High-volume recruiting is undergoing a massive transformation. With the rise of generative AI, the lines between software and service are blurring, changing both how companies hire and how job seekers find work.
On a recent episode of the RecTech Podcast, host Chris Russell sat down with Prem Kumar, the CEO and founder of Humanly. Humanly, a high-volume recruiting platform, just announced a major milestone: a $25 million Series B funding round.
Prem shared his insights on what this funding means for the company, how AI is altering the economics of HR tech, and how organizations can leverage automation without losing the human touch.
1. The Next Chapter for Humanly
Fresh off the $25 million funding announcement, Prem noted that the team’s immediate priority is execution—specifically, building a better product and scaling their internal team. Currently sitting at around 50 employees, the six-year-old company is looking to expand its workforce across several key roles.
2. From "SaaS" to "Service as a Software"
One of the most provocative concepts discussed was the shift from standard Software as a Service (SaaS) to "Service as a Software."
Prem highlighted a massive discrepancy in market spend: while the recruiting technology market is worth roughly $14 billion, the staffing, RPO, and services market is a staggering $500 billion. This services market is heavily concentrated in hourly, deskless, and entry-level high-volume roles.
Traditionally, software platforms give you the tools (like a kit to build an IKEA chair), but services companies deliver the actual outcome (the finished chair). Humanly is bridging this gap by shifting toward Pipeline as a Service. Instead of just selling an ATS or a CRM, they are providing a built-in flow of QIAs (Qualified, Interested, and Available) job seekers. This allows technology vendors to deliver agency-level outcomes with high SaaS-like efficiency.
3. The AI Reality: Engagement vs. Being Ignored
A common critique of AI in recruiting is that it removes the human experience. However, Prem flipped this perspective for high-volume hiring:
"From a job seeker standpoint, we’re not talking about human versus AI. We’re talking about AI versus being ignored and never hearing back."
Statistically, about 95% of applicants attracted via recruitment marketing are completely ignored because time-strapped hiring teams can only realistically review about 5%. Traditional applicant tracking systems rely on glorified keyword matching to filter that 5%.
Humanly leverages conversational AI to ensure 100% of applicants get a two-way screening interview. This helps companies learn more about every candidate beyond a piece of paper, while simultaneously building a robust "silver medalist" pipeline for future roles.
4. Bridging the "Trust Gap"
We are currently witnessing a unique phenomenon in enterprise technology: a massive gap between the appetite to buy AI and the trust required to deploy it safely. Prem referenced a study by Tideo showing that while 90% of Talent Acquisition leaders want to use AI, only 27% actually trust it.
To build this trust, Prem emphasizes that AI vendors must focus on:
Transparency & Third-Party Audits: Ensuring models are externally audited for fairness.
Giving Value Back: Job seekers trust AI when it provides immediate value, like resume coaching, constructive feedback, or a faster path to a job.
Deep Collaborative Customization: AI allows vendors and buyers to sit on the same side of the table to custom-tailor workflows, tonal qualities, and brand experiences much faster than old code-heavy software allowed.
5. Combating Bias with Better Data
AI models face valid criticism for potentially automating or exacerbating bias. Humanly tackles this by training its models using data sets from hundreds of thousands of human-to-human interactions to identify systemic flaws.
For example, their research on 300,000 Zoom interviews revealed that junior women were given an average of 10 minutes less to speak. They also found that interviewers speaking over 150 words per minute severely disadvantaged candidates for whom English is a second language. By standardizing and guard-railing conversations, a properly trained AI interviewer can actually level the playing field and minimize human bias.
6. The Future: "Jobs Find You"
When asked about the current "AI arms race"—where candidates use auto-apply bots to flood inboxes and employers use AI filters to block them—Prem sees an ultimate paradigm shift on the horizon.
Right now, AI is being used to make existing, inefficient application processes faster. In the near future, Prem predicts we will move away from active applying altogether. Instead, a job seeker might interview or update their profile just once a year, and intelligent agents will pass that verified data to company agents. We will move toward an ecosystem where jobs find you, eliminating the "resume black hole" entirely.
Key Takeaways for Founders and TA Leaders:
Data is the Moat: In the age of AI, transactional tracking tools are easy to build. The true value lies in recruiting-specific data sets that understand contextual nuances (like state pay transparency laws) to drive actual conversions.
Empathy Matters: Use AI to absorb administrative, script-reading tasks so human recruiters can use the full capacity of their empathy where it matters most.
To learn more about Humanly and their open roles, visit humanly.io. For more insights at the intersection of recruiting and technology, subscribe to the RecTech Podcast.
