SAATKORN · Gero Hesse

Ask Ingolf #10: Bericht von der HR-Tech in Las Vegas 2025

·26 min·2 clips

Ingolf describes how a startup's award-winning AI job application tool was made obsolete by ChatGPT's new agent mode.

1. SAATKORN's Ask Ingolf series returns with Ingolf Tetz reporting to host Gero Hesse on the HR Tech conference in Las Vegas 2025, focusing on AI's practical deployment in HR. 2. Ingolf Tetz is a regular co-host on the SAATKORN AI series and attended HR Tech in Las Vegas; Gero Hesse is the SAATKORN founder and host who stayed in Germany this year. 3. The episode's core thesis is that AI in HR has moved from hype and early demos to deployed use cases, with 100% of exhibitors showing AI-labelled products and the technology beginning to influence macro employment figures. 4. Ingolf contrasts this year with HR Tech 2024: last year, Agentic AI was genuinely new; this year every session featured working examples, and every exhibitor had an AI label on their product. 5. Josh Bersin gave the closing keynote under the title 'The Rise of the Superworker,' describing workers whose productivity jumps 30-40% through AI tool use, with one recruiting example where a human only intervenes at the second interview and onboarding. 6. Bersin's most striking claim was that the last three months of weak US employment growth are attributable to AI-driven automation, because economic output was simultaneously growing — implying job displacement is already visible in macro data. 7. Gero adds that if AI-induced growth is subtracted from US GDP, 'there is not much left,' framing AI as currently the primary driver of US economic expansion. 8. The startup pitch competition featured SonicJobs, which won for its AI-powered job application automation: candidates enter their data once and the AI fills out application forms across different company systems on their behalf. 9. Ingolf tested OpenAI's newly released agent mode immediately after and found it does the same thing for free — find positions by job title and radius, parse the CV, and submit applications autonomously while the user steps away. 10. Both hosts note that 25% of applications received by US companies at HR Tech are now estimated to be AI-generated, and not always truthfully, prompting discussion of companies needing to decide whether to allow AI-generated applications at all. 11. Ingolf compares the situation to the shift from paper to email to online-form applications: each transition initially created spam problems before new friction mechanisms emerged. 12. A key concern raised by Ingolf is that most startups at HR Tech are wrappers around large language models (OpenAI, Gemini, Claude/Anthropic, Mistral) with limited proprietary technology, making them quickly interchangeable. 13. He argues that in this environment, brand, trust, and go-to-market capability will matter more than technology, while the real value creation stays in the foundation models — which are predominantly US-owned. 14. Ingolf raises the risk of European dependency on US AI infrastructure, drawing an analogy to existing dependency on Microsoft for business software and calling for a 'Linux moment for AI' — a freely usable foundational model — while acknowledging Europe lacks the capital to build one. 15. Both hosts note that HR Tech conferences in the US do not discuss the societal and political dimensions of AI-driven job displacement, which they contrast with European discourse. 16. Gero references a recent SAATKORN episode ('Food for Thought') in which he examined Bersin's theses in a German market context, and flags that a Paris HR conference (Unleash) is coming up the following week. 17. Junior developer roles in the US are mentioned as the first occupational category already being displaced by AI at scale, with the hosts noting this was unimaginable a year ago. 18. The conversation is a rapid, informal Q&A between two well-informed hosts who regularly cover AI and HR; the tone is collegial and frank, with both willing to voice uncertainty about what happens next. 19. HR professionals and recruiters tracking how AI is reshaping talent acquisition, application processes, and workforce planning will find the specific product examples and Bersin data points directly useful. 20. Listeners who want academic depth, primary research citations, or structured frameworks will find the format too conversational and anecdote-heavy.

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