Thermoforming Report

The Hiring Pyramid Under Pressure

“In an AI-saturated world, the competitive advantage… will belong to organizations that know what evidence they can trust, and that distinction is worth building toward deliberately rather than waiting until the cost of guessing makes it impossible to ignore.”

Source: CEO Magazine, Why Modern Hiring Data Is Optimized for the Wrong Outcomes, 5/18/26

Hiring has always looked like a pyramid. Wide base of applicants. Narrowing middle of screened and interviewed candidates. Small top tier that actually performs and gets hired.

AI has fundamentally changed the shape of that pyramid – but not its physics.

The base is larger than ever. Faster. Cheaper. More automated. Candidates can now generate resumes, optimize keywords, and package themselves in ways that were not possible a few years ago.

But while the pyramid base has expanded, the top has not.

The result is a new reality for hiring leaders. More inputs. More data. More volume.

Not more certainty.

The Signal Problem

The best interviewers have always understood this tension. They bring a rare combination of curiosity and discernment – they ask the right questions and hear what is not being said. Conversations typically focus on hard results: what was achieved, how it was achieved, and whether the outcomes are repeatable. Remember learning the STAR interviewing methodology? Situation, Task, Action, Result. It takes a skilled interviewer to separate signal from narrative and determine whether a candidate can truly deliver.

With AI now influencing nearly every stage of the hiring process, a recent CEO Magazine article highlights a frustrating reality: more data is not necessarily producing better decisions. In many cases, it’s doing the opposite – adding noise where clarity is needed.

The Hidden Cost of Hiring Noise

The cost of a bad hire is significant. There are many ways that a hire can be deemed “bad.” 

• Were they placed in the right role? 
• Do they align with the culture of the site? 
• Does the physical location fit their needs and expectations?  

Whatever the reason, the impact is the same: lost revenue, reduced performance, and leaders being pulled away from their priorities to manage underperformance. 

As the article notes, “The consequences rarely appear at the moment a hiring decision is made; they show up months later, when a hire who looked exceptional on paper struggles when conditions change, the team quietly compensates and the manager spends hours course correcting instead of building the business.”

The research cited in the article is striking – and frankly, unsettling. While it notes that “most candidates are not acting maliciously,” it also reports:

“A recent Checkr survey of 3,000 hiring managers found that 59 percent suspect candidates are using AI tools to misrepresent themselves in resumes, interviews or written assessments, and Gartner projects that by 2028 one in four candidate profiles could be entirely fabricated. When nearly six in 10 hiring managers question the authenticity of what they are seeing, the hiring signal itself begins to break down.”

same CEO Magazine article

When trust in the hiring signal erodes, hiring becomes less about selecting the best candidate and more about managing uncertainty across all candidates.

The unintended consequence is that strong, honest candidates can also be lost in the noise – overshadowed by those who are simply better optimized for the system. The result is a widening gap between what looks qualified and what actually performs.

Turning Volume into Better Decisions

The article emphasizes ‘evidence-based decisions’, suggesting that organizations should shift from evaluating claims to observing real work. While the concept is compelling, it’s not always practical at scale – particularly for mid-level to senior-level roles where simulation is limited.

This is where the challenge becomes structural.

Great hiring still depends on great judgment – but judgment alone is no longer enough. Organizations need a structured system that filters signal earlier, sharpens it through the process, and strengthens decision-making at every stage.

That system has two layers.

First, an informed recruiting partner – internal or external – who understands the true must-haves of the role, pressure-tests candidates through structured screening, and filters signal before candidates ever reach the hiring manager.

Second, trained (and supported) hiring managers who ask better questions, listen more closely, and push beyond rehearsed answers – focused on evidence, not presentation.

When those two layers work together, volume stops being the problem – and better decisions become the outcome.

The difference becomes obvious when you have the opportunity to observe interviews firsthand.

With the advent and common use of platforms such as Teams, more than half of our clients request that we sit in on the interview (in the background and without injecting anything at all of course!). Over the past few years, after listening in to hundreds of interviews, it has become clearly evident which hiring managers are better prepared and trained in the art of interviewing.

On a recent search, with the hard work of initial filtering completed by Siena Group, a select group of candidates was presented and handed over for review and next steps. From that point forward, it was up to the hiring manager and supporting cast to assess technical skills, culture fit, leadership style, and more.

In this case, I had the privilege of listening to two different leaders hiring for different roles and locations for the same great organization. Both were professional. Both were conversational. Both represented their company well. Yet the contrast was striking.

One interview felt comprehensive, detailed, and well-prepared. Questions were built upon previous answers. Assumptions were tested. Specific examples were explored. The conversation consistently worked toward uncovering evidence.

The other interview felt more scripted and less prepared, resembling a box-checking exercise. Questions were asked, answers were accepted, and the interview moved forward. Nothing was necessarily done wrong, but little was done to separate signal from noise.

The first layer was executed well in both cases, but the second layer – and ultimately the outcome – was very different.

The Competitive Advantage

In an AI-driven talent market where the hiring pyramid has expanded the bottom layers in every direction, advantage is no longer defined by more candidates or more data.

It is defined by the ability to distinguish signal from noise.

The irony is that as technology continues to improve, the human side of hiring becomes even more important. The organizations making the best hiring decisions are not necessarily asking more questions – they are asking better ones. They have leaders who are prepared, curious, and trained to uncover evidence rather than simply confirm impressions.

Because the organizations that win are the ones that know what evidence to trust – and have built a process capable of finding it.

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