Vertex's Niwa: AI turns recruiters into strategic advisors

The conversation at LEAP HR: Life Sciences conferences has shifted over recent years. Earlier questions focused on which automation tools to try and how hard they were to set up. Now employers are thinking more philosophically about AI's role in people and workforce strategies, according to the article.

Both Grace Niwa of Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Kosta Kleitsas of Dyno Therapeutics stress starting from the business problem rather than the technology. Niwa describes AI supporting sourcing, talent mapping, screening and candidate matching, scheduling, and candidate engagement. She says this reshapes recruiting, and that the focus in discussions has moved away from automation and efficiency toward how to best use the human element. Kleitsas frames the shift as an organizational design question: deciding which tasks stay human-led, where AI can operate autonomously, how decision rights are distributed, and how teams work alongside AI systems. That is enabling talent planning to ask what capabilities the business will need next, rather than only who can fill a job.

The article also notes that these assessments are blurring boundaries between HR and technology functions, with more chief people officers and chief human resources officers taking leading roles in AI transformation. Kleitsas sees an opportunity for HR business partners to help redesign roles and workflows, and recommends designing for where AI is heading rather than only what it can do today, involving the people closest to the work and treating implementation as iterative. Whether that ambition translates into changed roles may depend on how organizations phase in workflows as capabilities advance.