Talk to any talent acquisition leader about their strategic priorities these days, and candidate experience is sure to come up.

While employers aren’t currently as desperate for workers compared to the “Great Resignation,” candidate experience remains a priority.

The hiring process before the internet and era of instant communication didn’t require employers to care about candidates’ feelings. Job seekers, who’d send in paper applications, were lucky if they received notice that they weren’t selected for a job, Gerry Crispin, principal and cofounder of CareerXroads and an expert on candidate experience, told HR Brew.

When Crispin worked at Johnson & Johnson in the 1970s, the company received upwards of 40,000 résumés annually, ”which is not a lot compared to what large companies get today, obviously,” Crispin noted. “But still, they were all coming in with paper.” Rejected candidates received a postcard or letter notifying them that they weren’t selected—an uncommon practice at the time.

For more on candidate experience and its importance in this age of Glassdoor reviews, keep reading here.—PM

At WorldatWork’s recent Total Rewards conference in Orlando, vendors were eager to talk about how they were incorporating AI into their compensation tools.

The great promise of AI is that it can save professionals time and effort on mundane, administrative tasks so they can focus on more strategic projects that don’t lend themselves as easily to technology. Compensation is no exception.

Luke Corby, director of professional services for Salary.com, joked that he remembers a time when his boss at a previous company would ask his team to print out and stuff envelopes with 3,000 bonus letters each year.

“I slowly discovered, through that experience, and through talking with other colleagues, that…not everybody is at the forefront of this technology,” he said.

Salary.com and other HR tech firms are positioning themselves to be at the forefront of AI, and hope that their customers will come along for the ride. But not all compensation pros are ready to abandon their Excel spreadsheets just yet.

For more on the brave new world of AI agents in employer compensation tools, keep reading here.—CV