How to hire using AI in 2026

Getting people into teams where they thrive beyond their skills, so the company can grow reliably with high-impact, high-performing people.

Why voice agents change hiring.

• A CV is a thin, self-written sales page. It says where someone has been. It rarely says whether they would thrive in this team, with this manager, on this problem.
• A voice agent can hold a real conversation with every applicant, any time of day, carrying what the hiring manager knows about the job into each one.
• So the people most likely to have real impact become visible before anyone is picked for interview, including people whose CVs would have put them at the bottom of the pile.
• The decision stays human. Kit recommends. The employer decides. Kit never rejects anyone.

Hiring goes wrong mostly because the people deciding don't have enough information about enough of the applicants. Voice agents fix the information problem, at the scale of the whole applicant pool, for the first time.

The first controlled trial of AI voice interviews.

In 2025, Jabarian and Henkel ran a randomised trial with about 70,000 applicants for entry-level customer service jobs in the Philippines. Applicants were interviewed by an AI voice agent or by a human recruiter. Humans made every hiring decision in both groups.

With the AI voice interview: 12% more job offers, 18% more people starting the job, and 17% more still in the job after 30 days. 78% chose the AI when given the choice. Applicants reporting gender discrimination: 3.30% with the AI against 5.98% with humans. 5% dropped out rather than speak to the AI.

Limits: one country, entry-level roles, one firm. It's strong evidence that the method works, not proof for professional roles in the UK.

"People won't speak to a machine."

783 in 1,000 people who start a Kit call finish it, and the median call runs 22.9 minutes. In the 70,000-person trial, 78% chose the AI interviewer when given the choice and 5% dropped out rather than speak to it. People speak to Kit for longer than a recruiter could give them.

"AI is biased."

The comparison is with today's process, not with perfection. Today a CV filter decides who gets an interview, assessing people on proxies: name, schools, gaps, job titles, years served. Only a few ever get one. Kit replaces that selection by CV. It doesn't replace the interview.

Kit starts from the real environment of the job: the manager, the team, the pace, what is genuinely hard about the role and what success looks like. Then it explores, with every applicant, whether they have the capabilities a person needs to thrive in that environment, and the examples that show it.

Everyone gets the same conversation about the same job and is scored against the same scorecard, from every source. In the trial, applicants reported gender discrimination at 3.30% with the AI against 5.98% with humans. Kit recommends and a person decides.

"Applicants will use AI to game it."

The things employers rely on today are the easiest to fake. A CV can be rewritten by AI in seconds to match any job ad.

A live conversation is far harder to game. Kit asks about the real job, then follows up on what the applicant actually says. A rehearsed answer runs out after the first follow-up.

This is an argument from how the conversation works. Kit doesn't yet have data on how many rehearsed applicants it catches.

Your team posts the job, as they do today.

Kit picks it up from your ATS. Every job your talent team owns. Your process stays the same.

The manager tells Kit about their best people.

Who made the biggest impact in their first year, and why. Who they loved working with. Which hires didn't work out, and what went wrong. Ten minutes, alone or with your recruiter.

Kit writes four things, in the manager's words.

A picture of the top performer. The standard every applicant is measured against. The advert. And what a CV won't show you. Your team signs it off before Kit speaks to anyone.

Kit speaks to every applicant, the minute they apply.

Wherever they came from: an advert, a referral, your CRM, or someone your team found. By phone or in writing, whenever suits them. Midnight is fine.

Kit recommends who is likely to succeed.

Against the standard your team signed off. Every recommendation shows its reasons and the answers behind them.

Every morning, your recruiters see who's ready for them.

Kit recommends. Your people decide. Kit doesn't interview. You do.

On Talent and Enterprise plans, Kit checks in at 30 days, 90 days and a year.

Each team's recommendations get sharper. You can report quality of hire across the whole company.