To ease recruiters’ concerns about being replaced by AI, Zillow experimented with ‘prompt-a-thons’—now the real estate giant has 6 new recruitment tools

Recruiting teams are, in numerous ways, the starting point for AI-driven change. A wide range of tasks that recruiters have traditionally handled can now be done by AI technology. Yet…with so many potential uses at one’s disposal, figuring out where to start can be challenging.

The real estate technology leader has rolled out multiple AI recruitment tools since starting experiments in late 2023. HR Brew recently spoke with Roz Harris, Zillow’s Vice President of Talent Acquisition, Engagement, and Belonging, about how her recruitment team has pinpointed and integrated AI solutions.

Where to begin? In November 2023, Harris’s team began exploring how AI could support recruiters.

“We started examining AI’s potential. What we discovered is that, when you look at a recruiter’s role and responsibilities, around 80% of our work falls into the ‘mundane tasks’ category you hear about at conferences—tasks that AI can take over,” she told HR Brew.

To alleviate recruiters’ concerns about being replaced by AI, Harris and her team tested AI through “prompt-a-thons.”

Zillow already used hackathons to build consumer-facing features and products; Harris’s team adapted this approach for internal AI applications. For instance, prompt-a-thon teams wanted more guidance on navigating tough conversations with hiring managers. They created a ChatGPT prompt that includes capturing details about the issue and emphasizing soft skills like maintaining rapport or trust with hiring managers. The outcome: solutions designed by recruiters themselves, not imposed from above by leadership.

“The problems they chose to tackle are ones that, if I’d gathered my leadership team and said, ‘Let’s do this,’ we never would have come up with the same questions or challenges,” Harris said.

Once problems and solutions were identified, Harris brought in what she called “the cavalry”—the legal, enterprise tech, engagement and belonging, and talent acquisition teams—to evaluate the tools and assess their usability.

Prompt-a-thons have so far produced six AI recruitment tools, Harris shared. Some were built in-house, but most are vendor tools that her team either adopted early or helped develop. Harris said the cavalry has yet to say “no” to any of their ideas, largely because she followed their best practices—like avoiding decision-making tools and personal identifiers (such as race, gender, or specific keywords) when evaluating candidates.

“Fortunately, I’ve been around a long time, and so has my leadership team. We always knew we didn’t want AI making decisions,” she said. “We stayed away from tools that do that.”

Measuring success. The tools used by Harris’s team focus on both supporting recruiters and enhancing the candidate experience.

For job seekers, Zillow’s AI tools include assistants that help find and apply for roles, as well as schedule and prepare for interviews. For recruiters, tools like recruitment marketing software or Recruiter aid in sourcing high-quality candidates, while another tool analyzes interviews and provides feedback.

“If you’re applying to a job at Zillow, you can get help with the application process, and it will also match you to relevant roles. We also use AI to support recruiters,” Harris said.

Zillow’s AI-powered interview scheduler is designed to speed up hiring and reduce recruiters’ heavy workloads—some roles, like sales or marketing specialists, receive over 4,000 applications within a day of being posted.

“As someone who started my career as a recruiting coordinator, the scheduling tool is actually my favorite,” Harris said.

In the past, Harris noted, recruiting coordinators would spend more than a week coordinating interview schedules. Now, candidates receive a text or email with a link showing the interviewer’s availability and booking the meeting—cutting scheduling time to 30 minutes, a 97% reduction that saves recruiters up to 450 hours per month.

For any recruiting coordinator worried about that statistic, Harris had good news: “They’ve upgraded their skills. All of them still work at Zillow.”

Many former coordinators now work in Zillow’s employee service center, as executive assistants, or in program manager roles; others help oversee the scheduling tool. (And when a [missing term] crippled the internet, those former coordinators stepped in to manually schedule interviews.)

Zillow has also used AI to [missing action] from a broader geographic area.

After adopting its [missing term], called Cloud HQ, Zillow found it wasn’t a well-known employer in some cities. Harris’s team used tools—including newsletters and targeted actions to drive applications—as well as [missing tool] to save time sourcing better candidates, such as Appcast, a recruitment advertising technology provider that helped with cross-regional hiring. Through these three channels, 558 hires were made in 2025 through mid-December.

“We had a reputation in areas where we had offices. But when we shifted to being a Cloud HQ and hiring nationwide, we didn’t have that reputation everywhere,” she said. “AI helped us build it.”

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