep people at the centre
AI is evolving rapidly, and with it new tools, and new risks, are constantly emerging. The question being asked by employers and HR leaders is no longer whether to use AI; it’s how to keep pace with it and use it to better protect their organisations.
The group agreed that trust matters most where it is part of the brand itself. For healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and professional services organisations, getting this wrong is not just a hiring problem; it is a reputational one. Recruitment remains a “people business”, and that human element should lead everything else.
There was an interesting discussion around executive and specialist hiring remaining largely traditional, while high-volume recruitment has embraced AI much more readily. Despite AI often being used to help drive efficiencies in the hiring process, giving recruiters and talent acquisition teams time back in their day, several leaders felt its benefits are being diluted by scaremongering and bureaucracy.
There is also a growing “tech vs tech” battle. Many felt candidates are ahead of recruiters in their adoption of AI, and sometimes in their manipulation of it.
A few points stood out:
- We must apply AI to today’s problem, not yesterday’s. The hiring process has changed, so simply automating the old process misses the point.
- Be clear on the why. If an organisation is aiming for a specific level of AI usage, it should be able to explain what that target is for.
- Use AI to personalise, not just process. As hiring journeys become more bespoke, technology can help create a better, more tailored candidate experience.
Don’t let volume outpace judgement
Applying for jobs has arguably never been easier, creating a growing challenge for employers trying to separate genuine candidates from those utilising increasingly sophisticated fraud techniques. When one role attracts thousands of interested people, candidates will do everything they can to be seen: optimising CVs with AI, exaggerating achievements, and, in some cases, more sophisticated forms of deception. Organisations need to respond in such a way that volume doesn’t undermine their ability to separate strong candidates from genuine threats.
The challenge becomes even greater when hiring for remote, location-agnostic roles. When you can hire from anywhere, filtering with confidence becomes harder, and separating “lazy apply” submissions from genuinely interested applicants quickly is a real operational problem.
The group’s view was that the answer starts with getting the basics right:
- Be wary of false efficiencies. Cutting screening interviews in the name of speed often just moves the problem further down the process.
- Bring back early human contact. Several leaders asked whether face-to-face interviews should be mandatory at early stages. Candidates are increasingly asking for it too; one participant said 95% of their first-round interviews now take place in the office.
- Keep a human eye on CVs. Some questioned whether there should be an expectation to review every CV in person rather than relying solely on technology.
- Consider ID verification at the point of application. Supermarkets, retailers, and even applications on our devices already hold our data, so why not a prospective employer? A strong candidate is unlikely to take issue with it, and the group felt candidates would share more data willingly if it meant a shorter, more transparent process.
Verification matters because, in an age of technological and AI acceleration, credential and identity fraud have become easier.
Today, more candidates have access to inexpensive and powerful tools that can be used to generate convincing university certificates, manipulate employment records or provide real-time coaching during a remote interview.
One attendee shared an example of a candidate claiming to have worked at Meta and providing a payslip as evidence. However, during the period in question, the company was still called Facebook. It was a simple detail, but a powerful reminder of how easy it has become to fabricate convincing evidence and how important verification remains.
Ongoing trust requires more than one-off checks
Passing pre-employment checks and receiving an offer doesn’t mean someone should be trusted indefinitely. The group agreed that organisations should consider how they maintain confidence in workforce trust throughout their employees’ tenure, rather than treating screening as a one-off activity. The risks posed by employees are often underestimated and can be more complex than many organisations realise.
However, the risk gap is often widest beyond the permanent workforce. Contractors are rarely performance managed on an ongoing basis, and screening consistency across contractors, consultants, and suppliers was identified as a clear blind spot.
The discussion raised several practical questions for people leaders:
- Are you acting on what screening finds? Pre-employment screening succeeds when it flags something, but it is then up to the organisation to decide how or whether it acts.
- How verified are your references? Reference screening loses much of its value when the documents collected aren’t independently checked.
- Should screening be recurring/continuous? Could employees be rescreened regularly, for example annually?
- Do you know what other work your people are doing? Moonlighting checks, which can be used to identify if an individual holds multiple employments at the same time, came up as a growing consideration.
The overarching message was the need to stay at the forefront of a changing landscape, including greater awareness of emerging risks and where they may originate.
Building trust without slowing down hiring
Workforce trust should not be determined solely by pre-hire background checks. As technology continues to evolve, organisations need approaches that can help them move quickly, maintain confidence in their decisions, and manage risk across their entire workforce lifecycle, from hire through to retire.
For additional insight into current screening, hiring and workforce risk trends, including findings from organisations around the world, download HireRight’s latest Global Benchmark Report.
