Zillow

Roz Harris knows a thing or two about building powerhouse teams. With years of experience leading HR and talent acquisition, she’s mastered the art of growing organizations by pairing smart strategy with a people-first mindset. Her leadership style? Equal parts empathy and execution, backed by data and a deep belief in the power of great talent.

In an interview with Manage HR, Harris pulled back the curtain on how she’s using AI to supercharge talent acquisition— integrating it into the right parts of the process, streamlining workflows, and making space for recruiters to focus on the human side of hiring. She also shared her experience with AIembedded HR management and why the magic really happens when efficiency meets emotional intelligence.

Empowering HR Teams with AI Integration

In today’s world, AI is integrated into almost every workflow. It books your flights and recommends your next binge watch, and at Zillow, it is quietly transforming the way we hire. The real trick is finding the sweet spot between AI’s efficiency and human emotional intelligence. That balance starts with seeing AI for what it is: a tool to empower people, not replace them.

At Zillow, we’re integrating AI in our workflows to reduce friction. Within talent acquisition and people management, tasks like interview scheduling and sourcing are repetitive and can eat up hours—hours that could be spent on high-impact work like developing talent, engaging employees, and helping managers make smart hiring decisions.

Take interview scheduling: it used to take us an average of 19 hours. Now, with automation, it takes 30 minutes—a 97 percent time reduction that saves nearly 450 hours every month. Those hours are now spent where they matter most: building relationships with candidates, finding the right culture adds, and partnering with stakeholders to make the best hiring choices.

Leading with intention and creating a culture where humans and AI work side by side, we’ve built pipelines that are not only more productive but far more strategic.

Fostering a Culture of Adoption

Rolling out AI tools is as much about people as it is about technology. New tools can spark excitement, but they can also bring uncertainty. Questions surface: Will it replace me? Can I trust it? What if it’s biased? These reactions are natural, which is why mindset is just as important as the tech itself.

At Zillow, we focus on making AI approachable and sparking curiosity. The goal is to help people see it as a powerful tool they can use—not something that’s happening to them. When employees feel empowered to experiment, they start finding creative ways to put AI to work for both their own success and the company’s.

“When AI’s used to support people—not replace them—it’s a game changer. It can make experiences feel like they were built just for you, shaping services and interactions around what you actually need and want”

One way we’ve done this is through Hack Week, a high-energy, all-hands-on-deck event where employees from every corner of the business put down their day-to-day work and dive into AI innovation. To promote the use of AI within my team, I launched a ‘prompt-a-thon,’ inviting people to explore what happens when you feed creative prompts into tools like ChatGPT. It’s part experiment, part play, and 100 percent about discovering how AI can take repetitive tasks off our plates so we can focus on the work that moves the needle.

Successful AI adoption requires participation and engagement from every employee, not just the tech teams. Employees at Zillow are motivated to view AI as a tool for empowerment and not a threat, and this mindset shift has been a real game-changer.

Driving Impact through Personalized AI Assistance

AI is a powerful personalization tool when used to support people. By tailoring services and interactions to someone’s specific needs, it can turn routine tasks into experiences that feel custom-built. Done right, AI-driven personalization adds value to an employee’s day instead of making it feel impersonal or overly data-heavy.

At Zillow’s HR department, we are embedding AI into all tasks, specifically in learning and development, to make feedback more accessible, relevant, and effective. One example is our feedback companion agent, a tool that helps employees brainstorm, draft, and refine how they deliver feedback. It saves time, lightens workloads, and still ensures quality, clarity, and specificity.

With the right approach, AI becomes a growth partner. It delivers personalized suggestions and actionable insights that keep the human element front and center—offering the best of both worlds: efficiency and authenticity.

Redefining HR in the Age of Automation

At Zillow, AI isn’t new to us—we’ve been on this journey for years. We see it as an enabler of smarter work, not a replacement for people. A great example is the Zestimate, our home valuation model, which was created to give people a clearer picture of a home’s market value so they can make more confident decisions about one of the biggest purchases of their lives. That same spirit of empowerment guides how we bring AI into our internal workflows.

The pace of AI innovation suggests a future where the technology blends seamlessly into daily life. The real differentiator will be knowing how to harness it. People who embrace and use AI effectively will have the edge.

For HR, that means applying AI strategically while keeping the human element front and center—especially in processes rooted in empathy and active listening. AI can help talent teams quickly surface great candidates, but understanding a candidate’s goals and motivations still requires a real conversation. That’s where the balance between AI’s efficiency and human emotional intelligence comes to life.

Advice for Strategic AI Integration in HR

The key is to invest in AI that automates the mundane and makes space for deeper thinking and creative work. Build a culture of curiosity where people are encouraged to experiment, learn, and find new ways AI can make their jobs better.

At Zillow, embedding AI into our workflows has sparked innovation, sharpened execution, and delivered real results. That’s why we’ll keep investing in it.

As AI continues to reshape business, HR teams have an opportunity, and a responsibility, to create an environment where learning AI is not optional but expected. Done right, this is where humans and AI work together to unlock creativity, strategic thinking, and ultimately, organizational success.