AI reshapes hiring in India, saves recruiters years of screening time

Bengaluru: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now embedded across the hiring lifecycle, right from searching, selecting resumes, to filtering profiles, matching candidates to role-based projects/work. With AI adoption in hiring workflows, employers created around 11,200 AI-enabled job listings, resulting in about 12 lakh automated screenings, which saved nearly four years of recruiter calling time.

Jobs and careers platform Apna.co in its report said more than 73 lakh AI interview sessions took place on its platform in 2025, with over 1.9 crore AI interview minutes. In its 'India at Work 2025' report, the platform revealed that job applications rose about 29% YoY, driven by higher participation from women and early-career professionals, as service-led hiring expanded across tier-1, 2 and 3 cities.

Across tech and staffing organisations, AI is being deployed primarily to improve speed, accuracy and consistency in the early stages of hiring, said CIEL HR MD and CEO Aditya Narayan Mishra. It is commonly used to craft and standardise job descriptions, screen resumes at scale and map candidate skills and experience against role requirements using Machine Learning models. These systems analyse large volumes of profiles in minutes, helping reduce manual effort, bias and turnaround time, he said.

"Importantly, AI is streamlining the initial layers of recruitment, allowing recruiters to shift their focus from administrative screening to deeper candidate engagement, such as assessing cultural fit, managing candidate experience and ensuring smoother onboarding. AI is also being leveraged across compliance, payroll and workforce administration to improve accuracy, reduce errors and ensure scalability," Mishra added.

Apna.co CEO — Jobs Marketplace Kartik Narayan said AI has also become a practical layer in everyday hiring, improving preparation for candidates and efficiency for employers.

AI-powered Business-to-Talent (B2T) platform Impacteers Founder Manohar Javvaji said AI has significantly strengthened CV screening by identifying inconsistencies, skill mismatches, and fabricated experience patterns that are often missed in manual reviews. Advanced models cross-validate resumes against job histories, skill benchmarks, and behavioural signals to flag anomalies. "This has helped HR teams reduce fake or inflated profiles early in the funnel. Importantly, AI acts as a verification layer, improving trust and accuracy, while ensuring genuine candidates are evaluated more fairly and efficiently," Javvaji said.

Also, after hiring, AI offers insights on performance trends and retention risks.

According to TeamLease Digital CEO Neeti Sharma, most companies are using AI to search, select and filter profiles. This acts as a first-level filter and helps recruiters screen high volumes of profiles, matching skills with JDs more effectively and in much less time. "The AI tools do flag inconsistent data points in the profiles, which helps eliminate candidates that would not fit the requirement," she said.

Like recruiters and companies, even job-seekers use AI to generate their profiles that match the JD (job description) completely. Hence, companies do not rely on only AI tools for hiring. "Using the tools as filters, and then the recruiters take over the hiring process. AI works as an enabler alongside human judgement, interviews and BGVs (background verifications) to make hiring a foolproof process," she said.