How Verizon handles more than 1 million job applications annually—and plans to use AI to streamline the process

These days, finding a needle in a haystack may actually be easier than finding top talent as a Fortune 500 company.

Telecoms giant Verizon hires 20,000 employees annually. It receives more than one million applications, with some roles, particularly frontline positions, netting more than 1,000 applicants.

“When we say high volume, we mean high volume,” Spring Lacy, Verizon’s global head of talent acquisition, culture and community, told HR Brew.

Verizon, like many other companies, has seen the volume of résumés it receives grow exponentially in recent years, as part of a trend that’s expected to continue as job seekers turn to AI tools to assist in their application process. Lacy spoke with HR Brew about her team’s process for identifying top candidates and initiatives for staying on top of the inflow of résumés.

Looking for the best. Verizon ensures its recruiters understand the expertise the company is looking for in candidates.

“Our recruiters are really the first point of engagement with our candidates,” Lacy said. “They work really closely with our HR business partners and our business leaders to understand: What are the skills and experiences that someone will need to be successful in the role?”

Recruiters use assessments to evaluate knowledge when hiring for roles, such as high-volume or technical positions. When it comes to interviews—of which Verizon conducts more than 60,000 annually—recruiters follow specific guidelines, including questions specific to the roles they’re recruiting for. Hiring managers handle the final stages of the recruitment process.

Tech push. While proud of the practices her team has established, Lacy said they’re planning to launch several projects in 2026 to make hiring even easier.

“Almost a million resumes to screen and 60,000 reviews is a lot. We know that there are technologies out there that can help with that, but we’re just at the beginning phases,” she said.

One initiative involves chatbots that candidates can engage with on Verizon’s careers website or through text messaging. The chatbots, for example, can help candidates determine what open jobs best fit their skills, experience, and location. They can also answer questions about job availability and help candidates apply for jobs more quickly and check the status of applications.

The goal is to free up recruiters to focus on the human side of their jobs. “By the time you actually get to a recruiter, you’ve been very well cared for, and then the recruiter can just focus on deepening relationship and assessing skills,” Lacy said.

As AI becomes more commonplace in the hiring process, many job seekers have expressed discomfort with the technology’s use in candidate selection. “Folks feel like AI is making all the decisions and that they never really had a chance at Verizon. We don’t have AI making decisions about hiring. Full stop,” she said.

Lacy pointed out that these sorts of concerns aren’t exactly new—in fact, in the early 2000s, job seekers and recruiters complained about internet job boards broadening the applicant pool and making the hiring process far less personal. She believes that AI can actually help address them. To that end, candidate experience, she added, will be a top priority next year.

“I think technology can help us to close that gap a little bit in terms of just helping people understand where they are in the process,” she said. “I always say people want news. Whether it’s good or bad, they just want to be informed.”

As her team further experiments with AI, she said they will need to maintain a balance between using the technology responsibly and not being left behind.

“We just want to make sure that we proceed with enough caution that allows us to make sure that there’s integrity in the process, but not so much caution that slows us down and doesn’t allow us to leverage such a fantastic technology that, literally, at this point, is sitting in our laps,” she said.