Insights & perspectives on modern recruitment

A Polling Number Worth Taking Seriously

A figure landed in the recruitment press two weeks ago that deserves more than a passing headline.

YouGov polling puts public opposition to AI-assisted shortlisting at 64%, with only 26% finding it acceptable.

That is not a fringe position. Two thirds of the working-age population, including the people your clients are trying to hire, are uncomfortable with the idea of a machine deciding whether their application gets read.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has since picked up the same thread, saying post-pandemic recruitment does not feel as though it is becoming fairer, and naming AI CV sifting specifically.

When a topic moves from industry discourse into political speech, the window for recruiters to get ahead of it is shortening fast.

The instinct for many in the industry will be to defend the technology, point to efficiency gains, or argue the public is simply uninformed. That instinct is probably wrong. The more useful question is: what is this polling actually measuring, and what does it mean for how you work?

What the Resistance Is Really About

The numbers contain a detail that changes the conversation.

Opposition to AI-assisted shortlisting runs at 64% overall, but the class split is the detail employers should notice: 30% of ABC1 respondents are comfortable with it, against just 20% of C2DE respondents. The people most likely to be filtered out are the least willing to accept the filter.

This is not an abstract technology debate. It is a fairness concern anchored in lived experience. Candidates who already feel disadvantaged by credential-based screening, degree requirements, or postcode bias are looking at AI shortlisting and seeing more of the same, faster.

While 70% of hiring managers trust AI decisions, only 8% of job seekers consider AI-based hiring processes fair, and nearly half of candidates report declining trust in hiring overall.

That gap between internal confidence and external perception is not a communications problem to be solved with better messaging. It is a legitimacy problem.

78% of job seekers now use AI in their own applications, and 63% say they have sat through an AI-run interview in the last six months.

Candidates are not rejecting AI wholesale. They are using it themselves. What they are rejecting is opacity: the sense that decisions are being made about them by systems they cannot question, by criteria they cannot see, without a human they can reach.

The Transparency Gap Is the Actual Product Problem

The 64% figure points to something recruiters have influence over right now. Most AI shortlisting tools are invisible to candidates. Applications go in, outcomes come back, and the process in between is a black box. That experience does not feel like efficiency to a candidate. It feels like indifference.

The same polling covers interview format too, and the picture is consistent: given a free choice, 70% of respondents would want to meet in person, 16% would opt for video, and only 6% for telephone.

People want contact. They want to feel assessed by someone who has actually looked at them as a person. Recruiters who can credibly offer that, and demonstrate it, are positioned to win business precisely because the market has moved in the opposite direction.

This is where the recruiter's role becomes genuinely differentiated. AI used well does not replace human judgment in the moments candidates care about most. It handles the repetitive back-end work so recruiters can spend more time on the interactions that actually build trust: the honest conversation about a role's fit, the feedback that helps someone improve, the presentation that shows a client something genuinely distinctive about a candidate.

Platforms like Floats are built around that principle: using AI to handle logistics and formatting so recruiters can focus their energy on relationships rather than administration. The goal is more human contact at the moments that matter, not less.

The Opportunity Inside the Opposition

Research conducted by YouGov on behalf of HireRight found that organisations worldwide are embracing AI as a driver of job creation and recruitment transformation, with a net positive 13% of HR decision-makers globally expecting workforce growth by the end of 2026.

AI in recruitment is not going away. The question is whether it gets deployed in ways that erode or strengthen candidate relationships.

Recruiters who treat the 64% figure as a mandate for transparency have a concrete advantage. That means being explicit with candidates about where AI is used in the process, what it does and does not decide, and who the human contact point is at each stage. It means ensuring that every candidate, whether successful or not, experiences the process as something designed for them rather than processed around them.

Macro hiring pressure and the impact of AI are among the named headwinds shaping the staffing market right now,

which means every recruiter is operating in a tighter environment. In that environment, candidate experience is not a nice-to-have. It is a competitive variable. Firms that can honestly say their process feels fair to the people going through it will attract better candidates and retain client relationships that others will lose.

Getting Ahead of the Conversation

The consent gap is not a crisis. It is a prompt. Recruiters who engage with it now, by auditing where AI touches their candidate journey, by communicating those touchpoints honestly, and by preserving human presence at the moments that count, will find themselves better positioned as regulation, political pressure, and candidate expectations continue to tighten.

The public is telling the industry something specific. Listening to it, and adapting, is not a concession to scepticism. It is what good recruitment looks like.