‘Skills are now the currency of hiring’: LinkedIn launches AI-powered recruiting agent

Against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving recruitment landscape, LinkedIn has unveiled Hiring Assistant to help hiring managers and recruiters go beyond old-school jobs boards and traditional modes of talent attraction.

LinkedIn has launched Hiring Assistant, its first AI-powered recruiting agent in Australia, which automates repetitive tasks like sourcing, screening, and outreach, so that recruiters can focus on strategic hiring and building human connections.

The agent has helped early adopters save more than four hours per role, LinkedIn noted, and has also reduced profile reviews by 62 per cent and improved candidate engagement with a 69 per cent higher InMail acceptance rate.

The launch comes at a time when Australian businesses across the board are undergoing major transformations in the hiring process. Research from LinkedIn shows that nine in 10 HR professionals Down Under plan to organise teams based on skills needed for specific projects rather than traditional job titles, as the rise of AI accelerates a shift towards project-based work and real-time skills visibility.

Furthermore, LinkedIn detailed, 89 per cent of Australian HR professionals say that internal talent marketplaces are becoming essential for project-based staffing, and 92 per cent agree AI is accelerating the integration of HR and technology.

“LinkedIn data shows skills needed for jobs in Australia are projected to change by 66 per cent by 2030, compared to 2016,” it said.

A skills-first approach, LinkedIn said, widens access to talent, noting its data shows it can expand candidate pools by 7.7 times in Australia, helping organisations find the right people faster. More than one in two (56 per cent) Australian HR professionals say AI will encourage employers to focus more on skills than traditional credentials like degrees.

Elsewhere, recruiters are under pressure “as application volumes rise and AI-generated CVs become more common”, LinkedIn continued, noting its research shows that 17 per cent of HR professionals spend between three and five hours a day reviewing applications, and 94 per cent say most applications don’t meet listed criteria.

Hiring Assistant, LinkedIn said, “helps recruiters cut through the noise and hire for skills and potential, not just resumes”.

Aurecon talent acquisition lead in NSW and ACT, Shaun Du Preez, said that Hiring Assistant is time-saving, and that he’s seen an approximate 30 per cent reduction in the time spent on sourcing.

“It’s allowed me to drive more strategic conversations with hiring managers rather than repetitive search tasks,” he said.

“The quality of candidates Hiring Assistant is surfacing is a game changer – we’re finding candidates that had previously gone unnoticed, even in niche markets.”

Moving past the ‘post and pray’ model

Speaking about the launch of Hiring Assistant, LinkedIn talent and learning solutions senior director in ANZ, Adam Gregory (pictured), said that “recruitment in Australia is at a crossroads”.

“The old ‘post and pray’ job board model hasn’t changed much since the ’90s, but the world of work has,” he said.

“Skills are now the currency of hiring, and recruiters need modern tools to keep up. Hiring Assistant helps talent teams move beyond outdated methods and embrace a skills-first approach powered by AI.”

Last week, HR Leader attended a Recruit-a-thon event at LinkedIn’s Sydney offices: a hands-on, invite-only networking session at which recruiters and talent acquisition professionals were given practical product guidance on using LinkedIn’s recruiter products, as well as live demos of Hiring Assistant.

In conversation with HR Leader following that event, Gregory reflected on the fact that technology is changing faster than ever before, and while this is not a new thing, “the rate of acceleration is relatively new”.

Hiring Assistant is the next evolution of ongoing technological shifts and is an essential offering “in an even more competitive world and [an] even faster changing landscape”.

“People need to be able to react to that, and be proactive, and that’s what our products do,” he said.

Every vocational pathway, regardless of the function, can be broken down into several tasks, Gregory said, and talent acquisition is no different.

“Some of those tasks are absolutely must-do, but they’re low-impact, and they’re very repeatable tasks. Some are much more high-impact, which adds a great deal more value. In a talent acquisition role, the very time-consuming, administratively heavy, very repeatable tasks take up a huge amount of time, and that takes away from doing the high-impact stuff, [such as] engaging with hiring managers to understand the future of the business and where they’re going, and of course, engaging with talent pools to understand better the fit culturally and the aspirations of the individual. What Hiring Assistant does is it frees up the individual to do the high-impact stuff, and not tie them down doing the low-impact stuff,” he said.

In light of the aforementioned finding that two in three skills for listed jobs will shift in the next five years, Gregory was asked what he sees as being the headline opportunities for hiring managers ahead of 2030, and how best technology can assist.

Workforce planning, he responded, “has never been more important”, and hiring managers and HR professionals are going to be fundamental in helping realise business objectives.

There is an “elevated requirement” for executives to think differently about workforce planning, he said, and while change has always been a constant, professionals need to be cognisant about the rate of change and how best to ride that wave.

The role of HR professionals, such as CHROs, HRDs, heads of talent, and heads of L&D in driving change across businesses “is far greater than ever before”, Gregory concluded, adding that tools like Hiring Assistant are critical in meeting these responsibilities.

“It’s not about AI replacing humans; it’s about humans using AI, replacing those that don’t. And what we’re seeing is a lot of C-suite executives are looking at HR, talent acquisition, and L&D to lead the way in adopting that change in their organisation,” he said.

“For me, that’s really, really exciting, because our customers are almost expected to be at the forefront of this, and we can certainly help them do that.”

To learn more about LinkedIn’s hiring assistant, click here.