According to Inc, LinkedIn has updated and fully launched its AI hiring tools, specifically LinkedIn Hiring Pro, across all English-speaking markets. The tool is designed to help small businesses sort through job applicants to find the best candidates. Senior director of product management Andrew Chimka states that early user research shows the feature saves small businesses more than six hours each week on recruitment. That’s nearly a full working day saved. The tools were built based on feedback from small business leaders who consistently report that finding skilled talent is a major challenge.
AI Saves Time, But Does It Find Talent?
Look, saving six hours a week is nothing to sneeze at. For a small team, that’s huge. It means less time staring at resumes and more time actually running your business. But here’s the thing: LinkedIn’s own product guy, Andrew Chimka, hints at the real issue. He says the frustration is “more of a problem of perception, rather than a lack of skills.” Basically, companies are bad at seeing potential. They want someone who’s already done the exact job in the exact industry, on a perfect resume.
So the AI is supposed to fix that by making hiring more “skills based.” It aims to spot candidates pivoting careers who have transferable skills but not the obvious pedigree. That’s a noble goal. But I’m skeptical. Can an AI, trained on mountains of existing job data and human biases, truly see potential that hiring managers routinely miss? Or will it just become a more efficient gatekeeper, using different metrics to filter out the same people?
The Human Problem Behind the AI Solution
This is the core of it. The tool might surface a great candidate who’s a career-changer. But then a human manager still has to make the call. If the manager’s perception is the problem, does giving them a slightly different shortlist actually solve it? The AI might be pointing at a diamond in the rough, but the manager might still see… well, rough.
And let’s be real. For small businesses, hiring is intensely personal. It’s about culture fit, hustle, and gut feeling as much as skills. Can an algorithm quantify that? Probably not. So the real value of this tool might just be the time savings, letting owners focus on the final, human stages of the process. That’s a win, even if the AI isn’t a magic talent scout. The promise of a fairer, skills-based process is fantastic. But the execution will depend entirely on how the humans use the tool, not just the tool itself.
