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Just as HR managers and recruiters are using AI to screen job candidates, job seekers are also using AI to make themselves more attractive to recruiters, sometimes with surprising results.
Headlines describe plans using AI to hire fake people and send spies to jobs where they could steal sensitive information.
But a more real problem for recruiters may be that AI will be used so routinely that every candidate will suddenly look like exactly the person the recruiter is looking for.
AI vs AI battle
Recruiting platform Cadient recently analyzed 3,000 resumes in its database and found that 9 out of 10 salaried resumes had logical inconsistencies, such as duplicate dates or the inability to promote. And three out of four resumes submitted to what they considered top employers included AI-generated content. We also found that 2 out of 5 applications would be automatically rejected if the hiring manager checked the basics on the resume.
Cadient CEO Bill Mastin said he was surprised that these statistics were so high, especially that 90% of salaried resumes had discrepancies that were likely caused by AI. He says that current recruitment efforts are a “battle between AI and AI.”
A candidate might pull a job description from a career site, input their resume into an AI platform, and have it match the two. “From a recruiter’s perspective, they receive 1,000 resumes and have 1,000 unicorns,” he said. “All of a sudden, everyone was a perfect fit.”
Recruiters are then using AI to identify who might truly be a unicorn and whose resume has a little or a lot of flim-flam embedded in it.
The impact of hiring people with AI-inflated resumes
Hiring the wrong people not only wastes time and money, but also creates security and safety risks when companies use AI to bluff people into jobs that require specific knowledge or qualifications. For example, if you work in the medical field, it can mean the difference between life and death.
“Putting people in the wrong roles has real-world consequences,” Mastin says.
Not leveraging AI to screen resumes and CVs “could cost companies a lot of money, especially for highly skilled positions,” said RJ Frasca, vice president of channels and partnerships at Shield Screening. Even in roles where lives don’t depend on the employee’s hands, hiring someone unsuited for the job can have negative effects in a number of ways, including increased turnover.
Hiring the wrong candidate can force more work on employees who have the desired skills, leading to dissatisfaction and leaving the company, Frasca said.
What recruiters can do
Experts say screening tools can only do so much. “Interviews are often critical to ensuring that poor hires don’t slip through the cracks,” said Katherine Loranger, chief executive of Safeguard Global.
Candidates can use AI to generate question content and potential answers. That means interviewers need to “understand the AI-enhanced components and get a thorough understanding of who this person is,” Loranger said.
Recruiters may want to encourage applicants not to rely too much on AI, he noted. “It shouldn’t be about who a person is. We want people to feel human in our interviews, and we want them to show their true selves, not their perfect selves,” she said.
That means asking questions about how someone handled difficult situations during that experience, rather than just asking about the experience. Questions include:
- How did you make decisions when you didn’t have all the information?
- How did you navigate ambiguity?
- What do you do when you’re in a situation you’ve never seen before?
- How did you manage to be responsible and work in a flexible environment?
These types of questions help recruiters “really understand how we got there,” she said, adding that she doesn’t think traditional interviews will go away or change much. “What’s changed is that we’re focusing less on what you do and more on how you do it.”
