AI is on everyone's lips, but similar to new software for New Work in 2013, not everything that has "AI" on it makes sense, even if it's sold to you.
At BREADHUNTER, we've always been very tech-savvy, as these little helpers save us a lot of time to focus on what's essential: candidate search and interviews.
Even back in 2013, when we used the paperless office and many SAS tools to be more efficient than our colleagues with the fancy offices in Vienna's first district, their Excel spreadsheets, and botched 90s workflows that required an armada of assistants and cheaply paid recruiters.
What has changed in the past year? (see article on AI from 2024.)
Copilot and Gemini are well integrated into our workflows, with us using Gemini more often.
What does AI do for us in headhunting?
- Summarize emails from projects
- Transcribe video calls during candidate interviews to then provide the client with a short video and summary of the conversation, along with the CV. "We screen people, not just application letters!" That was and still is our motto, and that's what makes the paper CV more colorful and helps our clients with candidate selection by watching perhaps five 3-minute videos from the candidate interview before we interview the top 3 candidates together.
- Target lists and our database are managed by AI to quickly keep track of things during the search and in the project.
- Our meetings are recorded and transcribed from various languages and sent to each participant afterward. This helps us to be fully present and not get bogged down with notes on the side. Partners who cannot be present can review the transcripts later or listen to them on the go.
- Phone calls with candidates or client briefings are also transcribed (with their consent) and sent to all participants at the end. This is handy when you're on the road or in the car and don't want to forget anything. You also have the transcribed conversations at the end for reports and can continue working from there. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra does a great job at this, unlike Apple, which doesn't have these functions on their radar yet.
- Job advertisements are quickly written by AI, and photos are generated for the ads.
- Target lists for direct search are created and securely stored, e.g., in Notion.
- Project statuses are repeatedly summarized with AI, so that we still have an overview after 2-3 months, and, more importantly: so do our clients!
- During sourcing, our database is automatically enriched with information from the internet, and the LinkedIn profiles are linked and updated. The transcribed video calls and phone calls are automatically linked to the contact from the database so that everything is in its place and not in MS Office 365 folders and subfolders.
As a BREADHUNTER one-man show with a large network and partners in 35 countries, it is particularly important to be efficient and technically state-of-the-art. This saves us two assistants for reports, emails, and database maintenance.
Why have I been a headhunter for 27 years and still oversee projects from A to Z?
Well, I like to oversee the entire process, i.e., the search, the interviews, and finally the placement. All administrative tasks have been 90% replaced by smart IT and AI tool workflows, which gives me real time to devote myself to the search, outreach, and interviews of candidates.
Identifying many personalities and people, then getting to know them, and thereby helping companies to fill their most difficult positions (often I invest 100-150 working hours per project/position in the search!), that's what has driven me for decades and, of course, as a BREADHUNTER pirate, to thwart my competition, because I'm still around. :-p
If you've become curious about what it's like to work with BREADHUNTER, please contact us. If you as a personnel consultant also want to work so smart, then contact us too. We are happy to play McKinsey in your office, revise the workflows, and get rid of 50% of them so that you too can work smarter again and save costs.
In this sense, best regards from Vienna,
Thomas Zahlten