The Chicken Aisle, Candidate Ranking, and the AI Illusion
The other day I was standing in the grocery store—doing something I think we all do, but don’t talk about. I was looking at packages of chicken.
Not just grabbing one. No. I was inspecting them.
Same type of chicken, same brand, same packaging. But I was still digging through the stack like a human meat scanner. Weight, price, sell-by date… scanning for the "best one." The most justifiable one. And I caught myself thinking, “What am I really doing here?”
And that’s when it hit me: This is exactly how most AI recruiting tools are scanning resumes.
You see, I’ve bought enough chicken to know that sometimes the “cheapest” pack has more fat, or the date is further out because it was flash-frozen and restocked. Sometimes the higher-priced one is from a different batch, not necessarily better, just newer.
But here’s the catch: I’m bringing in my experience. My preferences. My assumptions. I know the store layout. I know the tricks.
AI doesn’t.
AI is just scanning attributes—just like I was:
Weight = experience
Price = salary
Sell-by date = time since last role, or time in role
Packaging = formatting, branding, resume structure
It’s trying to match the best candidate… but just like I’ll never know which chicken was actually raised better or tastes best until I cook it, AI will never know which human can actually do the job until someone digs deeper.
Real Recruiting Needs Context
Here’s where it gets tricky. AI works off the information it’s given. It doesn’t know the story.
It doesn’t know that Candidate A has a two-year gap because they were taking care of a sick parent—and now they’re more emotionally resilient and organized than ever.
It doesn’t know Candidate B has moved around because they’ve been following opportunity, not running from problems.
It doesn’t know Candidate C has average keywords but is a superstar in person, full of soft skills and team chemistry you can’t measure in a resume.
AI doesn’t know what it doesn’t know. And yet, we’re letting it “rank” people. Matching Isn’t the Same as Knowing
Companies in the AI recruiting game are touting their matching abilities—and sure, the tools are improving fast. But let’s be honest:
Matching is about patterns, not potential.
Ranking is about attributes, not ambition.
No algorithm knows how to ask: “What’s your story?”
So What Do We Do?
We use the tech, yes. We let it support, automate, and even surface things we might miss.
But we don’t let it become the decision-maker. We don’t let it replace conversations, context, or connection and we definitely don’t reduce people to weighted packages on a shelf.
Because the best candidates? They’re not always the flashiest. They’re not always in the front.
And they’re definitely not always the ones AI picks first.