This is the key message from two business leaders operating at very different scales: Emma Davison, CEO of Virtual Headquarters and Alan Price, global head of talent acquisition at Deel. Together, their experiences paint a clear picture of what “good” looks like when it comes to AI in hiring – and where HR should lean in, not step back.

‍From operator to strategist: the new recruiter profile

For large, fast-scaling organisations, AI is forcing a fundamental shift in the recruiter’s role.

To put this in perspective, Deel received 1.3 million applications last year. To keep pace, Price says recruiters can no longer behave as “operators of repetitive tasks” – reading resumes, scheduling interviews, taking notes.

Instead, he believes AI has “come to require [recruiters] to evolve”.

According to Price, the modern recruiter must become a strategist and context analyst – someone who knows how to ask AI the right questions and interpret the answers in context. Mastery of prompting, he argues, is becoming as critical as mastery of interviewing.

“Instead of acting as an operator of repetitive tasks, the recruiter becomes a strategist, a context analyst, someone who knows how to ask the AI good questions and make decisions based on the answers,” he said.

For HR leaders, the takeaway is clear: AI is not replacing recruiters – it is raising the bar on what recruitment as a discipline looks like.

AI as a noise filter: the SME perspective

While Deel is operating at global scale, Davison sees a similar pattern in a much smaller environment.

For SMEs, the value of AI in recruitment is less about sophistication and more about survival.

“For many roles we advertise, we receive hundreds of applications,” she explained. “AI has been an effective tool in helping us quickly filter out misaligned applications, which is particularly valuable when you don’t have a dedicated HR team and every hour counts.”

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