When AI Rejects You in Your Sleep: What Gets Missed Along The Way
Written by Kristy Camarillo, Head of People & Culture, The Royals
Rejected By Morning
A friend recently told me a story that’s stayed with me.
She’d been personally encouraged by a board member to apply for her dream role. More than qualified, she did. Then came the rejection email from “HR”. No context. No conversation. Just a system-generated no.
Weeks later, still confused, she reached out to her contact. They’d never seen her application. After some digging, it was chalked up to an “admin error”. She re-entered the process, blitzed the interviews, and landed the job.
This story has a happy ending. Many don’t.
Applying for a role at 10pm and waking up to an automated rejection by 5am. Trying to speak to a human, and finding out there isn’t one.
AI has accelerated hiring at an unprecedented speed. In many cases, it’s now the first and only contact, filtering out people before they’re ever truly seen. In our creative industry, that’s dangerous.
I Know What That Inbox Looks Like
I know this terrain well. I’ve spent the last decade working in recruitment, often as a one-person HR function. I’ve opened inboxes with hundreds of applications for a single role. I’ve written personalised rejection emails, sometimes late into the night (that part I don’t recommend), knowing how much courage it takes to put yourself forward.
What surprised me most wasn’t the time it took, but the response. Messages from candidates simply thanking me for replying. It was a reminder that personal, considered responses have quietly become the exception.
The Best Talent Rarely Comes in Straight Lines
Creative careers often don’t follow neat, linear paths. Folios can look messy because people reinvent themselves. Some of the strongest talent comes from sideways moves and unexpected backgrounds. Those stories (my favourite part) tend to make sense when they’re spoken, rather than scanned.
At The Royals, we’ve hired podiatrists turned copywriters. Army recruits turned art directors. Former suits who once moonlighted as marine biologists.
AI can sort CVs. It struggles to recognise spark. It can’t always read courage, curiosity, or swagger. Or that raw potential, which often only emerges in conversations, preferably in person.
Our interview process is deliberately designed to uncover who someone really is. What lights them up or makes them tick outside the JD? The seemingly conservative Dad of two, who once toured in a death metal band. The published author. The furniture maker. The Dungeon Master.
At The Royals, the human behind the polished CV matters more than the prompt.
My own lived experience has shaped this view even more so. As a single mum raising a neurodivergent family, I’ve developed levels of grit and resilience I never imagined I’d need. None of that shows up neatly on a resume.
As Brené Brown puts it, “We are not machines that can be fine-tuned with instructions. We are humans who need to feel safe, seen, and heard.”
So when it comes to hiring, why would we let machines make so many calls?
Human + Machine
The Royals have adopted an AI-first mindset. Staying across change is table stakes. We actively track trends as they happen, testing tools in real work, and share learnings and hacks as we go. AI brings efficiency, speed, creative acceleration, and exciting experimentation. It also brings bias.
Humans add judgment and context, alongside their own bias, fatigue, and inconsistency. Anyone who has worked through large volumes of applications knows how easily great people can be missed.
Both have strengths and blind spots.
This Is The Human Part
Adam Grant reminds us that work doesn’t need to be dehumanising. In such a small, deeply connected market like Australia, employer brand travels fast. Cold, instant rejection leaves an impression, and not a good one.
So how do we design the right balance to ensure technology supports the human experience, rather than flattens it?
That starts with building intention into the process. An award-winning folio doesn’t always translate into someone who can sell an idea in a room. Presentation skills still win or lose business and remain a distinctly human craft.
Word of mouth and relationships continue to matter. References are often more revealing in conversation than in tick-box forms. After 20 years in advertising, my contacts have become an invaluable “Little Black Book”. Direct referrals and personal endorsements are still my first go-to recruitment tool.
Human checkpoints matter in fast systems. A manual review of rejections. A second look. Five minutes of consideration can completely change someone’s experience.
What People Remember
A name. A message. A person. Job hunting requires vulnerability (*it’s killing me not to quote Brené again here). The least we can do is acknowledge the time and courage it takes to put yourself out there.
It also requires continuing to invest in the skills AI can’t replicate yet. Empathy. Intuition. Culture alignment. Human context.
These human-based decisions shape teams, cultures, and careers.
I hope the future of HR won’t be defined only by the tools we adopt, but by the human experiences we continue to prioritise.
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