The Evolution of Hiring & Getting a Job🫱🏾‍🫲🏼

Every generation has experienced hiring differently.

Today, candidates are frustrated because they’re submitting dozens or even hundreds of applications and never hearing back. Recruiters are frustrated because a single job posting can receive hundreds or even thousands of applications, making it nearly impossible to review every candidate manually. AI has only amplified both sides of the problem. Candidates are using AI to tailor resumes, prepare for interviews, and apply to more jobs than ever before, while companies are using AI to summarize resumes, search talent pools, and assist with candidate screening.

It’s easy to look at all of this and assume AI is changing hiring. While AI is certainly changing things, I think it’s more accurate to say hiring has always evolved alongside the economy, technology, and the way people work. AI is simply the latest chapter in that story.

Before the internet, and long before AI, getting a job looked very different. Many people found work through family, friends, word of mouth, newspaper ads, or by walking into a business and asking if they were hiring. I remember doing this myself as a teenager. I’d walk into a business, ask if they were hiring, and sometimes get hired on the spot.

Businesses were smaller, hiring was more local, and employers often knew the people they hired personally or through someone they trusted. Many jobs were learned on the job, so employers weren’t always looking for years of experience. In many cases, your reputation mattered more than a resume.

As the United States industrialized and businesses continued to grow, hiring became more complicated. Companies expanded beyond their local communities, jobs became more specialized, and employers had more to lose if they hired the wrong person. At the same time, they were no longer evaluating people they already knew. They were hiring complete strangers, often from much larger applicant pools. That meant companies needed a more consistent way to compare candidates before deciding who to interview.

Around the same time, governments also began introducing labor laws that reshaped the relationship between employers and workers. Regulations around wages, working hours, workplace safety, child labor, and workers’ rights made employment more standardized and formal. While these laws didn’t create resumes or interviews, they did contribute to hiring becoming a more structured process as businesses grew and employers became responsible for complying with an expanding set of employment regulations.

That’s why resumes became so important. They gave employers a standardized way to understand a candidate’s work history, education, and experience. Applications made it easier to collect the same information from every applicant. References provided another perspective from someone who had worked with the candidate before, while degrees and certifications became indicators that someone had developed knowledge in a particular field. Interviews then gave employers an opportunity to validate what they had read and determine whether someone would be a good fit for the role.

Hiring became even more structured following the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Employers increasingly needed to demonstrate that hiring decisions and job requirements were based on legitimate business needs rather than protected characteristics. That led many organizations to adopt more standardized applications, interview processes, documentation, and record keeping, while HR departments took on a larger role in helping companies comply with employment laws.

None of these hiring practices became standard because they perfectly predicted success, but because they were the best tools employers had to reduce uncertainty while hiring at a much larger scale under an expanding set of employment regulations.

For decades, this combination of resumes, applications, interviews, and employment regulations became the foundation of modern hiring. Then the internet changed everything again.

Online job boards made it possible to search thousands of openings instead of relying on newspaper ads. LinkedIn transformed professional networking into an online recruiting platform. Applicant tracking systems gave employers a way to organize and manage growing numbers of applications. These innovations made it easier for candidates to find opportunities almost anywhere, but they also made it easier to apply for more jobs than ever before.

That shift created a new challenge - companies no longer struggled to find applicants, they struggled to identify the right hire from an overwhelming volume of applications.

Today, AI is accelerating that issue. Candidates can create tailored resumes and submit applications in minutes, while employers are using AI to help process the increasing number of applications they receive. In many ways, both sides are responding to the same problem from opposite directions. Candidates are trying to increase their chances of getting noticed, while employers are trying to identify qualified candidates without spending weeks reviewing every application manually.

So where do I think hiring and looking for a job are going?

I don't think resumes are disappearing, but I do think their role is changing. As AI makes it easier to generate resumes and apply for more jobs, employers will continue looking for stronger evidence that someone can actually do the work. At the same time, I think both candidates and employers will increasingly rely on AI to search, evaluate, and navigate the hiring process more efficiently.

I also expect employment laws and regulations to continue evolving alongside these changes. As with previous shifts in hiring, governments are already responding. New laws and regulations, such as New York City’s AI hiring law and the European Union’s AI Act, are beginning to address how AI can be used in employment decisions, with a growing focus on transparency, bias, auditing, and human oversight. Every major shift in hiring has eventually been followed by new expectations for how employers should use it responsibly.

I don’t think the story on the evolution of hiring is about resumes, applicant tracking systems, or AI. I believe it’s about how employers have continually adapted to find the right people as work, technology, and society have changed. I expect that evolution to continue long after today’s hiring tools have been replaced by whatever comes next.