AI is taking the bottom of hiring. The top still needs judgment.
Josh Hollander ·
The hiring market is splitting. AI now handles the bottom of the funnel well: sourcing, list-building, screening, and high-volume recruiting are faster and cheaper than they were two years ago. That is real progress, and we use those tools.
The senior end is moving the other way. As the stakes rise, the cost of a wrong leader rises with them, and the decision about a person depends more than ever on human judgment: the read on how someone makes decisions, leads under pressure, and fits the team they inherit. A model can prep the research. It cannot make the call.
That is the line Horton sits on. We bring the judgment of more than 1,100 searches and sharpen it with AI and Aperture 360, our assessment methodology, so the decision rests on evidence rather than a good interview day. The result is a 96% retention rate: 96% of the people we place are still with the company a year later.
The firms that win senior search in the AI era will not be the ones with the biggest database. They will be the ones whose judgment is worth paying for, with the tools in service of that judgment rather than the other way around.