Subscribe

The most interesting stories in HR & AI weekly

Mckinsey Tests AI-Simulated Clients in Job Interviews

McKinsey is piloting a new interview exercise in which entry-level consulting candidates spend 10 minutes interacting with an AI-simulated client, while human interviewers evaluate their performance. Why it matters: AI simulations could make hiring assessments more realistic by allowing employers to observe how candidates handle situations they will actually encounter on the job. Reality Check: The pilot is limited to select North American offices, and human interviewers (not AI) will assess candidates, underscoring the continuing importance of human judgment in hiring.

Anthropic’s Entry-Level Hiring Plunges as AI Creates New Work for Employees

Anthropic's new study of its own workforce reveals that junior technical employees' share of new technical hires fell from 27% to just 9% since early 2025, even as overall employment continues to grow. Meanwhile, employees are increasingly shifting from doing work to managing AI agents. Activities Anthropic calls "meta-work" (planning agent workflows, building monitoring systems, and reviewing AI operations) grew from 10% to 22% of employees' interactive Claude sessions between fall 2025 and spring 2026. Why it matters: The findings suggest AI is not simply eliminating tasks but fundamentally changing the nature of work, creating new responsibilities for employees to direct, coordinate, and oversee AI agents. Reality Check: Anthropic is an unusually AI-intensive employer, and its experience may not reflect how employment evolves across other industries.

Kroger Plans 3,000 Corporate Job Cuts Amid AI Expansion

Grocery giant Kroger plans to eliminate approximately 3,000 corporate positions over the next three years as it streamlines operations, reduces duplicative work, and expands AI adoption amid growing competitive pressures. Why it matters: Kroger illustrates how AI is becoming part of broader workforce restructuring strategies beyond the technology sector, requiring HR leaders to rethink staffing needs, work design, and employee transitions. Reality Check: Kroger has not attributed all 3,000 job cuts directly to AI, with competitive pressures and cost reduction also driving the restructuring.

Anthropic Pledges 5% of Equity to Address AI’s Societal Impact

Anthropic announced plans to dedicate 5% of its equity to a new public benefit fund, potentially supporting workers affected by AI disruption, with the commitment growing as the company's valuation increases. Why it matters: One of the leading AI developers is acknowledging that AI-driven workforce disruption may require direct economic support, not just retraining. Reality Check: The fund's specific priorities and beneficiaries remain undefined, so its actual impact on workers is still uncertain.

We're offering a limited number of complimentary passes to our November 18 CHRO virtual roundtable, Managing the Agentic Workforce, featuring Andrea Watt, CPO of Zip US.

Join a small group of CHROs for a practical discussion on integrating AI agents into the workforce and HR's emerging role in managing them.

Sanofi’s HR Simplification for HR Readiness

Pharmaceutical giant Sanofi is overhauling years of HR technology complexity across 59 countries, including 50,000 unused cost centers, 10,000 empty job profiles, and a job-change process with 441 steps. The company estimates that 70% of its AI transformation work involves process redesign, data organization, and decision management, not AI technology itself. Meanwhile, it is already deploying AI tools, including a career advisor that attracted 5,000 users in its first four days. Key Insight: Before AI can transform HR, HR may need to simplify itself, automating overly complex processes risks perpetuating inefficiencies rather than delivering meaningful productivity gains.

Gad Levanon, chief economist at the Burning Glass Institute, argues that the biggest AI-driven job losses may arrive during the next recession, drawing parallels to manufacturing, where 88% of job losses from 2000 to 2010 occurred during or shortly after downturns. Why it matters: Companies may be quietly accumulating opportunities to replace work with AI, with a recession providing the financial pressure and organizational justification to make large-scale workforce reductions. Reality Check: This is a forecast, not an established outcome, and the historical manufacturing decline also reflected offshoring and other structural changes, not simply automation.

A new Harvard Business Review article argues that employees often override effective AI systems not because they distrust the technology, but because they remain personally accountable when AI decisions go wrong, creating incentives to preserve human review and control. Why it matters: Realizing AI's productivity potential requires more than technology adoption, it requires redesigning decision rights, accountability, and performance incentives so employees can confidently rely on AI. Reality Check: Giving AI greater decision-making authority doesn't mean eliminating human oversight; organizations still need clear guardrails, escalation processes, and accountability for system performance.

IMF: AI Is Reducing Hiring in Highly-Exposed Occupations, but Creating New Opportunities

A new IMF study analyzing 700 million job postings across 110 economies finds that hiring demand in occupations highly exposed to AI has declined by nearly 10% relative to less-exposed occupations since ChatGPT's launch, although the decline has stabilized despite rapid advances in AI capabilities. Why It Matters: The findings suggest AI is reshaping rather than simply eliminating jobs, with firms seeking AI skills experiencing faster hiring growth even in highly exposed occupations. Reality Check: The research measures job postings rather than actual employment, and faster hiring growth at AI-adopting firms does not necessarily mean AI caused that growth.

Workday announced three AI-related initiatives: Work Intelligence, a tool for analyzing jobs at the task level to inform workforce redesign; Decision Intelligence, aimed at connecting workforce and financial decisions; and a planned acquisition of C1.ai to manage access and permissions for employees and AI agents. Why it matters: Together, the announcements signal Workday's ambition to expand beyond traditional HR administration into workforce planning, work redesign, and governance of a combined human-AI workforce. Reality Check: These are largely early-stage or planned capabilities, with limited evidence so far that they deliver more accurate workforce decisions, measurable productivity gains, or effective AI-agent governance in practice.

ServiceNow announced new capabilities for its EmployeeWorks platform that allow employees to create customized AI assistants and automate recurring tasks without coding, alongside planned HR-specific assistants for HRBPs, managers, and talent decisions. Why it matters: The announcement reflects a growing push to put AI development directly in employees' hands, potentially enabling HR teams to automate workflows without relying entirely on IT. Reality Check: The new capabilities are currently in limited release, and ServiceNow has not demonstrated that employees can reliably build, govern, and maintain effective AI agents at scale without significant technical support.

Greenhouse announced its Orchestrated Hiring Ecosystem, combining candidate sourcing, identity verification, AI-powered initial interviews, and applicant tracking to address growing volumes of AI-generated applications and make hiring decisions less dependent on resumes. Why it matters: As AI makes it easier to apply for jobs at scale, recruiting platforms are increasingly focusing on verifying candidates and identifying meaningful signals of fit rather than simply screening more applications. Reality Check: Several capabilities were already available, sourcing remains in closed beta, and Greenhouse has not provided independent evidence that its integrated approach improves hiring quality, reduces bias, or reliably distinguishes qualified candidates.

iCIMS announced a new fraud detection offering that combines existing applicant security controls with integrations from Socure and ApplicantX to help recruiters identify fake identities, suspicious applications, and potential deepfake interviews. Why it matters: As AI makes candidate impersonation and application fraud more sophisticated, identity verification and fraud detection are becoming increasingly important parts of recruiting technology. Reality Check: iCIMS has not published independent evidence of the new integrations' detection accuracy, and employers will need to balance fraud prevention against false positives, candidate privacy, and additional screening friction.

Thanks for reading. If you have comments or feedback just respond to this email.

Until next week,

Mike & Adam

HRBusinessPartner AI is published by PotomacHarbor. Follow us on LinkedIn.

Love HRBusinessPartner AI? Share your referral link below to get HRBusinessPartner AI swag!

{{ rp_refer_url }}

Someone forward you this email? Subscribe for weekly updates.

Want to advertise in HRBusinessPartner AI? Send us an email (reply to this message).