In conversation with HRD, Lendlease’s head of talent acquisition and inclusion, Claire Merriman, spoked on the growing use of artificial intelligence in recruitment.

Merriman said candidate sentiment has already shifted, and many jobseekers are openly questioning whether a human is involved at all when they apply.

“We get emails from candidates saying, ‘Did AI reject me?’ So we know that people are thinking about it,” she said.

“There’s a lot of noise around people’s resumes going into the ether and people thinking they’re getting rejected by a bot.”

While she describes Lendlease as “definitely not anti‑AI”, Merriman believes the industry is heading into a period of “tempered AI sentiment” as candidates push back against fully automated processes and demand more meaningful human contact.

“I don’t think people want to just be in a streamlined recruitment process. They want to feel a human touchpoint.”

For Merriman, the issue is not whether AI belongs in recruitment – she freely concedes “there are some fabulous AI systems out there” and says Lendlease has used AI tools for sourcing and candidate identification for years – but how far organisations allow technology to displace genuine human interaction.

“With the advent of AI, I think it’s even more important that people understand that there is a human helping throughout the process whenever you’re going for roles,” she said. “People still want to talk to people.”

Lendlease currently takes what Merriman calls an “AI light” approach. The company uses technology to support basic recruitment tasks but deliberately avoids removing people from core candidate interactions.

“We’re just using AI to help us with sourcing and candidate identification and things like that. Nothing mind‑blowing or groundbreaking at all, it’s just we were doing that six years ago,” she said.

“We don’t have chatbots that are talking to our candidates. If you email our careers email address, someone from my team’s responding to you.”

That choice is closely tied to Lendlease’s business model and workforce. Much of its talent pool – particularly in construction and development – is site‑based and not necessarily active on digital platforms where AI‑heavy recruitment tends to operate best.

“You can’t AI out the human,” she said. “How you convince someone to take a job that might pay less, or they might have to uproot their family and move somewhere else – you need a human connection with somebody, whether that be your recruiter or HR person or the manager. To get someone to really want to make that move, you need that connection.”

Merriman believes employers that lean too heavily on automation risk losing out in the ongoing “war for talent” if they fail to build that connection.

“Organisations need to be a lot better at talking to their value proposition and speaking to values, what the organisation means and building a human connection,” she said.

“If you want that person, you’ve got to make sure that they feel they fully buy into your culture and that it’s the right fit for both sides. You can’t get that by streamlining your recruitment process.”

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