This is an encore podcast presentation of WorkTrends, previously aired on November 14th, 2025. Whether you’re a recruiter, a job seeker, or somewhere in between, AI is reshaping your experience of the hiring process. In this episode, we break down what the Alignment Advantage Report reveals about how both sides of the table are adapting and share actionable strategies for building a process grounded in fairness, clarity, and genuine human connection.
But before we begin today’s podcast, ask yourself these two questions: Are you concerned about transparency in this AI-driven world? And what are you looking to embrace and avoid with the growth of AI during the candidate experience?
Meet Our Guest: Sloane Tolleson
Today, we are thrilled to be with Sloane Tolleson, the lead recruiter at Checkr. Sloane has over a decade of experience recruiting for public and private companies, helping them grow and scale with the right people. She is dedicated to creating the best candidate experience possible by building connection and trust with candidates through transparent and genuine conversations.
AI and the Hiring Process
As a recruiter, how are you seeing the hiring process change with AI’s impact, and what roadblocks are you coming up against?
I think that as a recruiter, we’re really, as we’re approaching AI and AI’s impact, we’re actually focusing on the human, the candidate who is interviewing, the interviewer, and thinking about ways that we can improve the process for every party involved. Because really, at the end of the day, I think that we’ve all seen this. AI is essentially becoming like a third wheel in hiring. And so, whether it be AI interview companions that are allowing interviewers to focus on the candidate rather than taking notes, we found that that has been, again, focusing on the human of who’s in front of you in the conversation. That’s leading to improvements to the better experience for everyone involved.
There’s definitely some roadblocks, like you said, to kind of implementing it. And I don’t know if this stat is necessarily a bad thing, I think it’s interesting for sure to speak about, but I think that we’re on this innovation bell curve right now with AI. So, not sure how familiar the audience is with this, but there’s a bell curve for adoption and innovation, and so I feel like candidates, they are more the innovators, the early adopters, they’re more risk tolerant, and comfortable using AI to help them find jobs, where HR teams need to be more intentional as they might be facing ethical or legal considerations in how AI is being used in hiring processes.
AI and Recruitment
How do you think talent teams can build trust with candidates who may be concerned or curious about how AI is being used during recruitment?
Put yourself in the candidate’s shoes and then think about what information would you want to know as approaching a job search, the level of transparency, and clarity, and when and how AI is being used. And so, we’re doing more and more with AI companions to take notes. Cool. Share that at the beginning of the interview with the candidate. Or even better, share that in the interview confirmation with the candidate that we’ll be using AI to take notes in this interview, and give them then that ability to opt out, like we were just talking about.
It’s really about getting that information to the candidate about when and how AI is being used in the process, and then I think also what I don’t want all of us to forget is really leaning into how humans at the end of the day, at least in my opinion, should still be making that final decision, and not removing humans completely from that final decision-making part of the process.
Candidate Fraud
This Checkr report shows how AI-assisted candidate fraud is quickly rising among the list of challenges and concerns facing everyone in the job market. What’s your perspective on how recruiters can mitigate risk when faced with this growing trend?
So, candidate fraud, it’s been a huge topic for us internally here at Checkr recently, and it’s interesting to dig into because we are seeing fraud pop up in many ways very quickly, I think work faster than we imagined. And so, some of the things that we’re seeing and trying to address is candidates who are using GenAI tools for real-time responses and interviews and coming across as an expert in that area, but really they’re relying on AI to generate those answers. Or on the engineering side, where I spend a lot of my time is around how candidates are using AI coding assistants to ace these engineering coding exercises. And even we’ve seen sophisticated impersonation tools, which is like deepfakes or like a proxy interviewer who is standing in as the candidate’s appearance or voice. And it’s amazing the things that AI can do, it’s also a little bit terrifying.
And even with how AI can hide, and is becoming more of this invisible partner as well, allowing candidates to have that AI generated content live without us as the interviewers knowing it. And so, these are just some of the ways that we’ve been seeing some fraud within this space.
For More Information About AI in Recruiting
First, listen to today’s full podcast episode! And be sure to subscribe to the #WorkTrends Podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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