For most job seekers, the hiring process follows a familiar script. You spend hours tailoring a resume, filling out application forms, and writing cover letters. Then you wait. More often than not, you never hear back.
For Prem Kumar, that experience was more than a frustration, it was the beginning of a mission that would eventually lead him to build one of the fastest-growing AI recruiting platforms in the country.
“I experienced the problem myself as a job seeker,” Kumar says. “I would send in resumes and applications and never hear back.”
What began as a personal frustration eventually became a much larger observation.
“Companies are spending over $100 billion in the U.S. to attract job seekers through job ads and then ignoring about 95 percent of the people they’ve spent time engaging,” Kumar explains. “Hiring teams simply don’t have the human capacity to engage at scale.”
That realization became the foundation for Humanly, the Seattle-based company Kumar founded in 2019.
Today, Humanly uses AI to help employers engage, screen, interview, and qualify candidates at a scale that would be impossible for human recruiting teams alone. But Kumar insists that automation is not the company’s ultimate goal. He believes the future of recruiting may involve something even more radical: eliminating much of the hiring process altogether.
From Microsoft to Humanly
Before founding Humanly, Kumar spent nearly a decade at Microsoft working across HR technology, Dynamics, Office 365, and accessibility initiatives.
His perspective on recruiting changed during Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn, when he began working with hiring and candidate data at scale.
“It really hit hard that we are literally choosing which candidates we spend human time on across the Fortune 500 based on how many words two pieces of paper have in common,” he says. “A profile and a job description.”
The experience highlighted a fundamental flaw in recruiting: qualified candidates were being filtered out before they ever had the opportunity to have a real conversation, while recruiters were overwhelmed by application volume.
“The problem wasn’t a lack of candidates,” Kumar says. “It was a lack of meaningful interaction.”
The End of Repetitive Interviews
One of Kumar’s most ambitious ideas is that candidates should not have to restart the hiring process every time they apply for a new role.
“We don’t think there should be an interview process in the future for these roles,” he says.
Humanly is building toward a model where candidates maintain a persistent professional profile based on interviews, skills assessments, and career data. Rather than repeating recruiter screens and introductory interviews for every application, candidates could move directly into conversations with hiring managers.
“We want to get you to that conversation faster,” Kumar says.
In Kumar’s view, AI should eliminate repetitive evaluation while preserving the human conversations that determine team fit, culture alignment, and long-term growth.
Building a Real-Time Labor Market
Kumar describes Humanly’s long-term vision as creating a real-time labor market.
Instead of employers posting jobs and candidates repeatedly applying from scratch, Humanly aims to continuously understand both sides of the market. The company’s growing dataset of candidate interviews and hiring interactions allows it to identify opportunities proactively rather than reactively.
“We’re basically trying to create a world where there is no hiring,” Kumar says. “The connections between job seekers and hiring teams are made in real time.”
That vision received a significant vote of confidence in May 2026, when Humanly announced a $25 million Series B funding round led by SEEK Investments, bringing total funding to more than $50 million. The investment reflects growing belief that AI can do more than automate recruiting workflows. It can fundamentally reshape how talent and opportunity connect.
