Will autonomous, AI agents complete replace recruiters? | June 2025

Most months, some of the College Recruiter team get together for a short conversation about a subject that should be of interest to a lot of our customers and others interested in topics related to recruitment marketing, early careers, or both.

This month, chief operating officer Jeanette Leeds, head of sales Glen Handrahan, and founder Steven Rothberg got together to share our thoughts about whether fully autonomous, AI-powered agents are only a few years away from completely removing humans from the hiring process, including identification of potential candidates, outreach, ranking, screening, and everything else so their first interaction with any human will be the their first day of work.

While all three of us see a lot of promise with AI, including agentic AI, we also see a lot of risks, especially for organizations considering fully automating their entire hiring process.