33,000 Applications and Counting: Navigating the AI Hiring Surge with Katie Rakusin of Merit America
Jul 29, 2026
Katie Rakusin, Director of Talent Acquisition at Merit America.
has seen the AI hiring surge hit in real time: 33,000 applications
in five months, 10,000 in May alone, and yes, the bots have
officially arrived. The conversation covers how her team is
restructuring its entire hiring process around the assumption that
candidates are using AI, why stopping bot detection might actually
be the smarter move, and how a real four-day work week gets built
and protected at scale. Katie also makes a strong case for why
human judgment should be the last thing you automate, and what
early-career TA pros need to hear about staying relevant in a
market that keeps changing underneath them.
A Soundbeam Studios Production
Key takeaways
- Stop trying to detect AI in applications. The detective work is exhausting, biased, and misses great candidates
- It's not "did you use AI?" It's "can you defend and own what's on the page?"
- AI can surface and prioritize candidates, but a human must make every decision on whether someone moves forward. Surfacing is not the same as deciding.
- A four-day work week only works if leadership actually models it.
- Write your rubric before you turn on any AI screening tool, or you will just be scaling your existing biases across thousands of candidates.