Hiring is changing fast. Talent teams are trying to cut through noise, candidates want real clarity, and everyone is asking the same question: how do we keep hiring human while using AI well? If you care about conversational AI in hiring, improving the hiring brief, or building more trust with candidates, this is for you.
Sam Berthoud, VP of Talent Solutions at hackajob, and Victoria Davies, our Head of Product, sat down with Becky Lee-Roche from ElevenLabs to explore how voice technology and AI-powered recruiters are reshaping the moments that matter most.
Their conclusion was simple: when you fix the conversations, everything else gets better.
The brief between a recruiter and a hiring manager. The first touchpoint with a candidate. The questions people ask before they decide whether a role fits their life. These moments decide the success of a hire long before interviews start.
Conversational AI makes these moments clearer. It removes friction from early communication, captures context that written notes miss, and gives teams a more accurate picture of intent, motivation, and fit.
Most hiring challenges start with misalignment. A vague brief becomes a mismatched shortlist which becomes wasted interviews. Voice AI is changing that.
ElevenLabs’ agents, AI Becky and AI Oscar, let teams talk through a brief naturally. Instead of typing into forms or deciphering a hiring manager’s stream of consciousness, recruiters can record a real conversation.
"That’s where you get the real insights, tone, confidence, and intent," Becky explained during the session.
This simple shift leads to stronger alignment, clearer expectations, and far fewer surprises downstream.
Candidates can tell when a process is designed for speed instead of understanding. Conversational AI gives them space to ask better questions and share their motivations early.
"We’re using AI not to replace conversations, but to make them more meaningful," Victoria shared. "You still get human intent, just faster and with fewer misinterpretations."
When candidates feel heard and teams feel aligned, trust becomes a competitive advantage. And trust is exactly what reduces drop offs and increases engagement.
Application volumes are higher than ever, but relevance has plummeted. Voice technology helps surface genuine motivation long before a recruiter sees a CV.
Tone, clarity, reasoning, curiosity. These signals reveal what a resume cannot.
For technical talent, this matters. Developers want to be understood beyond keywords. For hiring teams, it means spending time with the right people sooner.
Integrated into hackajob, conversational insights turn thousands of data points into a clear, contextual picture of fit.
This is not filtering harder. It is understanding better.
At hackajob, conversational AI connects into a wider ecosystem designed to make hiring feel more human, not more automated. Chase is the clearest example.
Chase is hackajob’s AI recruiter. He takes a live brief, captures what the role really needs, and then sources, engages, and qualifies talent across both active and passive communities. No admin, no repetition, no noise. Alongside Chase, Thena handles resume screening, and Archer drives qualified inbound applications.
Chase is not here to replace recruiters. He exists to give them back the time and headspace to do what humans do best: connect.
Want to see Chase in action and discover how hackajob can help you find engaged, qualified talent? Read more about Chase or book a free, personalised demo.
The teams from hackajob and ElevenLabs landed on the same belief: AI should make hiring more human, not less. When voice and conversational technology reduce noise and capture intent, people can show up better on both sides of the process.
When done right, AI does not remove the human element. It strengthens it.
Watch the full conversation on our YouTube channel
What is conversational AI in hiring?
It is technology that captures and understands spoken or written dialogue so teams can gather cleaner, more contextual hiring insights.
Does conversational AI improve the hiring brief?
Yes. It helps teams talk through roles naturally, reduces misalignment, and creates clearer, more accurate briefs.
How does an AI recruiter like Chase work?
Chase takes a live brief, sources and engages talent, qualifies candidates, and delivers a ready shortlist while keeping humans in control.
Does voice AI improve candidate trust?
Candidates get clearer information earlier and can ask real questions, which builds trust and reduces drop-offs.