I founded an HR tech company. No, agentic AI is not going to replace recruiters.

At last week’s TAtech North America 2025 in San Diego, Chris Forman—founder and former CEO of Appcast—delivered one of the most thought-provoking keynotes of the conference. He shared a vision for the near future of hiring that centered around agentic AI: intelligent systems that could fundamentally reshape how employers and candidates connect.

Instead of today’s model, where many candidates apply to 50, 100, or even 200 roles and employers sort through hundreds of applications and then 10 or even 25 interviews, Chris envisions a world where employers describe the role to an AI, and that system goes out, finds qualified candidates, and reaches out to them one at a time.

According to Chris, the AI will email the candidate it deems best first with a “you’ve been pre-approved” job offer that will look similar to the emails we all get where we’re offered a new credit card or other loan. However, instead of simultaneously blasting the offer to tens or thousands of consumers and all who accept the offer get the loan, employers will instead send the job offer to one candidate, wait a certain amount of time for a yes and then move on to the next candidate if the first didn’t respond with a yes within that specified period of time. I would think that candidates would need to respond with a “yes” within a couple of days to, at most, a week.

In the presentation by Chris, he noted that 10 years ago as well as now, the average job took 41 days to fill. If candidates are given even just two days to respond and the successful candidate two weeks to start, only 14 candidates need to respond no (or not respond at all) in order for the agentic AI to take more than 41 days to get from the start of the process to the start date of the new hire. Given that most candidates are unlikely to be interested in even a great job within a couple of days of essentially being cold-called by an AI agent, I have to think that it will be the norm, not the exception, that it will take an agentic AI system longer than 41 days to get someone in place.

Where It Could Work Well

Agentic AI has the potential to shine in certain areas, particularly with senior-level or highly specialized roles. For example:

• Executive search already involves identifying and engaging passive candidates one at a time.
• Hiring a CFO, CMO, or other C-suite leader can take months of outreach and relationship-building.
• An AI that can assist with sourcing, messaging, and scheduling could be a valuable tool in that process.

In these situations, the volume is low, the stakes are high, and the need for precision is significant. Automating part of that process could make hiring more efficient without sacrificing quality.

The Challenge at Scale

That said, most hiring doesn’t look like that. Indeed (pun intended), almost all hiring looks quite different.

When you’re trying to hire a warehouse associate, retail team member, early-career engineer, or office administrator, you’re typically working with a much higher volume of candidates—and those candidates are often active job seekers. They’re applying to multiple jobs at once. They’re sometimes ready to start immediately, mostly within a couple of weeks, and almost never months. And they’re choosing between multiple employers, not just waiting to be chosen by one.

In those cases, agentic AI might not speed things up. In fact, it could slow things down.

Why?

• Most people who are a perfect match on paper aren’t actively looking for new roles.
• A one-at-a-time approach means the AI has to wait for each candidate to respond before moving on.
• Some people may not respond at all—especially if they’re happy where they are or skeptical of unsolicited outreach.
• That means the AI could spend days or even weeks cycling through candidates before finding someone who’s available and interested.

Compare that to the current system, where dozens of candidates can apply in parallel and employers can move several through the funnel at once. It’s not perfect, but it’s fast—especially for roles that need to be filled quickly.

Candidate Experience and Message Fatigue

There’s also the candidate experience to consider.

If multiple employers start using agentic AI to reach out to the same talent pools, the volume of unsolicited job messages will rise quickly. That could lead to:

• Message fatigue for candidates who receive dozens of “you’ve been pre-approved” emails each week.
• More emails getting ignored or marked as spam.
• A need for the AI to reach out to even more people just to maintain response rates.

Over time, that could become a cycle where outreach volume increases, candidate engagement drops, and the effectiveness of the system starts to erode. Candidates want to feel that their time, preferences, and autonomy are respected—and that becomes harder when job offers start feeling automated or transactional.

Where We’re Likely Headed

None of this is to say that agentic AI doesn’t have a place in the future of recruiting. It absolutely does. I expect to see it used to:

• Identify and contact passive candidates more efficiently.
• Support recruiters with intelligent recommendations.
• Speed up communication and scheduling.

But I don’t see it replacing the current process—especially for high-volume, fast-fill roles. Instead, I believe it will become part of a hybrid model: one where AI helps recruiters focus their time and energy where it matters most, without removing the human element that makes recruiting work.

In the end, hiring isn’t just about filling a role. It’s about finding the right fit—for the company and for the candidate. And that’s something best done with a balance of technology and trust, efficiency and empathy. Agentic AI can help us get there, but it’s not the whole answer. So, despite what some at TAtech took away as the message from the presentation, the sky is not falling. To the contrary, if the vision presented by Chris is the most likely scenario for how agentic AI is poised to invade communications between candidates and employers, then the sky is actually in no danger of falling at all, which is a very good sign for sourcing tools like job boards.