AI must support, not replace, the human heart of recruitment, according to Real Time Australia's Ellis Taylor
After years of insisting he wouldn't join the family business, Ellis Taylor now heads partnerships at Real Time Australia, the specialist tech recruitment firm his parents founded 35 years ago. Despite the familial roots, Taylor brings a fresh, future-facing perspective to the company - and to the recruitment sector as a whole.
"I joined the company to focus more on the emerging startups and scale-ups in Australia, and those entering our market," he said. That market, he explained, is being rapidly reshaped by artificial intelligence.
Taylor is clear-eyed about AI's impact: "It's made processes faster, more human, less human, more efficient and less efficient. And it's really a little bit of a mess where we are right now."
He believes the problem lies not in AI itself, but in the outdated hiring systems it's been dropped into. "AI has just exacerbated the problems with this already very clunky process. I'm really, really excited to see how we use AI to completely rewrite this traditional, long overdue-to-be-disrupted hiring system," he said.
AI's promise to streamline recruitment - by scanning CVs and shortlisting candidates - has yet to be fully realised, particularly for specialised roles. "It's very good at high-volume hiring," Taylor explained. "But when it comes into more specialised areas, we need a lot more insight into human behaviours, skills and aptitudes. A CV does a really bad job of that."
He's not alone in this critique. AI-driven recruitment tools have received growing criticism for reinforcing existing biases and missing high-quality candidates. At Real Time, Taylor has taken a clear stance. "We're not handing any hiring decisions over to machines. We're using AI to enhance human judgement, not replace it," he said.
For tech giants, AI is being used more effectively - to engage with candidates, personalise the hiring experience and identify talent in new ways.
Real Time has worked with tech giants like Google, Canva and Oracle. But Taylor warns many firms still use AI to speed things up rather than foster connection.
"A lot of them are scratching their heads as to why the talent they really want isn't engaging with them," he said.
He's especially optimistic about the future of specialist recruitment in the tech ecosystem. "AI should replace all the tasks that humans aren't good at - admin, for example. But recruitment is, and should remain, about human connection."
That human-first ethos is central to Real Time's approach. "Our product is human relationships," Taylor said. "Clients rely on us to access those relationships."
Still, the broader industry is at a crossroads. The number of companies is rising, but average team sizes are shrinking as AI makes organisations leaner.
"The box-and-line org chart is dying - thank the heavens," Taylor noted. "We're showing companies how more organic, fluid organisational ecosystems are the way forward."
Real Time is helping businesses of all sizes integrate AI thoughtfully. For those feeling overwhelmed or under-resourced, Taylor recommends bringing in external expertise. "We're placing AI specialists into companies on a short-term basis to help them automate their systems and free up capacity," he said.
Yet AI's current misuse is creating frustration - especially among candidates. "Candidates are pissed off, and they have absolutely every right to be," Taylor said. From AI-generated job descriptions to mass applications written by ChatGPT, the system is buckling under its own weight. Employers receive floods of near-identical CVs, then rely on AI to sift through them - often with poor results.
"Hiring managers are quickly realising these people are not the right fit. Their CV has been skewed, and now candidates are fed up because a lot of good ones have been missed," he explained.
The result? Employers are advertising fewer roles and leaning more heavily on personal networks and referrals. "Candidates are so fed up, they're not applying to jobs altogether. They're finding ways around the system," Taylor said.
But even in that breakdown, Taylor sees a silver lining.
"It's forcing candidates and employers to meet in a new arena - human connection. We're getting back to the original plan of just meeting someone and getting to know them."
Smart employers, he said, are now prioritising human qualities over rigid technical benchmarks.
"We look for candidates with the 'ROCKS' - resilience, opinion, compromise and creativity," he said. "It's less about 'can you pass this tech test' and more about how you collaborate and think."
He remains confident that companies who strike the right balance between technology and empathy will thrive. "We're a human-centric company. We use AI to level us up," he said. "It's working - candidates love the time we take to understand their true needs."
While many agencies struggle, Taylor says Real Time is growing. "I need to hire more of the best relationship-focused technical recruiters to scale what we've built," he said.
His advice to leaders hesitant to embrace AI is straightforward. "You're running a human business," he said. "So use AI to illuminate the talent you want, and then you'll be in a great position."