After spending over 20 years in the communications industry, I have seen a major transformation in how companies search for and evaluate talent. The field now encompasses traditional media, digital platforms, social media, and emerging technologies, each requiring strong communication skills and specialized knowledge.

As a result, recruitment teams are facing growing complexity in finding candidates who can manage these diverse demands and still deliver clear outcomes. Despite these changes, many communications departments continue to employ hiring strategies developed before the industry’s digital transformation. These outdated methods were effective when job roles were well-defined, and talent pools were uniform.

But today, with applicants coming from varied professional backgrounds and possessing a wide range of skills, these same methods often lead to inefficiencies in the hiring process. Artificial intelligence offers a powerful solution to these modern screening challenges. From my own experience implementing AI-based recruitment tools, I have seen how they can reshape the way communications teams identify the right candidates.

Rather than replacing recruiters, these tools support them by taking over the time-consuming early stages of screening and evaluation. This enables hiring teams to spend more time engaging with top candidates and making more informed decisions.

What Screening Challenges Do Communications Teams Face Today?

Communications professionals face unique screening challenges that affect their ability to build strong teams in a highly competitive job market.

Managing High Application Volume

Communications roles often attract hundreds of applicants with diverse backgrounds in journalism, PR, marketing, and content. When we recently opened a digital marketing position, we received over 300 applications in just one week. This volume exceeded our team’s traditional screening capacity, thereby increasing the risk of missing qualified candidates who may be hidden in the crowd.

Evaluating Soft and Creative Skills

Success in communications depends on strong writing, creativity, strategic thinking, and interpersonal skills. These qualities are difficult to assess solely from resumes. For example, when cross-channel content promotion became a priority, we realized that standard interviews couldn’t reliably determine which candidates could tailor messaging effectively across different platforms.

Verifying Specialized Knowledge

Many communications roles require niche expertise that candidates often claim but may not actually possess. While hiring for a crisis communications role, we needed to confirm that applicants had real-world experience managing crises, not just theoretical exposure. Traditional methods offered limited insight into the depth of a candidate’s practical knowledge.

Keeping Up with Changing Skill Needs

Communication platforms and audience behavior evolve rapidly, requiring professionals who can adapt quickly. When social audio platforms gained traction, we had to find candidates already familiar with this format. Our standard screening process, which relied on resumes and conventional interviews, offered no way to evaluate skills related to these emerging tools.

Maximizing Limited Recruitment Resources

Communications teams often juggle hiring with their core responsibilities. Our department managed recruitment alongside daily communications work, making it challenging to dedicate enough time to screening. With multiple open roles and overlapping candidate pools, we were often forced to choose between being thorough and being efficient.

How Does AI Transform Candidate Evaluation in Communications?

Artificial intelligence provides practical solutions to persistent screening challenges, offering tools that are particularly effective for hiring in communications roles.

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

NLP technology can assess communication skills by analyzing writing samples, resumes, and assessments. While hiring for a content strategy role, we utilized NLP tools to identify candidates whose writing was both technically accurate and engaging. These traits were challenging to detect through manual review alone but crucial for resonating with our target audience.

Automated Skill Assessments

AI platforms provide role-specific evaluations that measure both creative and technical communication abilities. For a media relations position, we utilized AI to evaluate how effectively candidates could distill complex information into compelling pitches for journalists. These assessments measured clarity, relevance, and suitability for different publications, reducing reliance on subjective judgment.

Predictive Hiring Insights

By analyzing data from past successful hires, AI systems can identify which candidates are most likely to succeed in similar roles. For instance, we reviewed the performance patterns of top social media managers and built a success profile. The AI tool then screened new applicants for similar traits, offering insights that went beyond just resumes and job titles.

Reducing Bias in Evaluation

When implemented thoughtfully, AI helps minimize unconscious bias in the hiring process. During a recent expansion of our creative team, we utilized AI to conduct blind evaluations of design and content samples, removing personal identifiers. This led to a diversified shortlisting process, bringing new perspectives to our team’s creative work.

Scaling Efficiently with Automation

AI enables screening at scale while maintaining a positive candidate experience. When we had to fill five roles at once, automation handled initial application reviews and early assessments. This freed up our team to focus on more in-depth engagement with shortlisted candidates, improving both the speed and quality of the hiring process.