From recruiting and retention to company culture and the latest in HR tech, HR Brew delivers up-to-date industry news and tips to help HR pros stay nimble in today’s fast-changing business environment.

HR Brew

Sam Blum

hr-brew.com

Canva scours 300,000 job applications a year 

 Every application is looked at by human eyes, says Global Head of People Jennie Rogerson. 

How Canva scours 300,000 job applications a year 

Adam DeRose

A recruiter’s work doesn't stop during downturns, it just changes

When requisitions dry up, it’s a great time to tackle work that will improve talent acquisition processes.

How in-house recruiters can stay valuable when hiring slows

This new bill might just be the solution to recruiters’ staffing struggles. 

The House has introduced a bill that could help low-income job-seekers access skills—and recruiters find qualified workers.

Lawmakers eye a change that would make skills-based training eligible for popular Pell Grant program

cork board with job board text next to morning brew coffee mug and notebooks

Recruitment

An illustration of a photo of HR Brew reporter Paige McGlauflin.

Paige McGlauflin

As immigration enforcement skyrockets under the second Trump administration, a new problem is keeping HR teams up at night: I-9 audits.

The one-page forms, used to verify the identity and employment eligibility of new workers, are subject to review from the government at any time. Experts warned that government agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), would ramp up investigations after President Trump took office again in January.

Risks abound with I-9 investigations. Penalties for employers can range from $288 to $2,861 for paperwork errors alone on the form, while knowingly employing an unauthorized worker can result in a fine as high as $5,724 or even criminal charges. As a result, more organizations are auditing their own I-9 forms to avoid getting in trouble should ICE target them for an investigation.

“The key defense to addressing ICE issues is to make sure your I-9s are in order,” David Jones, a managing partner at Fisher Phillips's Memphis office and co-chair of its Immigration Practice Group, said during a breakout session at SHRM’s annual conference in San Diego.

Organizations are increasingly placing that responsibility on HR’s shoulders. Jessica Roberts, manager of HR operations at the Delaware-based healthcare system Christiana Care, told HR Brew that her team is currently conducting a self-audit. The primary driver of the audit was potential investigations: “Just because of today’s climate, as far as the worry of the potential for an I-9 audit,” she said.

Many employers used to overlook I-9 form compliance, but more are looking to conduct audits as enforcement ramps up, John Fay, director of product strategy at Equifax Workforce Solutions and a former practicing immigration attorney, told HR Brew.

“Mostly what we’re hearing now is employers coming to us and saying, ‘What do I do? How do I prepare? What’s the risk?’” Fay said.

Experts strongly recommend that employers use a third-party provider to conduct an audit, because often those conducting the audit in-house will fail to see the previous errors made, which could potentially create an even bigger compliance mess for future self-audits. Experts suggest a third-party auditor could catch inaccuracies that otherwise might be missed.

But “any self assessment is better than none at all,” Fay said. If employers can demonstrate that they were attempting to follow best practices, even if they made errors, the government might be more forgiving when it comes to levying penalties.

To start, some organizations may begin by auditing a sample of all of their forms, while others might choose to review every form. Afterwards, they’ll need to pull the forms in whatever form they’re in (on paper or electronically).

From there, employers will want to ensure they’re getting every form for every active employee, as well as former employees dating back a certain period (either three years since their start date, or one year since their end date, depending on whichever is the longer period).

“Then it’s just going through them all, reviewing them, figuring out what the issues are, and coming up with a strategy of how we’re going to fix them,” Fay said.

As for the frequency of conducting self-audits, Fay explained that it depends on the employer and industry. In sectors that more heavily rely on immigrant labor with a heightened risk for investigations (such as agriculture or manufacturing), organizations might want to conduct reviews more often, such as monthly or quarterly.

Common mistakes Roberts’ team keeps finding as part of their audits include missing documents, incorrect hire dates, and missing initials.

“Nothing crazy, but you can be fined for everything. In the scheme of things, everything is a worry,” she said.

Roberts’ team is not alone as many employers catch errors on these forms. “The I-9 has been one page for most of its existence since 1986, and I’ve almost probably never seen an employer who had every I-9 done correctly,” David Jones said.

Other common errors include employees inputting their birthdate for their hire date, foreign nationals attesting to the wrong status (for example, a visa holder erroneously selecting that they are a permanent resident), and leaving parts of the form blank.

“There’s probably a couple hundred different ways you can mess up an I-9 form,” Fay said.

He also warned against going in and retroactively fixing a problem. Fay recalled one public case where a company discovered it had several incomplete I-9 forms: The employee auditing the forms went and retroactively completed and signed the forms, backdating them for fear of getting in trouble. But, they signed and backdated using their married name on forms completed before they were married.

“The government actually did this investigation and discovered: ‘Hey, you weren’t actually married back then.’ So it looked really, really bad,” Fay said. “That’s the number one thing with audits: You want to be as transparent as possible. No white out, no backdating. We always recommend attaching a note explaining that you saw the issue,” he added, noting that with the notion of good faith, if an employer demonstrates that they’re making an effort, “many times the government will turn the other way.”

A pen rests over an Employee Eligibility Verification form, commonly called the form I-9, which each new hire in the U.S. must fill out at the start of their employment.

What HR can expect when conducting an I-9 audit

As the Trump administration ramps up immigration enforcement, more employers are tasking their HR teams with getting their I-9 forms in check.

What HR pros should expect when conducting I-9 self-audits, according to experts

An illustration of reporter Courtney Vinopal's headshot.

Courtney Vinopal

Spotify’s new CHRO Anna Lundström is stepping into the role during a fairly rosy period for the streaming giant. For the first time since it was launched in 2008, the Stockholm-based company 

 for an entire year in 2024. A few rockier periods preceded this achievement, though, including layoffs that affected 17% of the company’s workforce in 2023.

Lundström, who has been with Spotify for nine years, officially took over as CHRO in April, replacing Katarina Berg. She said her team is now focused on hiring “homegrown talent” for open roles, as well as preparing the workforce for the AI age.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

What was the succession process like when you took over from your predecessor?

The good thing is that succession planning is a huge focus of ours, and has been for many years. Katarina, my predecessor, who I also reported into for nine years, was walking the talk by making me ready for the role.

Prior to this job I had probably the next largest role in the HR org, as I covered all of the business areas in Spotify, all the revenue teams…supporting our chief business officer and co-president, Alex Norström, for about three years before.

That’s a big part of our strategy, what we are actually coaching our leaders and managers to do here…you’re not doing your job if you don’t have a successor.

Any new priorities now that you’ve formally stepped into the CHRO role?

Unsurprisingly, AI is top of mind. AI has been a huge part of our product for a very long time…and now we’re very focused on embracing AI as an organization amongst the workforce.

Gustav Söderström, chief product officer and co-president, and myself, went out to the organization about a month ago and talked about the importance of AI, but with a learning lens. We’re all going to start embracing this regardless of role, offering trainings and tools.

We recently did hack week, which is usually a week where all our product and technology employees get a week [when they’re] free to work on a passion product, something they’re interested in. We went and offered that to the full organization, regardless of role, and the theme was “play with AI,” and that was very well received.

We are experimenting with an AI analyst that will give you real time data, such as, “what’s the current attrition rate over here? What’s the engagement score over there?”

Another one is just deck review—reviewing decks to make them ready for executive presentations, creating GPTs for that to save time…The learning angle really works for us.

You mentioned Spotify’s “work from anywhere” policy has helped the company recruit diverse talent. Has Spotify’s approach to diversity changed given some of the executive orders from the current US administration?

We did a big pivot about two years ago to focus on 

. That’s one big part of who we are as a company, everyone should feel like they belong and are included at the company.

We need a workforce that mirrors the world. Our product is in 184 markets, and our consumers are all over the world, so we need to have a workforce that can serve our consumers in a very real way.

Our focus on inclusion, equity, and diversity has not changed. We needed to train our managers…to be inclusive leaders and so forth. But we have not changed anything…It’s needed for our business to have a diverse workforce.

Spotify’s headcount has fluctuated over the years. How is your team thinking about hiring priorities now?

We have the last two years doubled down on 

We have our own internal talent marketplace built on machine learning, [called] 

We have a strategy where all open jobs should first go in-house because of the belief that we need to retain our talent. What keeps people here is the challenges, the opportunities, the ability to grow, and it's been a success for us. We filled 30% of our open jobs last year internally, going up from 22% the year before.


Spotify CHRO Anna Lundström stands in front of the streaming platform's logo

Spotify’s CHRO talks AI, recruiting internally, and DEI

Anna Lundström, who has been with Spotify for nine years, took over as the streaming giant’s HR chief in April. 

Spotify’s new CHRO on encouraging employees to “play with AI” 

Working through a flood of applications with rising pressure to fill roles quickly with top talent, recruiters haven’t had an easy go lately. To help address key pain points, applicant tracking system and hiring platform Greenhouse announced a suite of new AI-driven features aimed at easing the burden on talent acquisition pros while hastening the hiring process.

Greenhouse is designing new tools to help recruiters make faster and better hiring decisions inside their existing workflows at a time when there are more and more applicants, but fewer and fewer recruiters to handle open requisitions. Unveiled at the UNLEASH Conference in Las Vegas last week, the new tools promise to automate labor-intensive tasks, from filtering resumes to drafting job descriptions.

“Application volume has doubled over the last two years,” Meredith Johnson, Greenhouse’s new chief product officer, said in Las Vegas. “That volume is clear. We’re seeing in our data three times the number of applicants per recruiter. So there’s a real challenge here that’s forming.”

Johnson pointed to a 102% spike in job applications since the release of ChatGPT, according to Greenhouse data. Generative AI has made it easier for candidates to tailor their application materials for specific job descriptions, and robo-apply tools allow job seekers to throw the proverbial spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

In its May release, Greenhouse announced new AI-powered features including:

AI-assisted personalized candidate outreach

“When we think about talent, talent acquisition, recruiting, and all the things that our operational teams have to do, our recruiting teams, our hiring teams, we’re really trying to be pragmatic and focused and prescriptive about where we are adding AI technologies and features right into the workflow,” Johnson said.

Features such as candidate filters and personalized candidate outreach are aimed at helping recruiters engage with the best talent for the role, but to help winnow down the field and better engage top talent.

“It is about saving time and money and being efficient,” she said. “To me, what’s more important is actually driving up the efficacy of the value we’re trying to deliver. In this case, great hires.”

The percentage increase in job applications since the release of ChatGPT has been updated, per Greenhouse data.

Greenhouse unveils new AI hiring tools

New features equip recruiters with more tools to streamline hiring amid high volumes of applications

follows a shepherd boy on a journey to find the treasure from his dreams, [spoiler alert] only to learn that the treasure was back home where his journey began (so why did I read all 208 pages?). Coelho suggests sometimes you have to go on a journey to recognize the value of what you’ve got.

In some ways, recruiters have been on their own AI-powered, 

-esque treasure hunt in TA. But even AI proponents see core 

 to the future of work. New AI tools have created a new set of issues and concerns—forcing some to rethink how to pursue new talent.

And in some ways, emerging AI tools and platforms are creating the opportunity for recruiters to return to their people-focused roots: building and leveraging professional relationships, creating a positive candidate experience, and navigating the nuances of human needs in the workplace.

“[TA] can be very transactional anytime you’re using AI,” said Bonnie Dilber, a recruiter with Zapier and a 

. “You’re never going to have that same human touch, and if you’re a company that wants to hire the best talent out there, that talent wants to feel courted; they want to feel like your company is putting as much human time into them as they are into you.”

New AI tools have allowed for recruiters and TA pros to better communicate with their networks, create more effective cold-outreach messages, and for companies to better correspond with the massive amount of applicants for open roles that 

 via templated auto-send emails. But these AI level-ups, perhaps, aren’t always delivering on the candidate experience.

“Candidates are now complaining about that saying, ‘I don't want to hear from your ATS. I want to hear from a person.’ So what makes any product person believe that a candidate’s going to want to go through an experience where everything is automated or done through a machine, rather than a person, when people don’t even like getting a rejection [email] from the system,” said Dayforce’s VP of global TA Steve Knox.

Dayforce’s strategy is evolving “more and more” towards “bringing that human element back into the recruiting process,” said Knox in noting that the high-touch aspects of the company’s recruiting process are the components of the program that receive the highest praise.

“Every time I ask candidates, ‘How would you feel if this process was automated’, everybody runs screaming, saying they would never want to go through that,” he said.

Joel Lalgee, who runs a boutique recruitment firm, The Realest Recruiter, and hosts a podcast of the same name, told HR Brew that AI has allowed for the mass-sending of personalized messages creating “a lot of high-quality spam.”

“But you only have an advantage with AI if you’re the only one using the tool,” Lalgee said. “Once everybody’s using a tool, it then becomes really, really noisy…In the future, if we’re all used to this high-quality spam, we’re not going to respond to messages.”

This is where a strong employer brand comes into play, otherwise recruiters for smaller or lesser-known organizations will need to contend with standing out in messages and differentiate their outreach from other companies. Lalgee said he sees in-person recruiting at conferences or industry events as continuing to be a key future component to TA

In addition to returning to bespoke, human-authored outreach, AI tools available to candidates have also led some TA leaders to bring candidates back into the office for in-person (ID-verified) interviews or skills assessments.

“When it comes to global hiring, we’re seeing a lot more fraud,” Lalgee said, pointing to people showing up for interviews who aren’t who they say they are, different people showing up for work on the first day than the person who interviewed, or “pyramid schemes”-type candidates, who take on roles but then outsource the actual work to freelancers or contractors.

Lalgee also pointed to fraud involving AI-use itself: in a virtual interview setting, candidates can sometimes appear on screen but are caught looking off screen for an excessive amount during the interview, referring to AI tools to deliver the best answers.

“I think the only way that I’ve heard from people trying to solve that problem is just to get people back on site,” Lalgee said. “Which kind of ruins remote work for everybody. So I’m like, how did we screw that one up?”

image of people waiting to be interviewed for a job

AI is helping bring recruiting back to its human-centered roots

Human responses to AI use are refocusing talent acquisition back to its core human function.

Benchmark venture capitalist Victor Lazarte 

 podcast that AI is coming for white-collar jobs like lawyers and recruiters.

“One thing that I think is super exciting right now is just replacing people,” Lazarte told podcast host Harry Stebbings. “It sounds really bad when you say it this way, but I actually think it’s the most exciting opportunity in venture right now.”

Lazarte suggested that AI interviews could be more efficient than human ones and added that tech investment into hiring can showcase improvements in talent acquisition with data, and that data can, in turn, help companies adjust their models to continually improve outcomes.

While recruiters and talent acquisition pros are not strangers to automation and new AI tools, whether those tools prove valuable enough to replace humans remains unseen. HR Brew spoke with recruiters and TA experts, and asked for their insights into the possibility of a fully automated recruitment process.

“A lot of these people building these tools have never worked in HR or recruiting to really understand how this operates,” said Steve Knox, global head of TA at Dayforce, which boasts its own suite of 

. “I can't tell you how many times I’ve had entrepreneurs reach out to me to say, ‘Hey, Steve, can you walk us through how recruiting works, wing-to-wing, so that we can build this better,’ and I’m surprised at how often these people do not really understand the day-to-day workings of how recruiting operates.”

Joel Lalgee, who runs both a boutique recruitment firm, The Realest Recruiter, and a podcast of the same name, agrees.

“I think a lot of these VCs that are saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got a tool that can replace recruiting.’ It’s because a lot of them have reduced recruiting down to where it’s just an algorithm, where it’s [matching] a job description with a resume,” Lalgee said. “But anyone who’s in recruiting knows that that’s the starting point. There’s so much more.”

Lalgee said current AI tools are effective at early stages of recruitment, but they fall short of addressing deeper challenges around candidate-employer fit.

“You’re solving the top of funnel, but you’re not really solving why it’s so hard to find matches with people,” he said, adding that many large companies are facing an onslaught of incoming applications, so AI has been useful in taking a first pass at the pile, and it can even support lightening the load via some AI-led interviewing.

But Lalgee said the current labor market likely won’t exist forever. He said the majority of his career has been spent passive recruiting and "hunting people down" to sell them to open roles, not sifting through hundreds and hundreds of applications.

“What we’re seeing is definitely an advancement in technology and the capabilities that we have, but we’re also seeing [AI solve] a lot of problems [with] this particular market,” he said. “I think what a lot of these companies are underestimating is the fact that it’s a job market…you’re going to see shifts in supply and demand.”

Stephanie Sansone, who runs TA at iCIMS, said recruiters should embrace AI, especially for the rote work involved in TA, but she’s not concerned that AI tools are primed to help with some of the most challenging, intuitive components to hiring.

“We need to continue to evolve into strategic partners and advisors that are more comfortable leveraging and amplifying our employer brand, telling this story, and navigating in the area of nuance—sometimes where I find AI is the most successful is where it’s black or white. But recruiters, we live in the ambiguity of gray,” Sansone said.

Recruiters are constantly hearing and navigating different needs between candidates and hiring managers, and have become “professional matchmakers,” she said. No current technology is capable of navigating the nuance of different human needs and figuring out where they are.

“Where recruiters bring in incredible value is being able to translate what sometimes is on a piece of paper and doesn’t tell the full story, but the recruiters can give context and color with specific examples through the conversation that they’ve had with candidates,” Sansone said.


Photo collage of shapes containing a recruiter looking at a resume and a close up of a laptop with floating binary code. (Credit: Illustration: Anna Kim, Photos: Adobe Stock)

Can AI replace recruiters?

We asked TA experts where the future of AI fits into recruiting.

Deepfakes aren’t just something you have to worry about your uncle falling prey to while browsing his Facebook newsfeed.

As AI continues to evolve, recruiters now have to worry about candidates using 

 during interviews. Just ask Bettina Liporazzi, recruiting lead at 

, a remote digital studio that hires internationally (Liporazzi, for one, lives in Argentina).

She was contacted in mid-March by someone claiming to be an out-of-work software engineer. Though Make wasn’t hiring for their skillset, they wanted to connect, in case any relevant roles turned up in the future. After taking a quick glance at their résumé, she invited them to an introductory call.

“I’ll be honest, their résumé looked okay. I didn’t look into it with much detail, especially with how legit the companies were,” Liporazzi told HR Brew. “They reached out to me saying, ‘I’m out of a job,’ and with the market as it is, you are a human being. You want to help people.”

But from that point on, something felt off. They never accepted the Google Meet invite, and though they joined the 10-minute interview, (possibly via a private browser like Incognito, leading Google to flag them as suspicious), they did not turn on their camera—declining Liporazzi’s repeated requests to do so, claiming it was broken. After Liporazzi suggested rescheduling, they offered to restart their computer to fix the issue.

“I don’t know anyone who works remotely and whose camera is broken,” she said. “That’s something that, in the past, I would have said, ‘Okay, no problem. Let’s have a call without the video today.’ I cannot afford to do that. It’s not safe, unfortunately.”

Once they came on camera, things got fishier. Their eye and mouth movements appeared unnatural and not in sync with their speaking, and the edges of their face were distorted, as if they were using a sophisticated version of Snapchat’s 

Liporazzi—who captured and shared this footage in a now-viral 

“The filter was basically very similar; the eyes, the mouth, everything looked quite similar,” she said. “If I hadn’t seen that post before I don't know if I would have noticed.”

When she asked the candidate to wave their hand in front of their face—a tactic that can 

 the filter—they immediately left the call. They’d only been on camera for 30 seconds, but she was shaken.

“It was very creepy,” she said. “You have no idea who you’re talking to.”

Deepfake job candidates are becoming more common, in part because job seekers are hiring professional interviewers to go through the hiring process for them, Ben Walker, COO at Glider AI, an AI skills assessment and interview platform that 

 tools that scan for AI use, told HR Brew.

In less-common cases, deepfakes could be bad actors. Last summer, for example, cybersecurity firm KnowBe4 

 that someone from North Korea stole a US-based identity, posing as an IT worker through the hiring process. The firm caught them before they could access data or compromise systems, but others 

The best recruiters can do is look out for deepfaker red flags. Many target IT or tech roles, as they’re more likely to be remote, and well-paid.

“That’s where the big dollars are. That’s where it’s worth taking a bigger risk,” Walker said. “If I want to attempt something fraudulent, I’m going to make a lot more money in software engineering.”

Glider AI is currently developing tools to detect deepfakes, though Walker is still coaching clients on human interventions, such as asking candidates to turn on their cameras, or watching for unnatural eye or mouth movements, or voice distortions.

“Everyone needs to have a heightened awareness, unfortunately, that this is, I hate to say a new normal, but with the distributed remote workforce being a thing that’s probably not going to go away en masse, we have to brace for the worst,” he said.

After her deepfake encounter, Liporazzi noticed previously missed red flags, like outreach that appeared to be AI-generated and repeated—they had reached out two years prior. She then noticed suspiciously similar messages from another “candidate,” sent on the same days in 2023 and 2025.

Now, she warns other recruiters to be aware of the signs and best practices for remote interviews.

“We have to help our community and we have to talk to one another and say, ‘Hey, this is happening. Just be careful.’ Because if you have no idea what the intentions are or the real reason behind it, you don’t have an understanding of how risky it would be if you let that person in the organization,” she said.

A detected deepfake displayed on a glitchy computer screen.

How one recruiter caught an AI deepfake

“It was very creepy.”

How this recruiter realized she was interviewing an AI deepfake

AI-powered interviewing platform Ribbon opens up for general availability this week. The start-up—boasting $8 million in funding from Radical Ventures, with participation from Social Leverage, Cadenza Ventures, and GD1—was co-founded in 2023 by an Amazon AI alum and a former head of people ops pro.

The pair is betting that intelligent voice AI in the interview process will benefit both recruiters and candidates with a faster and more candidate-friendly alternative to traditional hiring, which often require significant human effort to sift through and screen potential candidates, and can leave job seekers waiting weeks for responses, if any are provided at all.

“I have always worked within AI and applying AI to really hard problems,” said co-founder Arsham Ghahramani, pointing to his work at Amazon on AI recommendations and at cancer-screening software company Ezra. “I’ve always been really, really passionate about building very human AI products.”

In fact, it was at Ezra where he met Ribbon co-founder Dave Vu, who oversaw talent and people operations at the cancer screening company as it experienced significant growth.

“When we were there, we worked super closely together on hiring, because at the time, we were just scaling really fast as a start-up,” he said. “That was actually how the idea for Ribbon started as well, because we were hiring a ton of people at the time, and had to think a lot about, how do we hire really fast and really well?”

The platform is chiefly targeting talent acquisition (TA) in high-turnover industries, such as manufacturing, healthcare, airports, food service, and retail using AI-powered voice interviews. Ribbon’s primary offering allows candidates to interact with an AI-powered interview screener to conduct live human-like screening conversations with candidates.

The system also scores and summarizes interviews, providing insights to the TA team and offering immediate platform-generated feedback to candidates, who can also use AI-generated content inside their Ribbon profile to bolster their own chances for securing future opportunities.

“We have this kind of technology like voice AI that can make creating 

, but for everyone, way easier,” he said. “How could we get someone like a factory worker, for example, to have a profile on a platform? And…it’s actually a really big ask these days to ask someone to fully fill out their entire profile.”

Following a five-minute AI screening interview, Ribbon can transform gathered information into a profile on the platform.

 Ribbon can be interacted with 24-7—a notable differentiator to its human counterparts, who often engage in screening and interview work during traditional 9-to-5 hours.

Interviewing outside the 9-to-5 opens opportunities for the working parent or student to actively pursue work on their own time when their schedule allows, Ghahramani said, adding that the current status quo creates barriers to opportunities for those with immovable commitments inside those “normal business hours.”

“I think there’s another subtle piece as well, which is that almost every company is restricted by the number of interviews that they can do,” he said. “There’s no company out there that can interview 100% of all the candidates at the moment if they’re doing human interviews.”

With Ribbon, the right talent can be better identified by the team, and TA pros can focus their human interactions with vetted, quality candidates surfaced by the AI. Ghahramani noted that the company takes bias and model training very seriously, and credits norms in the health AI world to their approach: studying the impacts of the AI in a similar manner as one would studying the effects of AI on a health outcome.

Ribbon is also compatible with 45 popular commercial ATS platforms, including Workday, Lever, Greenhouse, and BambooHR. Ahead of its launch to general availability, Ribbon has been working with companies like LAZ Parking, Fuze HR, and First Brands Group, shrinking time-to-interview from 48 hours to under five minutes, and reducing hiring timelines by 30–40%, according to the company.

“We’re really trying to be one of the first platforms where we think everyone can win,” he said. “A job applicant can have a much nicer experience. You can have a richer profile, and also, as a company, you end up finding way better applicants, also faster….It can be win-win.”

Half of an AI robot face next to and split with half a human woman’s face