Hiring is broken, and today's AI tools are making it worse

Why we started Liftoff

The job ecosystem has collapsed.

We’re experiencing unprecedented times in the job market — not because the market has swung to one side or the other, but because its core dynamics have changed.

Our team has experienced every role in the hiring ecosystem — we’ve interviewed thousands of people, hired in hypergrowth companies, have been candidates, and have helped friends recruit for over 15 years. Finding incredible people fast is the most important thing to a company’s success — whether you’re a budding startup or the biggest multi-billion-dollar AI company. And yet, it’s never been more difficult.

Over the past year, we’ve spoken with hundreds of hiring teams, recruiters, and candidates. Despite the latest technology and more great candidates on the market than ever — hiring is broken. No one is finding the right people or opportunities efficiently, and everyone is experiencing enormous time drain and emotional burnout.

Here’s what’s happening:

• Outreach has become automated — and lost connection and trust.
  Candidates are using AI to auto-apply to thousands of jobs, flooding teams with 3,000+ applications per posting. Recruiters are automating outreach to hundreds of candidates, overwhelming the best candidates with job spam. The result is a deafening level of noise, and no one knows who to trust. Because people are applying to more jobs than ever, they’re getting rejected more than ever, leading them to apply to even more jobs — putting more pressure on an already collapsing system.
  
  Current AI outreach tools removed friction, but in doing so, they removed the human signal. The overwhelming, low-quality noise has made it almost impossible for the best people and opportunities to find each other.
  

• Current algorithms are leveraging backward-looking data, so we’re all reaching out to the wrong people.
  Because hiring data is backward-looking — based on resumes and LinkedIn — candidates get matched to what they have done, not what they want to do next. Current AI tools and algorithms are weeding out all but conventional candidates who have already done the job, and wouldn’t want to do it again. Teams waste time chasing the wrong fits and miss the ones who could be incredible.

I’ve personally experienced this problem on both sides. As a candidate earlier in my career, I thought it was just a limitation of not having enough experience. It took me having two successive C-level roles at companies to realize that the pigeonholing actually never ends, and the problem is universal. Even as a rare female executive leader, 99% of the opportunities that came across my plate were carbon copies of what I’d already done — not what I wanted to do next.

The cost of this broken hiring system is staggering. And it’s not just the infinite cost of endless hours searching or huge recruiting fees — the biggest cost is that candidates and teams end up settling for “good enough” jobs or “good enough” hires, because it feels too hard to find something exceptional. When the right people don’t find each other, the loss is exponential. We miss products that could have been built, companies that could have scaled, or careers that could have flourished.

Replacing noise with human insight

Amid the volume and noise of misaligned outreach, the bright spots — the stories of great matches — all had one thing in common: people found the right roles through others who knew them. Real insight — from trusted connections who understood someone’s strengths and aspirations — helped them discover better, faster fits.

Everyone is searching for that kind of trusted signal. Yet, current hiring technology only amplifies noise — recycling low-quality data instead of combining AI with human insight.

Without a way to connect through people, we’re stuck using clumsy tools: one-off emails to old coworkers, or job posts tossed into the LinkedIn void. We’re desperately trying to hire, and be hired, through our social networks — but current platforms are failing us.

We believe the future of hiring is social — so we’re building a product that amplifies human insight and facilitates intelligent connections across a social network.

Liftoff is a hiring and networking platform that connects great people to opportunities based on what they’re interested in doing next, with the support of their network.

Our product combines AI with human insight to help people find the work and teammates that truly fit. Liftoff replaces noise with trust.

While in stealth, we’ve grown entirely through word-of-mouth to help over 100 companies — from Ramp to Loom to celebrity co-founded startups — run hundreds of searches and find exceptional talent from CEO successors to CMOs to Heads of Growth to Founding Designers. Over 5,000 users from Anthropic to Clay to Granola have joined to share opportunities and help people they know find their next chapter.

The impact is already real:

• An early Instagram employee helped another find their next founding engineering role at exactly the right time — with a team that shared their values.

• A Series B, Google Ventures backed company found their Head of Growth through a 2nd degree connection in their extended network, who never would have suggested them without Liftoff.

• A CEO found their VP of Marketing within 10 days, and within a year they were promoted to SVP.

• A design leader connected an AI legal tech company with their Founding Designer — who designed their app from zero to one.

• A CEO found their CMO who became their right-hand person — a match that never would’ve happened without a trusted intro on Liftoff, and changed the course of the company.

Our founding team has built some of the most loved consumer, social, and B2B products in the world at Instagram, NYT, Noom, Casper and InVision. We’re building our product with our community to reimagine how we find work and teammates we love—and how the right people discover each other faster.

We’re creating a future where every encounter is warm, and every intro is smarter. Where you can discover people through trusted connections continually. Where finding someone extraordinary to work with is always possible — and helping the best people in your network is simple, without the noise.

The result? Everyone — candidates and teams alike — finding not just “good enough,” but exceptional.

If this mission resonates, and you’re looking to build your team, we’d love to help you find an incredible fit.

— Eleanor

Liftoff is a hiring and networking platform that helps you find incredible people, through people you trust. Learn more here.