Episode
AI Isn't Replacing Recruiters.
Bad Leadership Is.
with Oscar Chavez
Recruiting isn't broken because of AI. It's broken because too many companies reduced recruiting to speed, admin work, and “paper pushing” long before AI entered the conversation.
In this episode of Talentless, Desiree Goldey, Ashley King, and Oscar Chavez unpack the real issue behind modern hiring dysfunction: leadership decisions that stripped recruiting of strategy, empathy, and human judgment.
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Episode Transcript
Full conversation — searchable and screen-reader friendly
Desiree: Today we're joined by Oscar Chavez — 20+ years in recruiting, agency to corporate, and now founding recruiter at an AI startup. We're getting into a conversation that I think most people will sit up a little straighter for: AI isn't replacing recruiters. Bad leadership is. Because AI has become the easiest thing in the world to blame. Oscar, what are your thoughts on that?
Oscar Chavez: A lot of it is overpromise, under-deliver. But one of the fundamental things from a foundational perspective is that a lot of hiring systems are currently broken. So the idea that introducing AI is going to magically fix all of that is just false. Not that it won't eventually be there, but you also need people in place to guide it appropriately to fix those underlying problems. People get set in how it's always been done. There's resistance to changing the process. They just want to make it faster. But if you speed up a broken process, you just break it faster. I love the idea of bringing speed to a process, but it should be used as a resource — not a replacement.
Oscar Chavez: Before you decide to revolutionize my business, I want to be sure you understand my business. That's where a lot of non-recruiter, non-HR people are coming into this space — "we can solve this administrative task." And that's already getting off on the wrong foot. Recruiting is not an administrative task. I have a lot of feelings about how that came about.
Ashley: It has always been postured as the little sister at the tiny table — just a paper pushing, phone calling, info swapping, coordination role. Because of that posturing, it's given people the ability to replace us with AI, because just us and a job board combined can handle it all. Full shade to those founders: how silly. I would never go have a bad hospital experience and say, I'm going to revolutionize all of healthcare. But for some reason there is an audacity whenever it comes to talent — because of the way we're postured. There is no other department that gatekeeps society like we do. No IT, no marketing, no banking. None of them get to say: this will be your title, your salary, your status. We actually shape that narrative.