AI in IT Staffing
What Works, What Breaks, and What Still Needs People
One staffing owner, one year of putting AI to work, and the receipts to prove what it cost.
Most books about AI in staffing are written by people selling the software. This one was written by someone paying for it.
Over the past year I used AI to rebuild my website, prepare candidate submissions, brief my sales team, read resumes, analyze outreach data, evaluate recruiting platforms and train my people. Some of it worked. Some of it cost more than $9,000 in a single month with two database rows to show for it. This book is the record of what actually happened.
What works
The website inquiry that turned into a real requirement, the recruiting workspace that turns a screening call into a client-ready summary, and the account brief that made sales conversations more specific.
What breaks
The automation that finished every step and left the spreadsheet empty, the dashboard showing tasks already done, and the repair loop that kept the bill climbing.
What still needs people
Deciding what done means, choosing not to buy, knowing which rule actually applies, and following through on what you told a client you'd do.
The free toolkit
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- The full recruiting copilot instructions we run, ready for a Claude project or a custom GPT
- The prescreen and fit scorecard: seven gates and five scored dimensions
- 11 templates and checklists, from the account brief to the repair attempt log
- The prompt from the end of every chapter
About Tyson Franco
Tyson Franco is the founder and president of Mako Professionals and MakoHire, two staffing firms serving enterprise SAP, Oracle and Microsoft clients. He started in recruiting in 2008, and at Oxford he billed more than $37 million in sales and made over 350 contract placements, despite ADHD and dyslexia that made writing the hardest part of the job. He was twice named Recruiter of the Year there before founding Mako as a niche agency.
He hosts the executive roundtable and speaks on AI for the largest IT and engineering staffing trade group in the United States.