Heidi Barnett
President at isolved Talent Acquisition
isolved Talent Acquisition
Episode 34
Unlock Quality Hires: AI Strategies to Outsmart the Volume Game
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleOctober 6, 2025 · 11:12
Thesis
“The value in recruiting lies in the *quality* and *qualification* of candidates, not merely the volume, and effective use of AI tools, coupled with well-defined inputs like job ads and screening questions, is crucial for optimizing the hiring process.”
Show notes
When tech layoffs hit in 2022 and 2023, Heidi Barnett watched a surge of applications flood recruiting pipelines — and quickly realized the volume was making everything worse, not better. Hundreds of applicants for every open role, most of them wrong for the job, and recruiting teams drowning in a problem they couldn't actually see their way out of. The answer wasn't more recruiters. It was smarter inputs.
Heidi's role at isolved Talent Acquisition has put her at the intersection of AI and recruiting at exactly the moment when that intersection matters most. Her diagnosis of why so many AI implementations in recruiting fail: garbage in, garbage out. The job ad is too generic. The screening questions don't actually screen for what matters. The AI gets trained on the wrong signals and surfaces the wrong people. The fix isn't better AI — it's better inputs. Specific, prescriptive job descriptions that include "a day in the life." Screening questions that actually differentiate candidates. Assessments that align with what the role requires.
Her most quotable line: "Volume doesn't necessarily equal value." 150 applicants feels good — like a warm blanket, she says — but if none of them are qualified, the number means nothing. The real metric is whether your process surfaces the right people efficiently. That's what AI, done well, actually enables.
What you'll learn:
- How the tech layoff wave created a high-volume recruiting crisis — and why volume made things worse, not better
- Why AI recruiting tools fail when the inputs (job ads, screening questions) are too generic
- How to write job descriptions that attract qualified candidates and train AI effectively
- The AI candidate matching, video interview, and pre-hire assessment stack that isolved uses
- Why treating hiring as a system (not a pipeline) changes how you approach every input
- The "volume doesn't equal value" principle — and what to optimize for instead
Built by People is presented by Previ — the free tool that helps HR teams boost internal communication engagement.
What you'll take away
- 1Prioritize candidate quality over volume by optimizing job ads and screening processes.
- 2Leverage AI-driven tools (candidate matching, video interviews, pre-hire assessments) for efficient candidate screening and prioritization.
- 3Invest in well-written, specific job descriptions, including a 'day in the life' section, to attract qualified candidates and improve AI matching.
- 4Treat hiring as a system, ensuring all inputs (job ads, screening questions, assessments) are aligned for effective AI utilization and better conversion rates.
- 5Continuously train and provide feedback to AI tools to improve their accuracy and effectiveness in identifying best-fit candidates.
What most organizations get wrong
- •Volume doesn't necessarily equal value, challenging the conventional HR belief that more applicants are always better.
In Heidi's words
“Volume doesn't necessarily equal value. So a lot of times you'll hear HR professionals say, I got 150 candidates for this job, right? It makes us feel good. It's like a little warm blanket that we put over ourselves. However, unless there are— the candidates are qualified, it's not great.”
This quote directly challenges the common belief that high applicant volume is always a positive indicator in recruitment.
“The more generic it was, the more mismatched the candidates were. And so that's really one of the challenges that, that came out of this is that we had to rewrite and be really clear. Prescriptive about the different things that we were looking for.”
Highlights the critical importance of specificity in job advertisements for attracting suitable candidates and effective AI matching.
“I love to include a day in the life section. If you can get a hiring manager to really help lay out for you what a day in the life would look like, you can write that into the ad. You start to get a little bit of a story, you get a more of an emotional connection, and then you get more excitement around it.”
Offers a practical, actionable tip for improving job ad effectiveness by creating a more engaging and specific candidate experience.
“Unless your inputs, your job ad, your screening questions, your assessments are all aligned, The AI won't really help you, right? It's, it's maybe going to give you a little bit, but it's, it's just going to get you faster to the noise overall.”
Emphasizes that AI's effectiveness is directly tied to the quality and alignment of the data inputs it receives, not just the technology itself.
“AI is our wand. So it's only as good as the inputs that we give it. You know, when you're using ChatGPT, it's your prompts. When you're using the AI functionality within systems, it really is only as good as we are at giving it the information and inputs.”
Uses a compelling analogy ('wand, not wizard') to illustrate the fundamental principle that AI's performance is dependent on human input and training.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Overwhelmed by massive influxes of unqualified job applicants, especially during economic shifts.
- •Significant time expenditure (23-25 hours per hire) due to sifting through numerous resumes.
- •Generic job advertisements attracting mismatched candidates, leading to inefficient screening processes.
- •Lack of clear understanding of job roles among practitioners, hindering the creation of precise job descriptions.
- •Risk of 'over-automating' recruitment processes without proper strategic alignment, potentially leading to worse outcomes.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
I'm super excited to be here with you guys. Thank you so much for having me
How My Career Journey Started at ApplicantPro
Heidi says her team faced overwhelming number of job applicants during hiring process
How To Screen an Overwhelming Number of Job Applicants
Can you walk us through the concrete steps and tools you implemented to manage and prioritize candidates
The Process of Candidate Matching at HubSpot
If you were to tackle a similar challenge again, what would you do differently
Beyond the AI: The Challenges of Screening Talent
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
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