Spray & Pray Chatbots

August 2025

‘Spray and pray chatbots wrecking recruitment’ screams the headline in The Telegraph this morning.

It hits the nail on the head. James Titcomb, the journalist, knows his stuff and neatly sets out the problem:

Employers facing a “tsunami of sameness” as each job position is flooded by thousand of applications, fuelled by AI tools that spin up CVs and cover letters in seconds.

Candidates feel like they’re shouting into the void. 😱

Recruiters are stuck in a volume game where genuine talent risks being overlooked.

It’s lose-lose-lose. ❌

There’s a real danger that rec-tech is getting stuck in a doom loop, creating a system that promotes scale not substance.

It’s eroding the very thing recruitment is meant to be: a way of connecting people with the work that matters to them. It’s worrying to read that the government is now actively developing yet another AI tool to help unemployed people find jobs. I’m all in favour of helping people get into work but this is not the answer.

That’s why, for some time now, I’ve been working with a team on something different.

A recruitment proposittion that uses technology not to multiply applications, but to bring the right human qualities to the surface.

A product built to help candidates show who they really are — and to help employers cut through the noise to find genuine fit. 👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨

Less will definitely be more, when it comes to the number of job applications involved for both candidate and employer. It’s super-cool when you get into the details and we’re getting close to being ready to share it.

We’re ahead of the curve in terms of where people are starting to realise the next phase of rec-tech has to go: restoring trust, quality and fairness to hiring.

It’s exciting and for investors watching this space — the need couldn’t be clearer, and the opportunity is only growing.