AI in Hiring: How AI-Powered Recruitment is Changing the Game

(00:00)

Welcome, everyone, to this edition of AI Insiders by the AI Marketers Guild. I’m excited to have two great guests today—Brett Martin, whom I’ve known for a long time, going back to his early pitches on mobile-social-local ideas when I was at 360i, and Jen, whom I just met. When Brett suggested including her in this conversation, I was eager to learn from her experience.

(00:48)

Brett and Jen, I’ll let you kick things off. Today, we're discussing how AI is transforming the hiring process—something relevant to everyone, especially marketers who are building teams and navigating AI-driven hiring. I’m particularly interested in what Brett has been developing and look forward to learning more.

(01:25)

Thank you, David, and thanks to everyone for joining. We have a good group today, so let’s keep this interactive. If you have questions, drop them in the chat or raise your hand. This will be more of a fireside chat format.

For introductions, as David mentioned, I’ve been in the New York tech scene for about 20 years. I run Charge VC, a New York-based pre-seed venture capital fund. We’re on our third fund with over 90 portfolio investments, including Jen’s company, Coral Care.

In addition, I co-founded Fonzi AI, a tech-enabled recruiting agency. We recently acquired a well-known New York recruiting firm (yet to be announced) and have been developing AI-driven tools to improve recruiting efficiency. We’ve essentially built an AI recruiter. At the time we worked with Jen, we hadn’t acquired the agency yet, so we were handling everything ourselves. My co-founder and Fonzi’s CEO, Yang Ma (a former Google engineer), along with our head of marketing, Drew Moffett, were personally recruiting.

Today, Jen will introduce herself, and we’ll walk through how we worked together—why she reached out, her expectations, and how the process unfolded. Then, we’ll broaden the discussion to AI in hiring.

Jen, could you introduce yourself and tell us about your work?

(03:15)

Sure. I’m Jen, CEO and founder of Coral Care, a platform that helps parents access pediatric developmental therapies such as speech, occupational, and physical therapy.

For parents, we operate like a local marketplace, making it easy to find therapists who provide home visits on a weekly basis. For clinicians, we function as a "business-in-a-box" solution, enabling them to launch or expand their private practice. This field is traditionally fragmented and supply-constrained, but we’ve successfully expanded the provider base.

We contract directly with health insurance companies to make these services more affordable and accessible. We’ve been operating for nearly two years now.

(04:50)

Jen has an impressive background—starting as an engineer, becoming a product manager, and working at companies like Samsung, Handy, and Weight Watchers before moving into leadership roles. Now, she’s running her own company. She’s truly a full-stack founder, which made me excited to work with her.

Jen, can you share the context in which you were hiring? What roles were you looking to fill, and why?

(05:19)

I started Coral Care based on personal experience—when my daughter was born with developmental delays, I struggled to find care for her. It was a frustrating process, and I became determined to fix it.

Having worked in digital health, I saw how the business-in-a-box model benefited the mental health sector and started connecting the dots for pediatric therapy. That’s how Coral Care was born.

When I reached out to Brett, our challenge was building credibility on both sides of our marketplace—clinicians and parents. We explored different strategies and considered influencer marketing to enhance credibility. Our idea was to leverage micro-influencers, especially on the clinician side, since they were more cost-effective than parenting influencers.

However, we needed someone to build and execute the program. Given our tight budget, we knew this person needed to be offshore, but I had no idea how to find them. That’s where Brett and his team came in.

(08:38)

One of our key insights at Fonzi was how overwhelmed companies get with job applications—especially in marketing and sales roles.

When hiring managers post a job, they often receive hundreds or even thousands of applications in 24 hours. Many companies end up closing applications quickly without reviewing candidates. This flood of applications renders the inbound channel ineffective.

To address this, we built an AI interviewer that conducts initial phone screens. Using OpenAI's Whisper and other models, it asks candidates a structured set of questions, just like a recruiter would.

(10:56)

Jen, you worked with Drew on this process. Can you describe how it worked from your perspective?

(11:27)

It was very simple. We discussed the role, budget, and key qualities needed—not just technical skills but subjective traits that are hard to screen for. Drew, having experience with influencer marketing, helped refine the criteria.

After that conversation, he said he’d handle the rest. Within days—over Christmas week, no less—he sent me a list of candidates. I was shocked at how fast it moved.

(12:05)

From our side, we converted Jen’s requirements into an AI-driven evaluation system.

The AI interviewer conducted 400 phone screens over two weeks, generating over 600 minutes of audio. The system scored and ranked candidates based on structured evaluation criteria.

(16:17)

Jen, how did you go about reviewing the candidates?

(16:53)

I listened to all 20 interviews while taking a walk. I realized that AI was a better interviewer than I had been in my career. Every candidate was strong, and it was clear who the best fit was.

In my final interviews, I could jump straight into follow-up questions rather than starting from scratch. It made my conversations much more productive.

(18:23)

Question from Paul: Are these video interviews? Also, what technology powers them?

(19:01)

They are audio-only, which allows candidates to interview via phone. Adding video would make the experience inconsistent across devices.

We use various AI models, including OpenAI, Claude, and Gemini. However, our secret sauce is the evaluation process—training AI to assess candidates the way an experienced recruiter would.

(22:05)

We’re also building a mock interviewer tool. It lets job seekers upload their resumes and practice interviews, with AI-generated feedback. Eventually, we want Fonzi to act as a personal recruiter, keeping track of candidates and proactively surfacing opportunities.

(25:08)

Jen: Another benefit of AI recruiting is that it reduces bias. Normally, hiring relies heavily on personal networks, but Fonzi ensures that candidates are assessed on merit, not connections.

(31:30)

I hired someone in Portugal to manage our influencer outreach. She’s already secured our first few influencer contracts, and the transition has been smoother than with other hiring methods.

(37:18)

Jen: Building a hyper-local marketplace is challenging. We balance clinician availability with demand while expanding in Massachusetts, Austin, and Dallas. If anyone has experience with local marketing strategies, I’d love insights.

(39:50)

Closing remarks:

David: Thanks, everyone! Brett and Jen, this was eye-opening. Looking forward to more conversations on AI-powered hiring.

Brett: If you’re hiring for go-to-market roles, reach out—we’d love to help.

Jen: Thanks! Looking forward to connecting further.