On the TA livestream we ran a few weeks back, I connected with Ben Eubanks, our Chief Research Officer, and George Rogers, our Chief Strategy Officer, to discuss our upcoming 2026 Talent Acquisition Trends Study. We’d surveyed nearly 1,000 TA leaders and 1,000 candidates, and three big themes had come out of the data. We’d chatted about the evident trust gap on both sides of the hiring process (candidate and hiring /employer side), and AI adoption (as well on both sides). When we got to the third theme, what we’re calling the humanity premium, Ben reached outside hiring for an example.
He pointed to AI marketing. He talked about how the fails are everywhere right now: generic copy, obviously generated images, and captions that are off by a wide margin. What’s standing out today, he said, is marketing or comms where a real person clearly did the work. That version has become the premium version. His point was that as AI saturates a space, anything visibly human starts to look like the more valuable version. He believes the same thing is happening in hiring. When we look back at the TA candidate data, the numbers back this up.
We’d asked candidates what damaged their experience when applying for jobs the most. Looking at those answers through Ben’s frame, the top responses were all about the absence of a person:
- No feedback after applying
- Rejection without any human touch
- Ghost jobs
- AI screening with no human reviewer on the other side
- Inconsistent messaging between recruiters and hiring managers who clearly weren’t talking to each other.
We’d also asked them to describe the hiring process in a few sentences. They wrote things like “give me a chance,” “let me try,” “judge me for me, not my resume.” Reading them, what they’re describing is a process that needs more humans in it. And AI hardly comes up at all.
George gave the feeling a name on the call: algorithm anxiety. Candidates feel a machine is judging them, with no human standing behind the decision, and as he said, “trust isn’t just dented, it’s destroyed.” That feeling, algorithm anxiety, is what makes the humanity premium real. When candidates have come to expect a machine, the human moments are what stand out.
Most TA teams are cutting the very thing candidates are asking for
If candidates are asking for human contact, employers should be answering the call. Most are doing the exact opposite.
When we asked employers in that same study what they’d had to drop because of capacity constraints, the top answer was candidate feedback. The same employers, in a separate question, said they plan to redirect AI time savings into improving candidate experience and communication. On paper, the plan is to add more human contact. In practice, they’re cutting it. That gap is what creates the humanity premium, and what makes paying it so cheap right now, because so few teams are doing it.
Two TA leaders putting humans back in the loop
A few teams are reading the moment differently and acting on it. Ben mentioned two on the call, both TA leaders making the choice to put real humans in front of candidates at moments where many teams are stepping back.
The first was Lance Sapera, a TA leader Ben has known for years in the industry. Lance’s team has a rule they call “no text breakups.” When a candidate is out of the running, they get a phone call. Not a cold email or text. Lance’s reasoning is straightforward: the candidate honored the company with their time, and the company can honor them back with a real voice. It costs more, and it’s the kind of moment that stays with candidates and creates a more positive experience for them. The employer brand benefits too.
Ben also told us about a recruiter at LinkedIn whose team is doing more in-person interviews than they’ve done in a decade. “I never thought we’d do that again,” the recruiter said. They’re doing it because it’s the cleanest way to address the trust and connection issues sitting beneath every virtual hiring step. An organization built entirely on virtual networking has decided that, for hiring, the room matters again.
Both these examples are strategic — the work of teams who see what’s getting scarce and have decided to put it back in. Candidates are getting more skeptical of AI-driven processes by the month. The companies that are still putting real people in front of candidates are earning trust in a market where most teams aren’t.
Where TA leaders should put their AI
Most AI-in-hiring conversations still treat human work as the cost: the slow, expensive thing AI is supposed to replace. Our 2026 data points the other way. The more recruiting work AI takes on, the more valuable the human moments become.
For TA leaders, the practical question is one of placement. Use AI on the parts of recruiting candidates that they don’t see, so the people on your team have time to be present in the parts they do.
George made one more point on the call I’d like to add as a closing thought. AI, in his words, should serve as a bridge to recruiting, not a barrier to it. We’re not at the bridge yet. Most of us are still in the trade-off phase, taking the time savings now and assuming candidate trust will hold up later. It won’t.
If you missed the TA Study Livestream, you can view it on demand here.
Roberta Gogos is an HR Industry Go-to-market Leader and Analyst. She has been behind the scenes at market-leading companies to help them shift market narrative, influence buyer behavior and expand into new markets. She is known for her ability to turn strategic vision into measurable execution through positioning, storytelling, and operational rigor.
Since 2024, Roberta has been focused on industry research used by investors, corporate leaders, and vendors to assess technologies and inform M&A decisions, improve GTM, enable sales, inform product development, and develop thought leadership.
She has 20 years of experience in marketing, positioning, and strategy, with 10+ years of that being directly related to talent and the workforce.
