Navigating the Future of Recruitment in the Events Industry

You’ve found the perfect job in the events industry. You spend hours tailoring your CV, meticulously aligning your experience with every bullet point in the job description. You hit ‘submit’, a wave of hopeful anticipation washing over you. Three minutes later, your inbox pings. It’s an email from a ‘no-reply’ address, politely informing you that “after careful consideration, they have decided not to move forward at this time.”

If this scenario feels painfully familiar, you’re not alone. You’ve just experienced the algorithmic handshake, the cold, digital interaction that now defines the start of most hiring journeys. Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept in recruitment; it is a global standard, a multi-billion-dollar industry that has fundamentally rewritten the rules of talent acquisition.

A staggering 87% of companies worldwide now use AI in their recruitment process, a figure that jumps to an almost universal 99% among Fortune 500 corporations. This technological tsunami is driven by irresistible promises of efficiency, with AI capable of slashing hiring times by 50% and cutting costs by 30% per hire.

But for the events industry—a sector built on human connection, creativity, and the ability to manage chaos with a personal touch—this revolution is proving to be a complex and often contradictory affair. As both candidates and recruiters arm themselves with increasingly sophisticated AI tools, we must ask a crucial question: is this technology creating a more efficient, meritocratic industry, or is it building a digital wall that filters out the very talent we need most?

The New Arms Race: Candidates vs. The Bots

The modern job hunt has become a technological arms race. On one side, recruiters, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of online applications, have deployed an army of digital gatekeepers. At the heart of this is the Applicant Tracking System (ATS), a piece of software that now filters approximately 75% of all CVs submitted online before they ever reach a human being.

In response, candidates have been forced to fight fire with fire. The adoption of AI tools by job seekers has been nothing short of explosive, with 70% now using generative AI to research companies, draft cover letters, and, most importantly, optimise their CVs to beat the bots. A new ecosystem of AI-powered platforms like Rezi, Enhancv, and MyPerfectResume has emerged, offering a sophisticated arsenal for the modern applicant.

These are not simple template builders. They are intelligent co-pilots that:

• Optimise for the ATS: They provide machine-readable templates and use AI to analyse job descriptions, ensuring a candidate’s CV is saturated with the precise keywords the recruiter’s system is programmed to find.

  
  

• Reframe, Not Reinvent: Many brilliant event professionals struggle to translate their hands-on, practical experience into the polished, metrics-driven language that modern CVs demand. AI bridges this gap, helping to reframe a vague duty like "managed event logistics" into a powerful, quantifiable achievement: "Orchestrated end-to-end logistical operations for over 50 corporate events with budgets up to £150,000, resulting in a 15% reduction in average setup time and a 98% client satisfaction rating." This isn't about inventing experience; it's about articulating its value more effectively.

  
  

• Enable Personalisation at Scale: In a market where hundreds of applications may be needed to secure a role, AI allows candidates to generate dozens of hyper-personalised CVs tailored to specific jobs in the time it once took to create a single generic one.

  
  

This isn't cheating. It's a logical and necessary strategic response to a system that has become increasingly automated. The initial point of contact in recruitment is no longer a human-to-human conversation, but a machine-to-machine handshake.

The Event Industry’s Digital Divide

While the rest of the corporate world has dived headfirst into AI recruitment, the events industry presents a more fractured picture. A 2025 study from the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) revealed that the sector is lagging significantly behind others, with only about half of event organisations using AI in their planning processes. A substantial 41% of professionals surveyed cited "no immediate need" for the technology, pointing to staff training (30%) and cost (25%) as the biggest barriers.

However, this paints an incomplete picture. The "events industry" is not a monolith. A deep digital divide is opening up:

• The Cautious Majority: Smaller event agencies and businesses, where hiring is more sporadic, are hesitant to invest in what they perceive as complex and expensive technology.

  
  

• The Aggressive Adopters: In stark contrast, large-scale event management corporations and their partners in hospitality and facilities management are early and enthusiastic adopters. For a company that needs to hire 80,000 people a year, AI is not a luxury; it is a strategic necessity. One major facilities management organisation used a conversational AI platform to schedule interviews with nearly 30,000 candidates, with each interaction taking less than three minutes.

  
  

This creates a growing efficiency gap. The larger players are leveraging AI to hire faster and cheaper, potentially consolidating the best talent. This cautious "no immediate need" sentiment also clashes profoundly with proven results. A Harvard Business School study found that AI-augmented teams complete tasks 25% faster and deliver 40% higher quality outcomes. The primary barrier in our industry, it seems, is not the technology itself, but a lack of strategic vision for its application.

The Algorithmic Standoff: When a “Perfect Match” Meets a Digital Wall

Here we arrive at the central paradox of AI-driven recruitment. A talented event manager uses an AI tool to craft their CV. The platform analyses it against the job description and awards it a 95% match score, declaring them a top applicant. They apply with confidence, only to receive that soul-crushing automated rejection email moments later.

This frustrating experience stems from a fundamental conflict between the two AIs:

1. Divergent Optimisation Goals: The candidate's AI is designed for breadth. Its goal is to create a master key that can pass through a wide variety of generic ATS configurations. The recruiter's AI, however, is configured for depth. It’s a custom-built lock, programmed to search for a very specific, often proprietary, combination of skills for a single, unique role.

   
   

2. The "Unconventional Path" Penalty: The events world is built on freelance work, contract-based projects, and non-linear career trajectories. But most AI screening systems are trained on conventional corporate data. They are programmed to penalise career gaps and often fail to recognise the value of transferable skills. A Harvard study found these rigid filters led to the rejection of over 10 million qualified candidates in the US alone. An event professional’s CV might scream adaptability and diverse project experience, but the recruiter’s ATS may only see an "unexplained gap in employment," triggering an automatic rejection.

   
   

3. The Recruiter's Double Standard: This technological disconnect is compounded by a psychological one. A landmark 2025 survey by Insight Global revealed a stark hypocrisy: while a near-universal 99% of hiring managers use AI in their own processes, a majority (54%) also stated they "care" if a job applicant uses it. They perceive it as a "lack of effort" (24%) or "impersonal" (17%), even as they embrace the very same technology for their own efficiency.

   
   

The Illusion of Objectivity

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of AI in recruitment is the illusion of objectivity it creates. A key selling point is its purported ability to reduce human bias. The reality is far more troubling.

An AI model is only as unbiased as the data it is trained on. If that data reflects decades of discriminatory hiring practices, the AI will not eliminate bias; it will learn, codify, and automate it at an industrial scale. The most infamous example comes from Amazon, which had to scrap an experimental AI recruiting tool after it taught itself to penalise CVs containing the word "women" because it was trained on ten years of predominantly male applications.

Because the decision is rendered by a "machine," hiring managers may be less inclined to question the results, assuming them to be impartial. In doing so, they risk laundering human bias through a technological process, creating a system that is not only discriminatory but also legally and reputationally perilous.

From Black Box to Feedback Loop: A Better Way Forward

For the vast majority of applicants, the AI-driven journey ends abruptly with that cold, generic rejection. This process is profoundly damaging to the candidate experience and, by extension, the employer's brand. It leaves applicants with no insight, no opportunity for improvement, and a lingering sense of resentment.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. The central argument is simple: if an AI is sophisticated enough to make a decision to reject a candidate, it is also sophisticated enough to explain the basis for that decision.

The technology to deliver constructive feedback at scale already exists. An ATS programmed to auto-reject an application for lacking a mandatory certification can easily be configured to communicate that specific reason.

This isn't a hypothetical fantasy. The AI recruitment platform Sapia made personalised feedback a core feature of its service, providing a detailed report to every single applicant who completed their text-based interview. The results were a powerful rebuke to the corporate fear that providing feedback is a legal hazard.

• 95% of candidates who received the feedback reported that they cherished it, describing it as "empowering, instructive, and 'eerily precise.'"

  
  

• Even more significantly, 70% of these candidates stated they would be more inclined to recommend the company as a preferred employer after receiving the feedback.

  
  

Moving towards AI-powered feedback is not altruism; it is a sound business strategy. It enhances your employer brand, builds future talent pools by telling people exactly how to improve, and provides invaluable data to refine your own hiring criteria. In the relationship-driven world of events, the goodwill this generates is priceless.

Navigating the Future: A Human-Centric Strategy

AI is a tool, not a tyrant. Its integration into event industry recruitment is inevitable, but its impact, positive or negative, will be determined by how we choose to wield it.

For Event Companies & HR Leaders:

• Audit, Don't Abdicate: Treat your AI systems as powerful but fallible tools that require constant human oversight. Regularly audit their outputs for bias and ensure a human being is always involved in the final hiring decision.

  
  

• Prioritise the Human Touch: Use AI to automate the tedious, high-volume tasks. Free up your recruiters to do what they do best: build genuine relationships, conduct nuanced interviews, and sell the unique vision of your organisation.

  
  

• Become a Feedback-Forward Employer: Seize the competitive advantage. Make transparent, helpful feedback a cornerstone of your candidate experience. In a tight talent market, this will make you a magnet for the best people.

  
  

For Job Applicants in the Events Industry:

• Use AI as a Co-Pilot, Not an Autopilot: Leverage AI tools to optimise your CV, but never let them strip away your unique voice. The final product must be an authentic reflection of your skills, and you must be able to speak confidently about every single point during an interview.

  
  

• Look Beyond the Application: Recognise that the CV is becoming a devalued currency. Invest heavily in the assets that AI can't filter: your professional network, a robust online portfolio showcasing your work, and direct human connection.

  
  

The rise of the robot recruiter is not a story about technology replacing people. It is about technology augmenting them. The future of talent acquisition in the events industry belongs to those who can master this new algorithmic handshake without losing the human touch that makes our industry so extraordinary.