Why one consulting firm is taking a more analog approach to sorting through hundreds of job applications

Hiring in this day and age is like finding a needle in a haystack the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Every recruiter wants to find the best candidate for every job. But identifying the crème de la crème out of hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants who are increasingly relying on AI tools to apply for jobs is becoming nearly impossible. Hiring teams are trying myriad approaches to tackle the problem. Some are also using AI, while others are taking a more analog approach due to hesitancy over AI’s readiness to take over more of the candidate selection process.

Manual method. West Monroe, a management and technology consulting firm, is primarily taking the latter approach. The firm has seen significant interest from job seekers, despite relatively low unemployment, particularly because they’re relying on services that can help them auto-apply to jobs, Tanya Moore, West Monroe’s CPO, told HR Brew.

For example, a job posting for West Monroe’s general counsel position received more than 500 applications—rare for an executive role. Of those, fewer than 5% were “even remotely qualified,” Moore noted.

“From the job seekers perspective, it’s, ‘What do I have to lose? Why not get my name and my résumé out there to as many positions as possible?’” Moore said. “The challenge with that, from our perspectives as employers, is it’s really hard to go through all of those résumés.”

Moore’s team implemented screening mechanisms, including asking candidates knockout questions that reject them if they don’t have the experience mandatory for the role. For example, because the general counsel serves as the company’s board secretary, one knockout question asked about board secretary experience.

While this manual approach to candidate selection may be more trusted than using an algorithm, it’s also requiring more of recruiters’ time.

“We haven’t gone to the point where there are a lot of tools out there that can say: ‘Of your 500 [candidates], here are the 10 you should talk to.’ We haven’t gone that far simply because we don’t trust the technology enough at this point to really accurately reduce the funnel to that extent,” Moore said. “So we’re using more of the knockout questions, more of the search functionality, and as a result of that, it is taking our recruiters more time.”

A place for AI. That said, AI isn’t totally excluded from the picture. To make up for the extra time spent narrowing down candidates, West Monroe’s team is using automation, including generative AI, to cut down on time-consuming tasks like writing job descriptions or curating emails. Vendors used by Moore’s team, like Greenhouse, Gem, and LinkedIn, all have AI-powered offerings that help further streamline recruiters’ workflows.

In the past year, West Monroe has saved each of its recruiters 100 hours of work, or 700 hours total, primarily thanks to automation and AI cutting down on these and similar tasks. The company is continuing to explore other opportunities to reduce rote tasks, including a pilot with IBM’s watsonx Orchestrate to automate communications and nudges during the hiring process.

“When you think about the recruiting process, there are a ton of steps to it. There is a lot of communication, there’s a lot of follow up,” Moore said. “We’ve really streamlined a ton of that, and we’re not done yet.”