Ireland’s competitive hiring market is putting recruiters at risk of burnout, with one in three describing themselves as heavily or very heavily physically stressed as a result of their workload, reports the Irish Examiner, citing research from IrishJobs.

IrishJobs warned that with the labour market close to full employment, more than half of recruiters say their workload has increased over the past two to three years. A rise in the amount of time needed to fill job vacancies is creating additional complexities in recruitment, IrishJobs noted, with 57% of recruiters reporting a rise in the average duration for filling a job as they face skills shortages and rising competition to attract talent.

The impact of slower hiring is greatest among large companies, it added, with 72% of firms seeing the average time taken to fill positions rise.

Recruiters using AI reported that reducing the time spent on manual and repetitive tasks was a key benefit of the technology, with sending candidates reminders, tracking application status, and scheduling job interviews some of the most common ways in which the technology is being used to automate the recruitment process.

Adoption is likely to accelerate further as more companies adopt clear guidelines on its usage and provide AI skilling initiatives to their workforce. Less than one in four firms have already established an organisation-wide AI policy, indicating that the potential adoption of the technology will rapidly rise as more concrete workplace guidelines are established.