What Candidates Want Employers to Get Right About AI

Key Takeaways:

• This article offers a five-step suggested process for incorporating new AI-enabled hiring processes without fueling misgivings among your talent pool.
• The article also shares findings from a recent Indeed-YouGov survey in the U.S. Among the findings: 40% of employers say AI implementation is a top goal for 2026. But just 13% of job seekers are enthusiastic about it, while 35% are concerned.
• Learn how healthcare company Midland Care prioritizes qualified candidates more quickly with Indeed Smart Screening. Indeed develops products responsibly by ensuring they are assistive, explainable, embedded and customizable.

Your AI road map won’t matter if candidates don’t trust the route. “Trust among employees and employers is at an all‑time low,” says Indeed Senior Talent Strategy Advisor Kyle M.K. “Job seekers say, ‘I’ll take care of myself because my employer won’t.’ Employers say, ‘I’ll cover my priorities, but I don’t trust the economy or market.’” 

According to a recent U.S. Indeed-YouGov survey,¹ this tension is only growing. Employers entered 2026 confident and growth-minded, but their priorities are at odds with their talent pools. Half of employers want to increase headcounts, but fewer than a third of job seekers expect to land a good job. Job seekers want salary growth (64%), putting pressure on employers’ main goal of cost control (40%). And as organizations ramp up AI implementation (40%), just 13% of job seekers are excited about it — and a third are concerned.

That’s the disconnect slowing hiring today: Leaders are optimizing for efficiency, while candidates are prioritizing security. “In this environment, efficiency without clarity only burns your brand,” says M.K. 

In this article, we share a four-point checklist for responsible AI use in hiring. See how to follow the success of healthcare company Midland Care in implementing responsible AI and tackling hiring goals transparently.

Responsible AI Checklist: Alleviate Candidate Fears

“Employers are focused on AI and costs; job seekers are worried about dehumanization and automation,” says M.K. “There’s a big mismatch in priorities and expectations.”

To address misgivings with any AI implementation, transparency is the name of the game. Here’s a quick checklist for clarity with AI in hiring:

✅ Explainable: gives the “why” behind its behavior

✅ Assistive: helps recruiters prioritize and verify but doesn’t decide for them

✅ Customizable: empowers your team to use their own judgment to monitor results

✅ Embedded: works inside existing workflows to minimize disruption

How Midland Care Expedites Hiring with Responsible AI

To see how these qualities look in practice, we can follow one healthcare company’s journey to more efficiently review candidates with AI. Midland Care is a not-for-profit, Kansas-based organization that delivers integrated community care for the elderly. It hires across clinical and nonclinical roles with license requirements, including CNAs and LPNs. 

Midland Care juggles three main pain points:

• High-volume applications with an uneven mix of qualified and unqualified talent
• Credential requirements for key roles, such as CNAs and LPNs
• A lean recruiting team

Here’s how Midland Care is using Indeed Smart Screening to efficiently address its challenges, using the four-point AI checklist: 

Explainable. Midland needed to enable the hiring team to focus on applicants aligned with the role's essential criteria. Indeed Smart Screening’s AI screens applications from Indeed using the criteria that Midland defined in the job description and assigns each a Smart Fit Score™: a 0–100 rating showing how closely the application aligns. With it, recruiters receive:

• A recent experience snapshot surfacing key details from the resume
• A flagged-for-review section that calls out potential gaps
• An optional bot mitigation check to help ensure the pipeline is filled with genuine applicants
• Responses to AI Recruiter questions

Assistive. These features allow hiring leaders to set fast-track rules: Midland’s team first focuses on those with an 80–90 Smart Fit Score™. Those with lower scores get a scan to confirm whether there’s something worth exploring. And with potential gaps surfaced upfront, recruiters already know what to ask about during a phone screen, instead of unexpected issues arising later. 

“It really helps us prioritize — we move the high scores through quickly and come back to lower scores when we have more time,” says Natalie Johnstone, Talent Acquisition Manager at Midland Care.

Customizable. At the same time, recruiters maintain control, not substituting the tools for human review. Indeed makes its responsible AI policies publicly available.

Midland’s team can modify the screening criteria, and the system provides options to give feedback or edit the candidate Smart Fit Score™ entirely at the recruiter’s discretion.

Embedded. For employers using Indeed Connect, applicants automatically land in the applicant tracking system (ATS), creating a consistent experience. Midland’s team uses Paycom, one of Indeed’s integrated ATS partners, meaning they don’t need to navigate back and forth between systems.

The results? Across 10 roles, Midland’s recruiting team saw its time-to-hire reduce to 42.6 days, about 14% lower than the industry average — a significant difference in a market where time-to-fill is nearly double the national average. Recruiters are also able to focus their initial interviews on only the most qualified candidates.

Midland Care's 5-Step Process for Transparent Hiring with AI

1) Publish your responsible AI and evaluation principles

• On careers sites, spell out where AI assists in hiring and what it considers, such as skills, recency or credentials, but make it clear that humans have final say.
• When evaluating vendors, ask if they have a Responsible AI team.

2) Define skills-first criteria

• Define must-have vs. nice-to-have criteria and adjacent skills that candidates can learn on the job. State these explicitly in job descriptions and rubrics.
• Lean into scenario-based interview questions or simulation-based assessments mapped to your critical skills and score against standardized rubrics. “Today’s employers want people who can move and flow with change rather than push against it,” says M.K.

3) Surface “go/no-go” signals early and set fast‑track rules

• Assistive, explainable signals add efficiency. Set up objective evaluation instructions and automate early resume summaries at the top of your hiring funnel.
• Create fast‑track pathways and use areas of concern to focus early conversations.

4) Create actionable feedback channels

• Provide candidates with feedback channels and opt-outs to ensure they are participating in a hiring process they are comfortable and confident with.

5) Reinvest saved time in people, not process

• Keep humans in the loop for all decisions. “Trust is built in the moments that can’t be automated,” says M.K. “When AI handles the mechanics, recruiters should reinvest that time into building community — through deeper conversations, clearer growth paths and transparent human judgment.”
• Use the time saved with automation to have conversations around mutual fit and values alignment, and build visible development paths for new hires.

In 2026, leaders can’t have efficiency without trust. Leaders who clarify what matters, standardize how they judge and use assistive AI to remove friction and keep their people will be the ones who earn it. 

¹Indeed Survey with YouGov 2025, Total N=2,019 job seekers and 1,019 employers.

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