Recruiting in the Age of AI: Why Relationships and Conversations Matter More Than Ever

At Solution Street, we believe recruiting is much more than filling an open position. It is about building relationships with talented professionals long before the right opportunity exists. That is why we encourage candidates to stay connected with us, even if the timing isn’t perfect.  This philosophy has become increasingly important as recruiting continues to evolve. AI has become part of nearly every consultant’s toolkit, remote interviewing is the norm, and unfortunately, fraud has become more prevalent in our industry. While technology can help us find and connect with great candidates faster, the best hiring decisions still come from conversations and understanding the people behind the experience.

Why You Should Take the Interview

One question we hear fairly often is: “Why should I interview if you don’t have the perfect role for me today?”

Our answer is simple: because everyone benefits. Solution Street’s CEO, Joel Nylund, wrote an article five years ago on Interviewing with a Growth Mindset that is still relevant today. For candidates, an interview is an opportunity to:

• Practice technical and behavioral interviewing.
• Expand your professional network.
• Learn about emerging technologies and consulting opportunities.
• Gain insight into how another engineering organization operates.
• Build a relationship that could lead to the right opportunity weeks, months, or even years from now.

Of course, we are actively recruiting for current client opportunities as well. When a candidate is a strong match for an open position, we move quickly through our hiring process. But if someone isn’t the perfect fit for a current opening, that doesn’t mean the conversation ends there. We often consider candidates for other roles, upcoming opportunities, or add them to our active pipeline so we’re ready when the right match comes along.

The benefits extend to Solution Street as well. Rather than waiting until a client has an immediate need, we intentionally invest time in getting to know talented engineers year-round. When we meet someone who impresses us, even if we don’t have the right opportunity at that moment, we don’t simply file away their resume and hope to remember them later.

Our recruiting team maintains an active pipeline of high-potential candidates. After each interview, we document not only a candidate’s technical skills but also their strengths, interests, career goals, and the types of consulting engagements where we believe they would thrive. We establish a plan to stay connected with promising candidates, whether that’s checking in after a month, sharing relevant opportunities, or simply following up to see where their career path has taken them.

During our weekly recruiting meetings, we regularly revisit this pipeline – discussing candidates we’ve met, upcoming client needs, and individuals who may be a strong fit for future projects. As new opportunities arise, we often begin by looking at candidates we’ve already come to know rather than starting our search from scratch. 

In some cases, the person we hire today is someone we first met months or even years earlier. Building these relationships allows us to focus on finding the right match rather than simply filling the next open role.

Careers evolve, client needs change, and the right opportunity is not always available at the exact moment we first meet someone. Maintaining these relationships allows us to reconnect when the right combination of skills, goals, and opportunity comes together.

In a world where AI can help generate answers and match keywords, getting to know the person behind the resume is more important than simply matching skills on paper. That is why we continue to prioritize conversations and relationships throughout our recruiting process.

AI Has Changed Interviewing

Artificial intelligence has become an incredible productivity tool for software engineers. We encourage our consultants to use AI appropriately in their daily work to accelerate development, research unfamiliar technologies, and eliminate repetitive tasks.

However, during our interview process, we ask candidates not to rely on AI assistants to answer technical questions. This isn’t because we expect someone to memorize every syntax rule or language feature. We are more interested in understanding the candidate’s thought process.

In consulting, where engineers are expected to collaborate with clients, navigate ambiguity, and solve problems they haven’t seen before, the ability to think critically and communicate clearly is just as important as technical expertise.

For example, if we’re discussing how the candidate would solve a particular problem, we would much rather hear a candidate say, “I’d use a hash map here because I need fast lookups. I don’t remember the exact syntax in C#, but I’d normally look that up,” than see them rely on an AI assistant to provide the answer during the interview.  That demonstrates they understand the problem, can make sound decisions, and know how they would approach implementing a solution in a real-world environment.

When we present a technical problem, we’re listening for things like:

• How do you approach an unfamiliar problem?
• What questions do you ask before jumping into a solution?
• How do you evaluate tradeoffs?
• How do you communicate your reasoning?
• How do you pivot when you realize your initial approach isn’t ideal?
• How do you collaborate with other engineers and address their questions and comments?

In consulting, clients rarely care whether you know the answer immediately. They care whether you can analyze a problem, collaborate with others, communicate clearly, and arrive at the best solution. An AI-generated answer may be technically correct, but it doesn’t tell us how you think. We’d much rather hear an imperfect answer accompanied by thoughtful reasoning than a perfect response that came from another source.

At Solution Street, we’ve evolved our technical interview process to better evaluate how candidates think. In some cases rather than asking candidates to write code from scratch, we might present a debugging scenario that allows us to observe their analytical skills, problem-solving approach, and reasoning.

The Reality of Recruiting Fraud

One of the more unfortunate trends we’ve seen across the technology industry is the increase in recruiting fraud. Organizations today are encountering everything from candidates misrepresenting their identities to individuals using hidden assistants during interviews or having someone else complete technical assessments on their behalf.

While the overwhelming majority of candidates are honest professionals, employers today have to recognize that fraudulent activity exists and take reasonable steps to protect their clients and the integrity of the hiring process. As a result, responsible employers have to perform additional verification and occasionally ask questions or take steps that may feel different than they did a few years ago.

We recognize that some of these extra verification steps can feel unusual, especially for legitimate candidates. However, they are necessary to protect our clients and ensure every candidate is evaluated fairly. We appreciate candidates who understand why these steps have become a part of our recruiting process.

Where AI Is Helping Recruiting

While we don’t want AI answering interview questions on behalf of our candidates, we’re excited about the ways it can improve the recruiting process behind the scenes.

Used intentionally, AI can help recruiters spend less time on administrative tasks and candidate sourcing, and more time building relationships with candidates.

For example, AI can help us:

• Match job requirements with candidates already in our network.
• Help us find candidates whose skills and experience align with our needs, even when their resumes use different terminology than our job descriptions.
• Surface strong candidates more quickly from large resume databases.
• Reduce administrative work so recruiters can spend more time talking with people.

We aren’t trying to replace human judgment. We are trying to find great people faster and create a better experience for candidates. The most important hiring decisions still come from the conversations we have with candidates, but AI helps us have more of those conversations.

Recruiting Is Still About People

Technology will continue to evolve. Interview formats will change. AI tools will become even more capable. Recruiting platforms will become smarter. Great consulting organizations will continue to be built on trust, curiosity, communication, and relationships. The better technology becomes at matching skills and finding information, the more important it becomes to understand the people behind those skills.

Whether we’re meeting someone for the first time or reconnecting after several years, every conversation helps us better understand each candidate’s experience, goals, and approach. So if we reach out, even if the timing isn’t perfect, we hope you’ll consider taking the call.

You may sharpen your interview skills, expand your network, learn something new, and build a relationship that leads to an opportunity when the timing is right. That is a win for everyone!

If you’re interested in consulting, enjoy solving challenging problems, and want to work alongside talented engineers, we would love to get to know you. Explore our current openings or reach out to our recruiting team at recruiting@solutionstreet.com.  We are always excited to meet great people.