Eventually, he walked with his resume and then got a job at a local bike shop. “Interviews are conversations, interactions,” he said. “It's an opportunity for me as a job seeker to get to know the people I work with.”
As the labor market weakens, the employment process has become the latest combat base for AI to infiltrate important parts of the economy. AI apps are increasingly being used by both parties in what employers and applicants describe as “arms races” escalating.
Employers and employers use AI to help them write jobs, find Winnow resumes, workforce talent and conduct screening interviews. According to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Committee, more than four of five employers, including almost all large companies, have already used AI in the employment process.
On the other hand, job seekers use AI Practice pitches with mock interviews and also assist during interviews to help you write customized resumes and cover letters for specific posts. This year's Gartner survey found that 39% of candidates said they were using AI, while 52% thought their employers were using AI. (Most of job seekers Although AI is used for resumes and cover letters, 29% said they use AI to answer rating questions.
There are complaints on both sides.
“It feels like the candidate is sending his resume to a black hole,” said Alexa Marciano, managing director of design and marketing recruitment firm Syndicatebleu. “But on the contrary, you have candidates who are applying in large quantities for just roles. … And when you win 10,000 applicants for the role, it's impossible to pass each of them.
Alyssa Hammond, undergraduate career development director at Bentley University in Waltham, said the AI app helps student job seekers find jobs that suit their interests and start their first draft of cover letters and applications. The app can wash thousands of posts across corporate and job sites to find an opening that suits your student's skills.
But Hammond has also seen apps exaggerate and produce information. Bot asked ChatGpt to write a cover letter for students who ran Instagram accounts for their high school sports teams, writing that they have a track record of creating engaging social media content.
“It's really dangerous because you don't want to get out, just like you've been working for years and you're just a sophomore,” Hammond said.
William Battelle hadn't created a resume in about 30 years when he was fired from his job at events and meetings at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute this year. The 60-year-old, who lives in Leicester, realized he needed to complete his bachelor's degree. However, in order to apply to such a program and earn some credit to his work experience, he had to create a specialized document called a pre-learning assessment. Microsoft's Copilot AI app helped him start writing documents with the right structure, he said.
“It gave me the foundation I could bring to career counselors,” he said. “It really helped.”
The problem of job-filled employment for employers The application did not start with AI. This trend goes back over a decade as online listing sites like Career Builder add features to allow users to send resumes quickly, according to Professor Christopher Stanton of Harvard Business School, who studies AI use in the workplace.
Job seekers responded by adding more keywords to the application. The latest challenge for Hiler is job seekers who use apps such as ChatGpt to hone their resume. Employers' AI-powered screening software is in a challenging time as more applicants submit AI-painted resumes that describe their skills using the correct terminology for a particular job offer.
Researchers from Columbia University and Yesiva University show that even humans can have a hard time choosing the best candidate. In New York. In a well-designed experiment, inexperienced applicants using CHATGPT were able to write cover letters that were deceived by experts more frequently than applicants who did not use AI.
The AI only improved the slightest pitch, but it still puts pressure on all applicants to use it, said Professor Yeshiva and co-author Pablo Hernández-Lagos. “Everyone is doing it and if I refuse to do it, I'm going to be the loser,” he said.
According to Stanton of Harvard, employers need to do more interviews to separate those who are truly qualified from those who have just pushed them from AI.
But interviewing thousands of candidates is unrealistic. This created a demand for businesses like Utah-based companies, where bike mechanics created automated software that they encountered Peregrine.
The company trained the app with thousands of recordings of real interviews, said Chief Data Scientist Lindsay Zloaga.
“The evaluation is a very long time and employment is a very old issue, but we use new technology, not just pencils and paper,” she said.
In a typical interview from Hirevue and similar apps, applicants are asked four to five questions that the executive has pre-recorded. In many cases, questions like “Tell me about yourself” or “Tell me about you that aren't on your resume” are common. Interviews often have one or two specific questions, such as why the applicant wants to work at a recruiting company. Applicants may be anywhere from 30 seconds to minutes to record responses. Typically, this app offers an opportunity to restructure the answer.
Hirevue has AI features suitable for applicant answers and specific openings. Employers usually review applicant recordings.
Rei said that human employees reviewed all the recordings and did not use Hirevue's AI feature to analyze candidate responses. The company then switched from Hirevue to ICMS. This has more features, such as a similar automated interview app, Rei said.
Boston-based Bullhorn manufactures software for recruiters and staffing agencies, and deployed a comprehensive AI app in May. Called Amplify, the app can do everything from candidates matching the job candidates to conduct screening interviews and scoring answers.
Bullhorn CEO Artpas said his company's app only records the applicant's voice, not the video. The questions range from whether candidates are permitted to work in the US and the software they used to manage their projects.
He predicted that the use of technology will continue to evolve quickly. “The candidates are definitely going to use AI too,” Pappas said. “Talking to my AI bot, you can answer most questions for me.” That's coming. ”
Because some apps were there, the use of AI in employment causes the ghost of automatic bias They are trained with materials that reflect human bias such as gender, race, and age discrimination. A Washington University study last year found that AI models appeared to be heavily biased against women- and black-related names as they were used to rank employment resumes. Additionally, a class action lawsuit filed in federal court in California in February 2023 alleges Workday's AI software is biased based on age, race and disability. The company denied the claim.
Hirevue and Bullhorn said their apps are being audited by external companies. And ultimately, the app doesn't make employment decisions, the company said.
Eric Chester, who talks to St-soon from time to time, has completed two interviews with the AI app, but has had issues in a live interview with people on the Microsoft team last month.
The 36-year-old, who lives in Long Island, said he is speaking quickly to avoid being stuck verbally when discussing the opening of a business analyst at an investment company.
Suddenly, the interviewer confronted him and asked if he was using AI, he recalled.
He denied the accusation, but felt that it “smashed my focus completely…. Of course, I've never heard of it.”
Aaron Pressman can be contacted at aaron.pressman@globe.com. Follow him @Ampressman.
