AI Has Broken Hiring, But That's Not the Real Problem

You've probably sat across from a candidate who looked great on paper, interviewed well, and still turned out to be the wrong hire.

The résumé checked all the boxes, the applicant’s answers were polished, and yet something didn't transfer once they were on the job.

That gap between how someone presents themselves and how someone actually performs on the job has always been the central frustration of hiring—and the gap’s only getting harder to close.

In an article titled AI Has Broken Hiring, published in the June 2026 issue of Harvard Business Review, authors Sunil and Saraf state:

"Generative AI is rapidly undermining the reliability of traditional hiring signals, making it easier for candidates to manufacture polished résumés and perform convincingly in remote interviews with real-time assistance tools.

Interviews with 120 talent-acquisition leaders and an analysis of more than 6,000 screening sessions show that companies now risk selecting for candidates who are best at navigating the hiring process rather than best equipped to do the job.

To adapt, organizations must redesign early-stage hiring around authentic reasoning, judgment, and adaptability instead of static credentials and scripted interviews."

I appreciate the reasoning … but there is a tremendous gap in the study. Credentials are not a reliable indicator of competence. Never have been and never will … especially when those credentials are curated by the person seeking the benefit of the job.

AI just makes curation a whole lot easier. And even if the hiring process is redesigned, interviewers are still in the dark about someone's real abilities.

What the authors overlook is the proven theory of formal axiology. Don’t let the unusual word throw you. Simply stated, axiology is a rigorous, validated framework developed by Prof. Robert Hartman over fifty years ago that has been validated by psychometricians at leading research universities around the world.

His theory accurately identifies the competencies of individuals, both their strengths and areas of development.

As the chairman of a conglomerate of international companies told me, "I don't like to fire people, that's why I call on you."

In other words, by using Hartman’s tool, he gets the right people in the right seats from the very start. Why? Because it accurately measures competencies and human judgment.

I have been using formal axiology for more than three decades—the first ten years as an executive and the last twenty as an organizational development consultant.

During that period, I have conducted tens of thousands of analyses, every one of which has been squarely on the mark. My clients have been known to call the results “eerily accurate.”

Though it is a powerful tool for hiring—saving lots of headaches—I also use it with team building and executive coaching. It provides keen insight into each individual's strengths and areas of development.

In the team setting, it helps everyone appreciate the differences in decision-making style across the team, and, by drawing up a team map, provides insight into the areas where the team is strong and areas where it needs to develop.

Take the pressure off your daily people decisions and experience the relief so many of my happy clients enjoy. Hope I see you in the next session.