Fred Bailey gazed out the window of his office at the tranquil beauty of the Imperial Palace amidst the traffic jam 24 floors below. Fred and Jenny met during their last year in college in a senior seminar class on business ethics. Fred was instantly attracted to Jenny's warm smile and flair for fashion. Jenny recognized in Fred high ambition, but also a kind heart. Fred had a couple of other offers coming out of Harvard, but including expected performance bonuses, the job at Kline paid 20% more. Fred was stunned by the Tokyo offer. Fred explained that the career opportunity was just too good to pass up and that the company's overseas package would make living in Japan terrific. The recollections of the frustration of that meeting were enough to shake Fred back to reality. Recently, their oldest daughter had complained about not fitting in at school.

Artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled digital marketing is revolutionizing the way organizations create content for campaigns, generate leads, reduce customer acquisition costs, manage customer experiences, market themselves to prospective employees, and convert their reachable consumer base via social media. Real-world examples of organizations who are using AI in digital marketing abound. For example, Red Balloon and Harley Davidson used AI to automate their digital advertising campaigns. However, we are early in the process of both the practical application of AI by firms broadly and by their marketing functions in particular. One could argue that we are even earlier in the research process of conceptualizing, theorizing, and researching the use and impact of AI. Importantly, as with most technologies of significant potential, the application of AI in marketing engenders not just practical considerations but ethical questions as well. The ability of AI to automate activities, that in the past people did, also raises the issue of whether marketing professionals will embrace AI as a means to free them from more mundane tasks to spend time on higher value activities, or will they view AI as a threat to their employment? Given the nascent nature of research on AI at this point, the full capabilities and limitations of AI in marketing are unknown. This special edition takes an important step in illuminating both what we know and what we yet need to research.

A large body of research has well established that changes in net balances between labor supply and demand can drive competition for human capital. We propose that AI-enabled recruiting tools constitute a force that will intensify the war for talent above and beyond episodic changes in net balances. We also propose that three seismic shifts will further intensify the war for talent by increasing the value of human capital and lowering its switching costs. Lastly, we bridge human resource management and military escalation literatures and examine how three key onset conditions relative to the use of AI-enabled recruiting tools have the potential to spark an arms race for those tools. Finally, we examine the managerial implications of these dynamics so that managers prevail not just in short-term skirmishes but also in the long-term war for talent.

Both researchers and practitioners are only in the early stages of examining and understanding the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in terms of marketing themselves as employers or the open jobs they have. AI has the potential to significantly affect how firms reach, identify, attract, and select human capital. We examine factors that can influence a job candidate's intent to complete Al-enabled recruiting processes, especially the influence of a firm's use of biometrics in that process. The results show that (1) social media can increase technology use motivation and Al-enabled recruiting with (2) trendiness as a first stage boundary condition and (3) biometrics as a second stage boundary condition. We contribute to marketing knowledge by identifying that for managers wanting to influence job seekers' technology use motivation in order to increase their participation in Al-enabled recruiting; they must focus on the indirect effects of trendiness, biometrics, and their social media usage.

Organizations are increasingly using AI-enabled technology and tools in their recruiting processes. However, little is known about how job candidates view AI-enabled job application systems and whether those views influence the likelihood that they will apply for jobs in such cases. Our research finds that attitudes toward AI use in the job application process in general, and attitudes toward organizations that use AI in the job application process in particular, are strongly related to the intent of prospective employees to apply for jobs at those organizations that have AI-enabled job application processes. Given the growing use of AI technology and tools in candidate recruitment, and given that organizations primarily select from and offer jobs to those who have completed the job application process, a better understanding of what influences candidates’ reactions to AI-enabled recruiting could provide valuable insights into how organizations can more effectively manage those activities.

AI-enabled recruiting systems have evolved from nice to talk about to necessary to utilize. In this article, we outline the reasons underlying this development. First, as competitive advantages have shifted from tangible to intangible assets, human capital has transitioned from supporting cast to a starring role. Second, as digitalization has redesigned both the business and social landscapes, digital recruiting of human capital has moved from the periphery to center stage. Third, recent and near-future advances in AI-enabled recruiting have improved recruiting efficiency to the point that managers ignore them or procrastinate their utilization at their own peril. In addition to explaining the forces that have pushed AI-enabled recruiting systems from nice to necessary, we outline the key strategic steps managers need to take in order to capture its main benefits.