33,000 Applications and Counting: Navigating the AI Hiring Surge with Katie Rakusin of Merit America

Katie Rakusin, Director of Talent Acquisition at Merit America. has seen the AI hiring surge hit in real time: 33,000 applications in five months, 10,000 in May alone, and yes, the bots have officially arrived. The conversation covers how her team is restructuring its entire hiring process around the assumption that candidates are using AI, why stopping bot detection might actually be the smarter move, and how a real four-day work week gets built and protected at scale. Katie also makes a strong case for why human judgment should be the last thing you automate, and what early-career TA pros need to hear about staying relevant in a market that keeps changing underneath them. Katie on LinkedIn LHH Recruitment Solutions  A Beautiful Working World A Soundbeam Studios Production   Key takeaways Stop trying to detect AI in applications. The detective work is exhausting, biased, and misses great candidates  It's not "did you use AI?" It's "can you defend and own what's on the page?" AI can surface and prioritize candidates, but a human must make every decision on whether someone moves forward. Surfacing is not the same as deciding. A four-day work week only works if leadership actually models it. Write your rubric before you turn on any AI screening tool, or you will just be scaling your existing biases across thousands of candidates.