Our take on AI agents at work, sourcing and recruitment automation.https://hire-balt.com/enhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/agent-washing-spotting-a-real-agent/https://hire-balt.com/blog/agent-washing-spotting-a-real-agent/Gartner estimates only around 130 vendors, out of thousands, sell a real agent. Five questions to settle the category before you buy.Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTdelegationGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/ai-agent-teams-or-slack/https://hire-balt.com/blog/ai-agent-teams-or-slack/Teams holds about 37% of the market against 13% for Slack, yet the agent ecosystem is built on Slack. What each surface forbids, and what it costs.Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTproduitGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/an-mcp-server-is-a-supplier/https://hire-balt.com/blog/an-mcp-server-is-a-supplier/An MCP server holds your credentials and feeds your model text it reads as an instruction. The 2026 measurements, and three questions to ask first.Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechniqueGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/claude-tag-an-agent-living-in-slack/https://hire-balt.com/blog/claude-tag-an-agent-living-in-slack/Claude Tag installs an agent as a member of a Slack channel, with an ambient mode that speaks unprompted. What it changes, and what it does not do.Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechniqueGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/cobalt-and-balt/https://hire-balt.com/blog/cobalt-and-balt/Cobalt is the ATS-CRM where your data is written, Balt the agent that works in Teams and Slack. Balt runs without Cobalt, and here is when.Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTproduitGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/entry-level-hiring-is-collapsing/https://hire-balt.com/blog/entry-level-hiring-is-collapsing/The employment gap for 22-25 year olds in AI-exposed work has reached 19%. This is not a redundancy plan, it is a hire that never happens.Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTmetierGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/running-two-agents-that-know-your-company/https://hire-balt.com/blog/running-two-agents-that-know-your-company/Yes, on one condition: their contexts must not overlap. And to cooperate, one of them has to stop being a colleague for the duration of the call.Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechniqueGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/specialised-or-generalist-agents/https://hire-balt.com/blog/specialised-or-generalist-agents/The question is badly posed. What protects a vertical agent is not its knowledge, which the model will eventually have, but the responsibility it accepts.Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTvisionGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/telling-a-candidate-they-are-talking-to-an-ai/https://hire-balt.com/blog/telling-a-candidate-they-are-talking-to-an-ai/Yes if they converse with the agent, no if a human reviews and sends. Article 50 has applied since 2 August 2026 and the line is not where you think.Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTgouvernanceGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/time-to-fill-18-days-or-81/https://hire-balt.com/blog/time-to-fill-18-days-or-81/The top decile places in 18 days, the bottom in 81, in the same market. A 4.5x gap does not measure scarcity, it measures dead time.Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTmetierGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/uniform-governance-makes-ai-agents-fail/https://hire-balt.com/blog/uniform-governance-makes-ai-agents-fail/Gartner expects 40% of enterprises to demote an autonomous agent by 2027. The cause is one blanket policy applied to agents of unequal reach.Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTgouvernanceGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/your-ai-agents-have-no-identity/https://hire-balt.com/blog/your-ai-agents-have-no-identity/An agent does not have an identity problem but a delegation one: it acts with its rights instead of yours. The test that reveals it fits in one question.Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechniqueGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/agents-that-call-other-agents/https://hire-balt.com/blog/agents-that-call-other-agents/Yes, and it is already standardised: over 150 organisations behind A2A in one year. An expert agent is called like a tool, provided it keeps nothing about you.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechniqueGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/ai-agent-memory-what-it-has-to-forget/https://hire-balt.com/blog/ai-agent-memory-what-it-has-to-forget/A memory that swells unfiltered drops accuracy from 39 to 13 %. What an agent forgets matters as much as what it keeps, and that is settled at design time.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechniqueGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/automating-100-percent-of-a-company/https://hire-balt.com/blog/automating-100-percent-of-a-company/No, and the limit is not model capability. A company is a person that answers for its acts: automation stops exactly where somebody has to answer.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTvisionGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/cited-without-being-visited/https://hire-balt.com/blog/cited-without-being-visited/Between 82 and 88% of citations in an AI answer produce no visit at all. The click stops being the unit of measure, and recommendation replaces it.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTvisionGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/how-to-test-an-ai-agent-before-you-sign/https://hire-balt.com/blog/how-to-test-an-ai-agent-before-you-sign/With thirty cases from your own history, whose right answer you already know, replayed three times each. A demo proves none of that.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTdelegationGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/one-candidate-profile-in-four-will-be-fake/https://hire-balt.com/blog/one-candidate-profile-in-four-will-be-fake/Gartner expects one profile in four to be fake by 2028, and half of applications to remote IT roles. 41 % of companies have already hired one.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTmetierGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/shadow-ai-in-the-enterprise/https://hire-balt.com/blog/shadow-ai-in-the-enterprise/66 % of office professionals used an AI they believed was banned, and over a third entered client data into it. Banning harder only moves the usage.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTgouvernanceGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/skills-or-subagents/https://hire-balt.com/blog/skills-or-subagents/A single agent with well-written skills matches multi-agent architectures. But an auto-generated skill adds nothing, and a bad one actively degrades performance.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechniqueGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/the-ai-doom-loop-in-recruiting/https://hire-balt.com/blog/the-ai-doom-loop-in-recruiting/Candidates apply with AI, recruiters screen with AI, and response rates collapse on both sides. Getting out of the loop means changing channel, not adding tools.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTmetierGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/the-ai-match-score-is-the-wrong-instrument/https://hire-balt.com/blog/the-ai-match-score-is-the-wrong-instrument/A score of 87 % cannot be argued with, only applied. 75 % of companies let an AI reject without review, and 26 % of candidates call that fair.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTproduitGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/the-commoditisation-of-intelligence/https://hire-balt.com/blog/the-commoditisation-of-intelligence/The cost of the same level of answer fell 280-fold in eighteen months. When intelligence costs nothing, what becomes scarce is context and the right to act.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTvisionGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/the-end-of-interfaces/https://hire-balt.com/blog/the-end-of-interfaces/At Supabase, 60% of new databases are launched by an agent, and probably 90%. What is dying is not the software: it is the access layer.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTvisionGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/the-four-eras-of-ai/https://hire-balt.com/blog/the-four-eras-of-ai/Symbolic, machine learning, deep learning, generative then agentic. What comes next is being decided on memory and world models.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechniqueGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/twelve-agents-that-do-not-talk-to-each-other/https://hire-balt.com/blog/twelve-agents-that-do-not-talk-to-each-other/A company runs twelve agents on average and half of them work alone. The right criterion is not how many you have, it is how many contexts you duplicate.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTproduitGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/what-is-left-to-humans-when-agents-work/https://hire-balt.com/blog/what-is-left-to-humans-when-agents-work/It is not the job that disappears, it is the pyramid. The volume work that trained juniors is going, and nobody has planned a replacement.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTvisionGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/why-an-ai-agent-costs-30-times-a-chatbot/https://hire-balt.com/blog/why-an-ai-agent-costs-30-times-a-chatbot/Because an agent rereads its whole context at every step. Resent context is 62 % of the bill, and past fifty steps the multiplier goes beyond thirty.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTtechniqueGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/workslop-work-that-looks-finished/https://hire-balt.com/blog/workslop-work-that-looks-finished/40 % of workers get it from a colleague, and each instance costs almost two hours to whoever picks it up. The cost does not vanish, it changes person.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTdelegationGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/ai-act-deferred-to-2027/https://hire-balt.com/blog/ai-act-deferred-to-2027/The high-risk rules move to 2 December 2027. But telling a candidate they are talking to an AI has been required since 2 August 2026, and GDPR never moved at all.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTgouvernanceGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/ai-agent-or-automation/https://hire-balt.com/blog/ai-agent-or-automation/An automation follows rules, an agent makes decisions. The rule for choosing: if you can write the script, automate. If you can only describe the outcome, delegate.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTproduitGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/ai-training-is-now-an-obligation/https://hire-balt.com/blog/ai-training-is-now-an-obligation/Article 4 of the AI Act has required a sufficient level of AI literacy since February 2025. It is an obligation of result, with no format imposed.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTdelegationGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/automating-linkedin-what-it-costs/https://hire-balt.com/blog/automating-linkedin-what-it-costs/40% of accounts using non-compliant tools were restricted in Q1 2026. And what you are risking is not a company account.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTmetierGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/bench-time-is-not-a-sourcing-problem/https://hire-balt.com/blog/bench-time-is-not-a-sourcing-problem/An 11.4% average bench rate, 41 days, €5,480 a month per consultant. The cost is already committed once you learn about the roll-off: the lever is the date.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTmetierGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/candidate-ghosting-is-a-capacity-problem/https://hire-balt.com/blog/candidate-ghosting-is-a-capacity-problem/53% of candidates were ghosted in 2026, up from 38% in 2024. It is not rudeness: it is a saturated queue, and AI is the cause before it is the cure.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTmetierGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/cv-prompt-injection-ai-agent/https://hire-balt.com/blog/cv-prompt-injection-ai-agent/Yes. Text hidden in a CV gives an order to the agent reading it. It is the least covered flaw in enterprise agents, and no filter fixes it.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTgouvernanceGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/delegating-to-an-ai-agent-where-to-start/https://hire-balt.com/blog/delegating-to-an-ai-agent-where-to-start/Start with work you can check in ten seconds: follow-ups, interview notes, record updates. Here is the order that works, week by week.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTdelegationGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/dpia-for-a-recruitment-ai-agent/https://hire-balt.com/blog/dpia-for-a-recruitment-ai-agent/Almost always yes. France’s CNIL names algorithmic candidate screening explicitly, and a missing DPIA is a priority enforcement theme for 2026.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTgouvernanceGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/look-at-your-data-before-an-ai-agent/https://hire-balt.com/blog/look-at-your-data-before-an-ai-agent/A candidate database loses about 30% of its accuracy a year. An agent reasons soundly over that wrong data, confidently, which costs more than no agent.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTmetierGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/should-you-require-mcp/https://hire-balt.com/blog/should-you-require-mcp/MCP is genuinely good news, but it is not a buying criterion. It is an exit criterion: what matters is the day you change tools.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTproduitGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/what-an-ai-agent-costs/https://hire-balt.com/blog/what-an-ai-agent-costs/Between €200 and €3,000 a month recurring. But the real question is the billing unit: per-seat pricing is structurally broken for an agent.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTproduitGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/what-an-ai-agent-should-not-be-able-to-do/https://hire-balt.com/blog/what-an-ai-agent-should-not-be-able-to-do/A good agent refuses. Deciding for you, acting outside its scope, silently retrying: five things it should be incapable of, by design.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTproduitGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/who-approves-what-an-ai-writes-to-candidates/https://hire-balt.com/blog/who-approves-what-an-ai-writes-to-candidates/No, approving everything is the same as delegating nothing. The rule that holds: approval whenever a message leaves the company or closes a door.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTgouvernanceGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/why-ai-agent-projects-are-abandoned/https://hire-balt.com/blog/why-ai-agent-projects-are-abandoned/Gartner expects over 40% to be abandoned before the end of 2027, for three reasons: no measurable ROI, no governance, no integration. All three are preventable.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTmetierGrégory Hissigerhttps://hire-balt.com/blog/works-council-consultation-before-ai/https://hire-balt.com/blog/works-council-consultation-before-ai/In France, yes. A court suspended two HR tools in January 2026, an appeal court two more in May, with daily penalties, and no need to prove urgency.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTgouvernanceGrégory Hissiger