Stop Being Lazy: The Human Cost of AI Overuse in Leadership Hiring

Well, the thing I dreaded is happening.

I heard, through the grapevine, that people are using AI to lead critical decisions about leadership hiring. In one example, AI was used to decide which candidates made it through to the final interview stage for a senior leadership position.

Don’t get me wrong, AI does have a (limited) place within the hiring process. But to leave a machine to decide which individual is going to lead a whole business function? Absolutely shocking. And frankly, lazy.

No technology; regardless of hype or perceived “intelligence”; can replace human judgment – not least when it comes to hiring your next C-Suite leader. Choosing the right candidate is effectively powering the future of the business, especially when you’re hiring for board level (and near-board level) positions.

Picking the right leader isn’t just a tick box exercise. It’s not just one more job crossed off a recruiter’s to-do list. You’re not just getting a butt in a seat. You’re making a critical decision about the business’s future performance, and therefore the livelihoods of everyone on your payroll – and possibly, by extension, those in your supply chain.

The AI revolution has undoubtedly unlocked efficiencies for all manner of businesses and individuals, but we must be cautious not to fall into the hype-laden trap of “efficiency at any cost.”

Modern Leadership Hiring: The Volume Problem

In the current digital era, applying for a job has been made ridiculously easy. Simply click a few buttons, fill in a few fields, and boom – you’re in the running (or at least that’s how it seems!). Any individual can apply for any position with little or no effort.

However, this also opens the door to “chancers” – individuals who are massively underqualified or who are a poor fit for that position, but are just trying it on to see how far they get. You’d be surprised how many people try their luck with top leadership roles once they start salivating at the salary range!

Understandably, this creates a problem for those involved in the hiring process. These floods of applications coming in left, right, and centre puts (often already overworked) hiring staff in a tough spot. Many are looking to AI for some kind of solution.

Some less scrupulous recruiters might turn to lazy tactics to cope with the overwhelm, like asking algorithmically driven tools to filter “the top 10-20 candidates” or only looking at the first 50-or-so applications. 

Granted, when filtering through entry level positions with mass appeal, you sometimes have to lean on mercenary tactics like these to simply keep on trucking. But when you are trying to find a new business function leader, reducing the complex matter of human leadership potential to a mere algorithmic matching exercise (AI or otherwise) introduces immense risk.

Choosing a business function leader like a CIO or CTO is a highly strategic decision, and one that should never be delegated to an AI, no matter how mind-blowingly “intelligent” its marketing says it is.

Just because these AI recruitment tools can be used to filter out chancers, uncover valuable entry level candidates, and spit out an individual who it feels is the best fit, that doesn’t mean it should be used for those things in equal measure for all roles, all positions, and all levels of seniority, throughout the whole recruitment process.

6 Risks of AI Overuse in Leadership Hiring

Reducing leadership candidate selection to automated keyword-hunting or checking off a list of desired technical accolades is highly problematic. Individuals vying for roles like CISO, CTO, CIO, and even CEO must possess certain intangible qualities that enable them to shape your corporate strategic direction.

But guess what? AI is very poor at judging intangibles. You know who is great at it? Experienced human leadership recruiters and executive search professionals. Let’s explore a few intangible human factors – and a few matters of essential “human touch” – that risk getting lost in the shuffle if you were to delegate most of the recruitment process to AI.

Lack of Connection with Cultural & Team Dynamics
The higher up in the corporate hierarchy a position is, the more important it is to choose someone who aligns culturally with the business.

Not only does a leader need to fully embrace your organisational values, they also need to be a positive force within your organisation. After all, when cultural workplace problems arise, they often begin somewhere up the chain of command and flow downward.

Though AI can have a stab at understanding things like attitude, cultural fit, and team dynamics in theory, only humans can tangibly understand and anticipate those social factors that make a leader – and their team – successful.

Let’s not forget that professionals at or nearing C-Suite level, whether they’re the hiring manager or the candidate in this situation, often already have their own network to turn to for opportunities. In fact, this very human capability for networking and elastic thinking – resulting in a “hey, I know the right person for this role!” – is something purely human that AI is pretty much incapable of.

It’s also worth considering the value that diversity can bring to an organisation, especially amongst leadership. Inclusive organisations are 1.7 times more likely to lead innovation, and frequently make better business decisions twice as fast. Diverse leaders often invite new and refreshing approaches that ultimately benefit a business.

Yet a candidate’s deviation from “the norm” might cause an AI model to deprioritise them or gloss over their potential entirely. Because AI-powered tools are basically pattern-matching machines. They aren’t built to make decisions that break the mould, even slightly. Machine learning algorithms can also develop their own biases and inferences, further impacting the process.

Purely Theoretical Perception of Leadership Potential
Let’s stick with the theme of pattern matching for a moment. AI is quite proficient at matching tangible things like skills and experience. If a job description stipulates a need for skills in X, Y and Z, AI tools will likely do a good job of flagging job applications which mention proficiency in X, Y, and Z.

This might be fine when recruiting for more entry level positions. But C-Suite leaders aren’t brought on to systematically execute a set list of tasks. They are employed to chart a course for success; steer the organisation’s ship (even through choppy waters); and strategically advocate for or against new developments as they come onto the horizon.

Sourcing such an individual in itself requires a rich, strategic understanding of the business’s goals and values, and experience in navigating the power dynamics at play within the C-Suite. This is something that AI can currently only really achieve at a surface level – not deeply enough to make a well-rounded leadership hiring decision.

No Lived Experience Around the Impact of Soft Skills
Good leadership requires essential soft skills like managing and understanding others’ feelings; problem solving; conflict resolution; adaptability; influence; stress management; self-reflection; and communication.

As humans, we can recognise the importance of these skills. We might even recall times where a leader’s proficiency in these areas (or lack thereof) dramatically changed the outcome of a situation. Yet, again, AI’s understanding of softer, interpersonal skills is only ever going to be shallow and theoretical.

Furthermore, communicating these skills requires a softness and subtlety of language that AI may deprioritise or misunderstand as weakness, depending on its training data and instructions.

Removal of Human Intuition from the Hiring Process
Over years in the game, recruiters develop a gut instinct for a good fit, often based on experience, intuited potential, and learned patterns. AI overuse can remove this crucial value from the equation entirely, potentially missing the mark and hiring a costly poor fit.

Loss of Candidate Respect & Employer Reputation
I’m going to put this plainly: if your hiring teams can’t be bothered to liaise with candidates who are being employed to add zeroes to the balance sheet, why should those candidates go to the effort of jumping through the hoops required of them during the application process?

After all, in the later stages of applying for a C-Suite or adjacent leadership position, candidates are likely to expend blood, sweat, and (perhaps) tears creating in-depth reports, presentations, and forecasts with the hope of being the successful party.

If your humans can’t be bothered to respect and properly review that hard work, what sort of look does that create?

Let’s not forget that leadership professionals are incredibly well-networked. They talk. So if you come across as an employer who doesn’t give a damn about the recruitment process, you’re hardly going to have skilled leaders beating a path to your door.

Good talent knows their worth. If they get even the smallest hint that an employer’s heart isn’t in the recruitment process, then they may drop out in search of a firm who can offer a more personal experience. I wouldn’t blame them.

Creates a Disappointing Candidate Experience
You know that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you hear back from a great employer you are really excited to work for? That kind of messaging relies on human connection and understanding and requires a human to manage – even if it is delivered as part of an automated flow.

Yet relying on AI tools to completely handle candidate liaison, selection, and onboarding creates a cold, dull, impersonal experience. It may be efficient, it may be functional, but it’s hardly going to excite and inspire your new candidates. Again, leaders who know their worth are probably going to end up looking elsewhere.

Related Reading: A Recruitment Revolution? The Ethics of AI Tools in the Hiring Process

Where Can AI Help the Leadership Hiring Process?
Though I’m highly critical of AI overusers, I’m no luddite. I do see potential for the use of AI throughout the recruitment process. Yes, even when sourcing leadership candidates, though in highly limited measure.

Here are a few use cases that tick all of my personal practical and ethical boxes:

• Filtering Out the Chancers: Removing the headache of manually filtering out underqualified candidates who are just throwing their hat in the ring.
• Initial Screening Assistance: Limited AI-driven keyword matching can be useful, though this process needs considerable human oversight to gauge intangibles and ensure that good candidates aren’t missed.
• Streamlining Processes: AI-powered tools can be used to automate straightforward processes and create an effective, streamlined recruitment and onboarding processes – without removing the human touch.
• Minimising Tedious Admin: Though AI shouldn’t be used for liaising with candidates, it can be used to help structure data, prioritise tasks, and even arrange appointments like interviews and assessments.

But a list of assorted use cases isn’t very practical or strategic. I recommend that you…

Develop a Practical Recruitment AI Policy
AI applications are most effective when they are systematised, with solid and repeatable policies, strategies, and workflows. That’s why, if you are tempted to use AI within your recruitment function, I recommend you create and implement unambiguous practical and ethical guidelines for recruiters, hiring managers, and HR professionals around AI use.

Personally, I see scope for setting different rules depending on a role’s seniority; for example, permitting more liberal use of AI for recruiting entry level positions, with the rules getting increasingly more stringent as the role in question climbs the chain of command, culminating in a strict “No AI Decision Making” policy for board and board adjacent positions.

In Conclusion
I have one thing to say to any hiring professional who feels tempted to use AI to make crucial hiring decisions, especially about leadership hiring:

Don’t do it, friend. You’re better than that.

AI is a process tool. An admin tool. Not a selection tool. AI might grease the wheels of productivity but removing human insight from a process as personal as recruitment comes with a cost.

And that cost is this: what you gain in efficiency, your candidates lose in actual heartfelt human connection. Because when a company hires without heart, they ultimately hire without respect for the candidate – and for the process.

After all, when you demonstrate lack of respect for a candidate, why should they respect you in return? It’s a recipe for disaster.

So today, think what you can do to re-centre recruitment around interpersonal connection. After all, we all chose this line of work so we could make a difference to people’s lives. To help people use their calling to put food on their family’s table.

That can’t just be delegated to an algorithm. It’s so unavoidably human – and so unavoidably worth doing well.