AI Can Do a Lot. But It Still Can’t Do Happy Hour.

I’m Jennifer Gavin, CEO and co-founder of Apex Placement & Consulting, celebrating 5 years of business this year!

And I want to start with something that might sound a little strange coming from the CEO of a staffing company.

I love AI.

I use it. My team uses it. We’re constantly exploring new technology.

If technology can make us faster, eliminate repetitive work, give us better information, or free up our people to focus on higher-value work, sign me up.

But recently I was at an OakMac SHRM networking event recently that Apex sponsored. I was standing around with a group of professionals, talking, laughing, having a cocktail, making meaningful connections and relationships.

And as I looked around, this thought popped in my head.

AI can do a lot. But it still can’t do happy hour.

Pause for laughter.

And as funny as that sounds, there’s something important behind it.

Because right now, I think every one of us is trying to answer the same question.

Where does technology make us better, and where do we still need people?

And manufacturing, as you all know, is right in the middle of that conversation.

The Workforce Has Changed

I started Apex five years ago.

And even in that relatively short amount of time, recruiting has changed dramatically.

The workforce has changed – drastically.

Candidate expectations have changed – drastically.

Technology has changed – drastically.

And employers and employees are being asked to do more with less, control costs, improve productivity, and somehow still find people in a labor market that often feels like it has a mind of its own.

At Apex, we recruit across manufacturing, skilled trades, engineering, logistics, and professional positions.  100’s of positions a week cross our desks.

So we get a pretty interesting and unique view of the market.

We hear what employers are saying.  And we hear what candidates are saying.

And many times those conversations sound like they’re happening on completely different planets.

The employer says: “Nobody wants to work.”

The candidate says: “Nobody wants to pay.”

The employer says: “People aren’t loyal anymore.”

The candidate says: “Companies aren’t loyal anymore.”

The employer says: “We can’t find any good candidates”

The candidate says: “No one every responds to my applications”

Somewhere in the middle is probably the truth.

The employment relationship has changed and I don’t think we’re going backward.

Technology and Offshoring Aren’t the Enemy

Then AI came along;

And suddenly every conversation, and I mean every conversation became: 

• Is AI going to replace my job?
• Is automation going to replace manufacturing jobs?
• Can we offshore this function?
• Can software do this instead?
• What can I do to overcome the lack of candidates in the market? 
• Is there a tool that could replace this role I can’t ever fill?

And sometimes the answer is yes.

Look at companies like McDonald’s and Walmart. Both made significant investments in self-service technology, fundamentally changing how customers place orders and check out.

And there were legitimate business reasons for those investments: rising labor costs, staffing challenges, customer convenience, and the need to operate more efficiently.

McDonald’s introduced self-ordering kiosks, allowing employees to shift their attention to food preparation, customer service, and other responsibilities.

But Walmart’s experience also teaches us something interesting. After expanding self-checkout, the company began bringing back traditional cashier lanes in certain stores because of customer experience concerns, theft, and operational challenges.

And I think there’s an important lesson in that.

Automation can absolutely help us overcome workforce challenges. It can improve productivity and allow employees to focus on higher-value responsibilities.

But eliminating the human interaction doesn’t always mean improving the customer experience.

And sometimes, after spending millions on technology, companies discover that the human element they were trying to reduce was actually part of what made their business successful.

That’s the difference between efficiency and effectiveness.

And I think we need to remember that as we make decisions about the future of our own workforce.

There are absolutely functions that can be automated, streamlined, or performed somewhere else more efficiently. 

I’m a business owner. I understand the math. I understand profitability and margin pressures and specifically I understand how important it is to remain competitive.

And I think we’ve gotten so good at asking:  “Can we do this cheaper?”

That sometimes we forget to ask: “What do we lose if we do?”

And I see this specifically happening in recruiting.

More and more staffing companies are exploring offshore recruiting models and automated intake and screening processes.

A former boss and current mentor runs one of the largest staffing companies in the world and they are moving ALL recruiting for all their business lines to West Africa and continuing to automate the front end of the recruiting process.

And when you look at the labor cost differences, I understand why.  It’s roughly $8 – $40/day for a W. Africa recruiter which equates 176 to 900/month or $11k a YEAR.  Compared to a US based recruiter, that is about 54k a year savings PER RECRUITER.  I see the appeal.

But here’s the question I think our entire community needs to confront.

At what point does reducing the cost of American labor begin to undermine the American labor market we’re supposed to serve?

Pause.

Think about that.  We’re in the business of putting people to work.

We’re supposed to be creating opportunities, building careers, strengthening communities, and helping businesses grow.

Yet we’re increasingly looking for ways to eliminate some of the very jobs that support that mission.

And I’m not suggesting every function has to remain in the United States.

I’m not against offshore resources.

I’m not against automation.

But I am concerned about what happens when cost becomes the only measurement of success.

The Economic Impact: Let’s Put Some Numbers Behind It

Let’s put this into perspective.

Depending on how we define the role, a reasonable planning estimate is that there are approximately 250,000 to 350,000 dedicated recruiters working in the United States.

Let’s use 300,000 as a working number.

If just 25% of those positions were eliminated through automation or moved offshore, that would represent:

75,000 American jobs.

And if we assume an average annual salary of $65,000, we’re talking about nearly:

$4.9 billion in annual wages potentially displaced from American workers.

Now, those are hypothetical numbers, not jobs that have already disappeared.

And some of those savings might be reinvested into American businesses and new opportunities.

But where does that leave the communities that lose those positions?

The people who used those salaries to buy homes, raise families, pay taxes, shop at local businesses, and support their communities?

And that’s just recruiting.

We’re not even talking about accounting, customer service, human resources, marketing, and the countless other professional and administrative positions facing similar pressures.

When we eliminate entry-level jobs, we’re not just eliminating salaries.

We’re potentially eliminating the next generation of managers, directors, executives, and entrepreneurs.

Because where do tomorrow’s leaders come from if we eliminate the opportunities for them to learn today?

As business leaders, we need to look beyond the immediate bottom line.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t reduce costs. I’m saying we need to understand the long-term consequences of how we reduce them.

We’re Making an Already Difficult Labor Market Even Harder

And here’s the part I think we’re overlooking.

Look at the people we’re trying to recruit in America today.

• Engineers.
• CNC machinists.
• Skilled tradespeople.
• Maintenance technicians.
• Controls engineers.
• Accountants.
• Manufacturing leaders.

These are not easy positions to fill.

In many of our markets, we’re already competing for a limited pool of qualified, experienced talent.

We spend enormous amounts of time trying to find people with the right technical skills, experience, and willingness to make a career change.

And now we’re considering taking one of the most human parts of that process and moving it thousands of miles away and/or automating the initial phone screens/contacts.

Think about that for a minute.

Imagine you’re a CNC machinist with 25 years of experience.

You’ve spent your career working on the shop floor, programming machines, solving problems, and building things.

You’ve worked at the same company for 15 years.

You’re not actively looking for another job.

And then your phone rings. Or maybe it’s a text message, an automated email, or even an AI-generated recruiting conversation.

It’s a recruiter halfway around the world, or worse, you’re having a conversation with technology designed to sound like a real person.

Maybe there’s a communication barrier.

Maybe the recruiter—or the algorithm—doesn’t understand your local labor market.

Maybe they don’t understand your industry, your experience, or what actually matters to you.

Maybe they don’t even understand the difference between operating a CNC machine and programming one. Or the difference between a facilities maintenance and machine maintenance.

But the system has matched a few keywords on your résumé to a job description, and suddenly you’re the “perfect candidate.”

And now, through a scripted conversation or a series of automated messages, they’re trying to convince you to leave a job you’ve had for 15 years.

Think about that. We’re asking someone to make one of the biggest decisions of their professional life, and we may not even be giving them a genuine human conversation.

And here’s the irony.

We’re already struggling to find these people. Engineers, machinists, skilled tradespeople, and experienced manufacturing professionals.

They’re hard to find, they’re in high demand, and they have choices.

So why, when we finally get their attention, would we risk losing them by removing the very thing that might convince them to make a change—a real relationship?

Because technology might identify the right candidate.

But identifying talent and influencing talent are two very different things.

Now, let me be clear.

This isn’t about nationality or where someone was born.

There are incredibly talented recruiting professionals all over the world.

And there are plenty of American recruiters who don’t understand manufacturing either.

The issue is knowledge, communication, trust, and connection.

It’s understanding that a skilled tradesperson in Michigan may have very different priorities than a software engineer in California.

It’s knowing what a 45-minute commute means in Pittsburg vs Texas vs New York.

It’s understanding shift premiums, overtime expectations, union environments, and the difference between a small machine shop, an R&D facility and a major automotive production plant.

It’s knowing that a maintenance technician making $35 an hour isn’t necessarily going to leave for $37.

• Maybe she’s tired of working seven days a week.
• Maybe she wants first shift because her kids are getting older.
• Maybe the company changed leadership.
• Maybe they haven’t had a raise in three years.
• Or maybe they’re just having a really bad Tuesday, and by Friday they’re going to change their mind.

You have to talk to people to know the difference.

And you have to understand their world.

We’re already struggling to find the talent our manufacturers desperately need.

Why are we making it harder for that talent to connect with us?

Efficiency and Effectiveness Aren’t the Same Thing

I think one of the biggest mistakes we’re making is confusing efficiency with effectiveness.

You can make a process incredibly efficient and accidentally make the experience terrible.

We’ve all experienced it.

You call a company because you need help.

“Press 1.”

“Press 4.”

“Tell me briefly why you’re calling.”

You tell the robot.

It says:

“I’m sorry. I didn’t understand that.”

You try again.

And suddenly your yelling into your phone REPRESENTATIVE or even hang up in frustration and call back hoping for someone who can help…or maybe that’s just me?

A Real Example: When Automation Goes Too Far

And I can give you a real example from my own career.

At a large staffing company I worked for previously, we introduced an automated recruiting assistant named “Mya.”

And I have to tell you, from a technology standpoint, it was pretty impressive.

When candidates first interacted with Mya, she seemed like a real person. The technology was conversational, responsive, and designed to make recruiting more efficient.

Sounds great, right?

But here’s what happened.

Once a candidate decided to engage with Mya, they were taken through a fairly tedious automated screening process.

Question after question after question.

And remember, at this point, these candidates often didn’t even know much about the job!

They didn’t necessarily know the company, the opportunity, the working environment, or why they should be interested – what are the wow factors of this opportunity or company?

But we were already asking them to invest their time answering a long list of questions.

And then I started looking at the data.

When I reviewed the candidate conversion numbers for my region, we had a 95% falloff during that process.

Ninety-five percent!

Pause.

And here’s the part that really got my attention.

These were entry-level jobs.

We weren’t asking someone to become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

We were trying to hire entry-level workers, and we had created a process where only about 5% of the candidates who entered that automated funnel were making it through.

Now, I’m sure the technology was accomplishing exactly what it was designed to do.

• It was asking questions.
• It was screening candidates.
• It was automating a process that previously required human interaction.

But what good is an efficient recruiting process if you’re losing 95% of your candidates along the way?

Think about that.

We were investing in technology to solve a recruiting problem, but the candidate experience was potentially making the recruiting problem worse.

And that experience really shaped my philosophy about recruiting.

When I launched Apex five years ago, one thing was incredibly important to me: I wanted our team to make an effort to have a real conversation with every single person who applies with our company.

Not just the people whose résumés perfectly match a job description. Not just the people an algorithm decides are qualified. Everyone.

Because I’ve spent enough years in this industry to know that a résumé doesn’t always tell the whole story.

Sometimes the person who doesn’t look perfect on paper turns out to be your best employee. Sometimes someone applies for the wrong position, but they’re a great fit for something else.

And sometimes all it takes is a five-minute conversation to uncover an opportunity that technology would have completely overlooked.

Does that take more time? Absolutely.

But I’d rather invest five minutes in a conversation than spend thousands of dollars trying to attract more candidates we’re not even taking the time to engage with.

Because sometimes the problem isn’t finding more candidates.

Sometimes the problem is what we’re doing to the candidates we’ve already found.

And that’s the distinction I want everyone to remember.

Automation should remove barriers, not become another barrier itself.

Mya could ask every question on the screening checklist. But she couldn’t recognize when a candidate needed a reason to stay in the conversation.

• AI can source candidates.
• It can screen résumés.
• It can send texts.
• It can schedule interviews.
• It can write job descriptions.
• It can summarize interviews.

And we should absolutely use those tools where they make sense.

But imagine you’re considering leaving a company you’ve worked at for 10 years.

• You have a family.
• You have benefits.
• You have vacation time.
• Maybe there’s a bonus on the table.
• Maybe your current employer is going to counteroffer.
• Maybe you’re scared to make a change.

Those aren’t just data points.  That’s someone’s life.

And that’s where I still want a human being involved.

Someone who can ask:

• Why are you really considering leaving?
• What would make this opportunity worth the risk?
• What happens if your employer gives you another $10,000 to stay?

AI can help us prepare for that conversation.

But I still want a person having it.

And it matters on the client side too.

A job description can tell me you need a controls engineer.

It can tell me the required experience, the shift, and the salary.

What it can’t necessarily tell me is why the last three controls engineers left.

That’s the conversation I want to have.

Because if we don’t understand that, finding another résumé isn’t actually solving the problem.

And It’s Not Just Recruiting

The same thing applies inside our manufacturing facilities.

Think about your best supervisor.

Your best plant manager.

Your best HR leader.

What makes them good?

From my experience working with 1000’s of manufacturing and logistics clients over the years, it’s not that they can complete a form faster than everyone else.

• It’s that they know their people.
• They can tell when an employee is struggling.
• They recognize when someone is becoming disengaged.
• They know when to push someone.
• They know when someone needs support.
• They can sense when a conflict is brewing before it becomes a resignation or a much bigger problem.

Those are human skills.

And ironically, I think those skills are going to become even more valuable as technology gets better.

Because if AI takes away more of the transactional work, what we’re left with is the work that requires judgment.

• Leadership.
• Communication.
• Creativity.
• Problem-solving.
• And connection.

And personally, I think that’s super exciting.

People First Doesn’t Mean Technology Last

I want to be clear about something.

People first doesn’t mean technology last.

Technology is already making our company better.

And I fully expect that to continue.

But I want technology supporting our people, not creating distance between us and the people we serve.

Let technology do what technology does really well.

• Process.
• Analyze.
• Automate.
• Organize.
• Predict.

Take repetitive work off our plates.

And then let people spend more time doing the things people do really well.

• Connect.
• Lead.
• Listen.
• Coach.
• Challenge.
• Create.
• Solve problems.
• Build trust.

The goal shouldn’t simply be to build companies that need fewer people.

It should be to build companies where people can accomplish more.

That’s the combination I think wins.

A Challenge to Everyone in This Room

So here’s my challenge to everyone in this room.

When you go back to your organizations, I want you to think about where technology could make the biggest difference in your business.

And I’m not just talking about reducing headcount or cutting labor costs.

Think about manufacturing for a minute.

How many of you have positions that are incredibly difficult to fill?

Maybe the work requires heavy lifting. Maybe it’s a hot, physically demanding environment. Maybe it’s repetitive, exhausting work that people simply don’t want to do anymore.

And because you can’t find enough people willing to do that work, turnover is high, overtime is climbing, and production is falling behind. This is a story I see all too often.

Now THAT is a great opportunity for automation.

Because in that situation, you’re not necessarily replacing people. You’re removing a bottleneck that’s preventing your business from growing.

You’re improving safety, increasing production capacity, reducing turnover, and potentially creating opportunities for your existing employees to do more skilled, higher-value work.

That’s technology making your business better AND making work better for your people.

And that’s really the point I’ve been trying to make today.

It’s not about whether we should automate. Of course we should.

It’s about being intentional with what we automate and understanding the impact of those decisions.

So as you’re evaluating your next investment in AI, robotics, automation, or even offshoring, I’d encourage you to ask yourself three questions.

First: Where can technology make us more efficient?

What repetitive tasks can we eliminate? Where can we reduce errors, improve safety, increase productivity, or remove operational bottlenecks?

Second: What’s the true return on that investment?

And I don’t just mean how much money we save on labor.

I’m talking about the impact on production, quality, employee retention, customer experience, and long-term profitability.

And third, and perhaps most importantly: Where does a human being make this better?

Where do experience, judgment, relationships, creativity, and problem-solving bring value that technology can’t replicate?

Because if we only ask the first two questions, we might create a more efficient operation while unintentionally eliminating something that made us successful in the first place.

We need to recognize the difference between eliminating a job because it’s expensive and eliminating a barrier because it’s holding our business back.

Because the best investments in technology don’t just make companies more efficient.

They make people more effective.

And that’s where I believe the real opportunity is.  In my industry and in yours.

Closing: The Future Is Both

I don’t believe the future of manufacturing is humans or technology.

I believe it’s humans with technology.

I don’t believe everything needs to be local.

And I don’t believe everything should be offshore.

I don’t think AI is going to solve every workforce problem.

And I certainly don’t think ignoring AI is the answer either.

The companies that figure out the balance are going to have an incredible advantage.

• They’ll automate what should be automated.
• They’ll use AI where it adds value.
• They’ll use global resources where they make sense.
• They’ll use data to make better decisions.
• And they’ll protect the human connections that actually matter.

Because at the end of the day, somebody still has to lead the team.

• Somebody still has to earn trust.
• Somebody still has to recognize when an employee is struggling.
• Somebody still has to convince that great candidate to take a chance on your company.
• And somebody still has to sit across the table from a customer and understand what they really need, even when they’re not quite saying it.

And apparently…

Pause and smile. Somebody still has to organize happy hour.

So embrace the technology.

Use AI.

Find efficiencies.

Be open to doing things differently.

But be intentional about where you keep the human connection.

Because technology is going to continue changing how we work.

But it shouldn’t make us forget why we work, who we serve, or the communities we’re responsible for helping build.

Manufacturing is a people business.

Leadership is a people business.

And building great companies is still a people business.

AI can do a lot.

Pause.

But it still can’t do happy hour.

Thank you.