As a business at the forefront of placing highly technical candidates for projects such as HS2, recruitment consultancy Carrington West places approximately 12,000 specialist contract workers each year across the built environment sectors including water, rail, property, nuclear and town planning.
As its founder, I am passionate that while the emergence of AI can’t be ignored, it will never replace humans – we have to learn to harness its power.
AI is rapidly changing how businesses operate, and that influence will only continue to grow. However, much of the conversation around it still focuses on what can be replaced, rather than what can be improved.
That distinction matters, because we believe the real value of AI is not in removing people from processes, but in enabling them to perform better, which is relevant for all businesses, but particularly the recruitment industry.
Taking a human-first approach to AI is essential and at the heart of our company philosophy is a belief that investing in people, culture, and leadership will ultimately determine long-term success and AI is just another tool to enhance that.
AI in recruitment
Much of the current conversations around AI are about the efficiency, speed, and time and cost savings it can bring. These are all valid, but we must not forget the importance of human input.
The recruitment industry is built on understanding people, their motivations, potential, and cultural fit, not just matching experience to a job description. There is value in our consultants’ ability to advise, influence, and build relationships-skills and AI cannot replicate these.
There is also a general perception and fear among candidates that AI is heavily involved in screening processes. While AI can improve consistency and help manage volume, it can create a more impersonal experience if not used carefully. Over-automation risks stripping the humanity out of hiring.
When that happens, candidates can lose confidence in the process and you may lose out on talent.
Assistive Intelligence
A more effective approach is to focus on how AI can assist, rather than automate entirely. We call it “Assistive Intelligence” – using AI to enhance productivity while emphasising the human skills that machines don’t have, such as empathy, judgement and relationship-building.
AI can add value by reducing admin workload, organising data, and identifying patterns or insights. We are currently developing our own agentic AI to solve specific problems and to generate market intelligence. For example for helping to identify where the government will next announce new funding for a major project so that we can predict hiring needs before they are announced.
Understanding when to look beyond a CV, or when to take a different view on a candidate are all part of what makes recruitment consultants effective. Advising candidates and assessing their potential rely heavily on human experience.
AI can inform those decisions, but it cannot make them in a meaningful way.
The importance of culture
A human-first approach to AI is closely linked to organisational culture. While AI can improve processes, it does not replace how people learn and develop. Much of that development happens through day-to-day interaction – through discussion, observation, mentoring and shared experience.
We place huge emphasis on engagement, onboarding, and continuous feedback. This includes a ‘daily pulse’ survey system, which tracks employee sentiment across multiple areas.
Then our senior leadership team reviews the data with ‘heat maps’ identifying areas of concern. Managers are expected to act quickly, whether that means adjusting workloads, improving communication, or introducing new initiatives.
We believe that feedback is a gift and we actively encourage our employees to speak openly and frequently. I’m sure this is how we’ve maintained our high engagement and retention levels even as we’ve grown.
Despite the rise of remote working, we maintain a strong belief in the importance of working together in person. While employees are allowed some flexibility, we encourage office-based working for most of the week. The rationale for this is simple, people develop and learn in many ways including informally through overheard conversations, asking questions and real-time coaching. This is how we can offer our clients so much more. We build genuine relationships with our clients and are able to challenge their needs and what they are looking for in their candidates
On paper a candidate may not have all the skills, but we may know that they would fit the client’s culture and are quick learners. AI couldn’t challenge like that!
