Below are five thinkers worth reading this summer if you care about how AI, work, and people practices are being redefined. We’ve paired each piece with a hiring-specific takeaway drawn from the teams we work with daily at Vouch.

Consider this your lighter, smarter summer reset.

🧠 Summer curation

It’s easy to get lost in the AI hiring hype cycle.

Every day brings a new tool, a new take, another chorus of "recruiters are obsolete." But beneath the noise, something quieter (and more interesting) is happening: thoughtful people are rethinking work from first principles.

This week, we’re doing less prognosticating, more pointing. These five thinkers are helping shape the future of hiring, work, and organisational design. Each one offers a clear signal in a noisy market, and each piece pairs with a reframe we’ve seen firsthand at Vouch.

📚 5 thinkers worth your time

1. Aravind Srinivas (Perplexity) key idea: AI is unbundling white-collar work

Read it

Our take: Srinivas argues convincingly that AI won’t replace whole jobs but that it will in fact replacefunctions. Think: sourcing, scheduling, summarizing. In hiring, this means recruiters become orchestrators of workflows, not executors of tasks. The shift isn’t about automation, it’s about coordination

Try this: Map your hiring process by tasks, not titles. Assign AI where clarity is high. Assign humans where trust matters.

2. Adam Dorr (RethinkX) key idea: We may not need most jobs at all

Read it

Our take: Dorr’s perspective is radical, but clarifying. If the future of work ispost-work, then hiring becomes less about filling seats and more about inviting contribution. What motivates someone to join your team when income is decoupled from employment?

Try this: Rethink job narratives. Focus on growth, impact, belonging, not just compensation or “culture fit.”

3. Jensen Huang (NVIDIA)key idea: Prompting is the new leverage

Read it

Our take: Huang cuts through the debate: the highest-value work won’t be building tools, but shaping them. In hiring, that means finding people who can co-pilot with AI, asking better questions, refining models, coaching teammates.

Try this: Update your scorecards. Add “AI literacy,” “judgment under ambiguity,” or “prompt fluency” to the top of your must-haves.

4. Erin Campbell (Altis Recruitment)Key idea: AI won’t replace HR, but make it more human

Read it

Your Take: Campbell offers a clear reframe: AI isn’t the threat, but rather the test. If your hiring process was mostly admin, sure, AI can replace that. But if it’s built on trust, clarity, and connection, AI becomes an amplifier.

Try this: Use AI to buy back recruiter time. Then use that time to listen better, calibrate sharper, and coach more often.

5. David Autor (MIT)Key idea: Automation doesn’t destroy jobs. It devalues them

Read it

Your Take: Even if jobs stay, they can lose what makes them worth doing. If AI takes all the interesting work, what’s left is monitoring the machine. The opportunity? Redesign jobs that elevate judgment, creativity, and human insight.

Try this: Don’t just automate the bottom 20%. Reinvest the time saved into making the remaining 80% richer, not thinner.

✍️ What We’re Seeing

We’re seeing two distinct camps emerge in recruiting.

One group is pushing hard for more automation: AI screenings, fully autonomous interviews, resume triage with zero human touch. The goal: speed and efficiency.

The other is pumping the brakes. They worry that over-automating strips the soul out of hiring, especially for nuanced, hard-to-fill roles.

What’s interesting: both sides are right, depending on context. For frontline, high-volume roles, candidates often accept more automation, especially nowadays as the market is tough for job seekers. But for strategic hires or specialist positions, the absence of human connection is a deal-breaker.

The real opportunity is to build systems that do both. Efficient for the team. Respectful to the human. That’s the bar. At Vouch, we’re working on it.

🔮 The Hiring Shift

Framework: The Human-AI Fit Test

Not all steps in hiring should be automated. This quick filter helps teams decide:

• Needs trust?→Keep it human: Final interviews, rejections, offer calls. These moments define your brand.
• Needs speed?→Use AIfor job analysis, resume triage, outreach, note summaries. Let tools clear the path.
• Could backfire?→Blend both: Early screening or assessments. Use AI, but keep a human in the loop.

If you use systems like Vouch, it is built with AI first with human in the loop, so these nuances are handled for you.

Rule of thumb:If a candidate would be surprised AI made the call, don’t let it.

About Vouch – your hiring assistant

Vouch is your AI-native hiring assistant. Envisage a recruitment system thatknowsandunderstandsyou, your company and every candidate interaction. We’re rebuilding how modern teams hire by combining smart automation, network signals, and clear workflows to help you attract, shortlist, and close the right candidates faster. Everything you'd expect from an ATS is included, but the value is in how it's used. Learn more here.