AI in HR: Start With the Problem, Not the Tool
Every HR tech demo promises to save hours. Fewer of them ask which hours you were trying to save.
Katee Van Horn sat down with Sarah Smart and Sofia Whelan, co-founders of HorizonHuman, to talk about AI adoption in HR and talent acquisition. Their point: the teams getting value from AI started with a problem, not a product.
Find the real pain point first
Before anyone signs a contract, map the process. Where does work stall? Where do candidates or employees drop off? Where are people doing the same thing by hand every week? That's where AI might help. If you can't name the problem, the tool will name it for you.
Design for people, not the dashboard
Human-centered design means asking how a change feels to the recruiter, the hiring manager, the candidate, and the employee. A tool that makes a report faster and the candidate experience worse didn't save anything.
Trust is part of the rollout
People need to know what the AI is doing, what data it uses, and who checks it. Say it plainly and early. Teams that bury AI in the workflow lose trust when it surfaces, and it always surfaces.
Regulation is already here
Rules on automated decisions in hiring and employment keep expanding in the U.S. and the EU. HR needs to know everywhere AI touches a decision about a person, and be able to explain it.
Skills HR needs now
- Process mapping, so you can find the work worth changing.
- Data literacy, so you can question what a tool tells you.
- Vendor evaluation, so you can ask how a product was built and tested.
- Change management, so the tool gets used the way you planned.
Start with one team
Some of the strongest examples come from a single team solving one problem well and then sharing what worked. That beats a company-wide rollout nobody asked for.
Decide which work AI should do and who checks it. Then buy the tool.
Listen to the full conversation on the episode page.
Co-Host
Jackye Clayton has spent more than 15 years in HR and HR tech, most of it arguing that hiring is a design problem, not a pipeline problem.
She led talent and inclusion work at Textio and SeekOut and edited at RecruitingDaily. Today she runs Talent Lab, advising companies on AI in hiring, neurodiversity, and talent strategy. She founded People Puzzles, teaches on LinkedIn Learning, and reports from the field at conferences like HR Tech and Workhuman Live.
She's building Who Do I Work For?, a tool that uses public records to show job seekers what a company actually does before they take the offer.
Her work has been cited in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, and SHRM. She's on HR Executive's Top 100 HR Influencers list.
She lives in Waco, Texas, where she serves as Secretary on the board of Creative Waco and Chair of the board of Communities In Schools of the Heart of Texas.