Hiring platform Greenhouse has agreed to acquire Ezra AI Labs, a startup focused on conversational, voice-based AI interviewing. The deal is set to close later this quarter and signals a shift in how talent acquisition (TA) can address the surge of AI-assisted job applications and the cacophony making it harder to discern candidate signals and fill reqs.

Applications per recruiter on its platform have jumped 412% since 2023, according to Greenhouse. At the same time, fewer than 7% of applicants receive an interview. Recruiters are facing a daunting challenge: more candidates than ever, but less clarity on who’s actually qualified.

“Fundamentally, people want to make the process work. Candidates want jobs. Companies want to make hires, and AI can be a great tool to make all that happen. AI is not the problem in and of itself, but the tools that people have been given haven’t been up to the task,” Greenhouse’s cofounder and CEO, Daniel Chait, said.

Candidates can use AI to optimize résumés and applications. Companies can then deploy AI to filter them. The resulting dynamic is noisier, less trustworthy system where strong candidates can be missed entirely.

The first wave of AI tools hasn’t helped, Chait said. AI tooling in ATSs and hiring platforms “saw the job seekers as the problem.” Solutions created more “friction” for applicants, making it harder.

For Ezra founder Ophir Samson, voice AI can be the unlock, both to reduce the noise, but also to enrich candidate signal.

“The beautiful thing about voice is that when people speak, they share much more about themselves than when they write,” Samson told HR Brew. “If we were going to have this conversation over text message, we’d have 5% of the information communicated. You can get to understand people—whether those people are candidates or the recruiter and the company—in far greater fidelity than you can then when you’re using just a piece of paper like the résumé.”

Instead of screening out candidates based on their résumé, the new feature aims to give applicants a structured, voice-based conversation about the role and their fit for it right at the top of the funnel. Every candidate is asked the same role-specific questions, evaluated against a set rubric, and offered transparency into the assessment process.

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