More than 2500 AI-led job interviews were carried out by a single company last month by a New Zealand company — a sign of how rapidly artificial intelligence is reshaping hiring in New Zealand.
Employment software company Employment Hero, which says its New Zealand customer base has grown 60% in the past two years, told BNZ Business Breakfast businesses were using AI to sort through hundreds of applications, rank candidates and conduct first-round screening interviews as employers deal with an increasingly competitive job market.
To see how the technology works in practice, I gave it a test run — interviewing for a fictional reporter role at TVNZ through an AI recruitment assistant.
Testing the technology
The interview began much like a standard online screening call, with the AI introducing itself before moving through a series of questions tailored specifically to journalism and reporting.
Questions included prompts like: 'Can you walk us through a key career achievement where you uncovered an exclusive story that had a significant impact?' and 'Describe a specific instance where you successfully mentored a junior journalist to improve their reporting skills'.
Unlike a traditional interview, there was no person on the other end of the screen — just an AI-generated voice asking questions, analysing responses and generating follow-up prompts in real time.
The whole thing took around five minutes.
Artificial intelligence is increasingly reshaping how New Zealanders get hired — with one company alone conducting more than 2500 AI-led interviews last month. (Source: Breakfast)
Recruitment under pressure
Employment Hero chief executive Neil Webster said the technology was designed to help employers manage overwhelming volumes of job applications.
“Firstly they’re using the AI to work out who should be on that shortlist,” he said.
“If you’ve had 200 people apply for a role, you need to be able to quickly comb that down and rank those employees, so the AI does that and gives you a shortlist.”
Webster said New Zealand’s labour market had become increasingly difficult for job seekers, with some employers receiving hundreds of applications for a single position.
“Unfortunately for all the job hunters out there, there is a lot more people looking for jobs than jobs are going,” he said.
"We’re actually seeing for each role hundreds and hundreds of applicants applying for each role.”
The company said the technology was growing rapidly in popularity, with more than 2500 AI interviews conducted in April alone.
Bias concerns
As AI becomes more embedded in recruitment, concerns are also being raised around transparency, bias and the role humans still play in hiring decisions.
“One of our firm rules is that there’s always a human in the loop,” Webster said.
“We never want the AI to make a decision; we want the AI to make a recommendation and to save the employer time.”
He acknowledged there was always a risk of bias in recruitment, whether hiring decisions are made by humans or AI systems.
“We’ve always got to be alert for that bias. We train our AI against millions of candidates, and we review to see if we can detect bias.”
Webster believes human involvement will remain critical in the final stages of recruitment.
“I think AI is going to be an integral part of work everywhere and recruitment absolutely,” he said.
“I’d be very surprised if five years’ time you didn’t have the vast majority of interviews involving AI at least at some point in the recruitment structure.”
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