On 21 September 2026, recruitment, HR, Talent Acquisition and technology leaders came together at Westhive Zurich for Recruitment Night Zurich – Beyond AI, hosted by nextImpact.
A big thank you to the nextImpact team, and especially Stefanie Zechner, for bringing people together for an open discussion around one of the biggest questions facing recruitment today:
What should AI take over – and what should it leave to humans?
One important conclusion was that AI is transforming both sides of the recruitment equation: candidates and recruiters.
More Applications. More Pressure.
For candidates, AI has dramatically lowered the barrier to applying for jobs.
What might once have meant applying for 10 or 20 positions can now become 200 or more. Applications are easier to generate, tailor and submit - but that doesn't necessarily mean they are more relevant, qualified or motivated.
The result is a growing imbalance: more applications, but not necessarily more quality.
For candidates, this can mean less feedback and longer waits for a response. For recruiters, it means growing volumes to process – and increasing pressure to identify the right people.
This is where AI can play a genuinely useful role.
Where AI Can Help Recruiters
AI can take over much of the repetitive work created by this increased volume.
Prescreening can help recruiters identify relevant candidates and prioritise where human attention is most needed. Scheduling can remove the back-and-forth of finding an interview time. Meeting notes and summaries can be captured automatically, reducing administrative workload.
And as organisations build larger talent pools, AI can also support Talent Pool Management – keeping candidate profiles up to date, identifying relevant opportunities and helping recruiters maintain relationships at scale.
These are areas where automation can create real value without removing the recruiter from the process.
Keep the Human in the Loop
The principle that emerged throughout the discussion was clear: AI can support the process, but humans should remain in control.
AI can help with prescreening and recommendations. It can organise information and surface patterns. But the final hiring decision should remain with the recruiter.
And when it comes to the interview itself, the human should remain at the center.
AI can take notes. It can summarise the conversation. But getting to know someone, understanding their motivation, building trust, negotiating and ultimately convincing a candidate to join a company are human activities.
Those shouldn't be delegated to a machine.
So, What Should AI Take Over?
The discussion pointed towards a practical framework:
- Automate the repetitive: scheduling, administration, data processing and meeting notes.
- Support prescreening: use AI to manage application volume and identify where recruiter attention is most valuable.
- Strengthen talent pool management: maintain candidate data, surface relevant opportunities and support communication at scale.
- Keep humans in control: recruiters remain accountable for hiring decisions.
- Protect the human interaction: interviews, relationships, motivation, negotiation and trust should remain human-led.
The goal isn't to automate recruitment as much as possible.
It is to use AI to manage scale, while giving recruiters more time for the work that actually requires a human.
Beyond AI
The most interesting question coming out of the evening wasn't whether AI will change recruitment. It already is.
The question is whether we are thoughtful enough about what we choose to automate.
AI can help recruiters deal with an increasingly high-volume market. But if that efficiency simply means processing more applications, we haven't necessarily improved recruitment.
The real opportunity is to use AI to remove the administrative burden and create more space for better conversations, stronger relationships and better decisions.
Let AI handle the scale. Let humans handle the people.
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