This AI company built an AI-proof recruitment process—and just got acquired for $1.1 billion

Sana Labs helps companies deploy AI assistants, but when it comes to its own hiring, it’s outsmarted the growing AI-on-AI cat-and-mouse game between recruiters and job candidates.

[Images: Adobe Stock]

If you’re looking for a job or hiring, the question is no longer whether AI is involved—but how aggressively you’re using it. 

Generative AI has wormed into every stage of recruitment, from drafting applications and filtering candidates to AI-led interviews. It’s the wild west out there. (And it’s getting wilder.) Both employers and prospective employees are exasperated.Examples abound. Last year, Anthropic urged prospective applicants to not use AI systems when applying to jobs at the AI company, even asking them to sign a contract to confirm they read and understood the ask. Goldman Sachs has implemented blocks and employs AI detection software, while McKinsey actually requires candidates to use its internal chatbot Lilli for practical consulting tasks.As all parties scrabble to jump through the new LLM-molded hoops, the mechanics of hiring are going under the microscope. CVs, take-home tasks, interviews—all of it is ripe for re-engineering. In a market obsessed with automation for automation’s sake, one particular Swedish AI darling is standing steadfast in its AI-resistant approach. 

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Megan Carnegie is a London-based freelance journalist who specialises in writing features about the world of technology, work, and business for publications like WIRED, Business Insider, Digital Frontier and BBC. Her work is underpinned by a desire to investigate what's not working in the working world, and how more equitable conditions can be secured for workers—whatever their industry. More

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