AI and recruitment

AI is mentioned a lot in the news, and has become increasingly prevalent within recruitment, both from the recruiter and the candidate perspective.

You may have read articles like this, stating that your application is being rejected by AI and no human sees the application at all! Or that candidates are using AI for their entire application. There is a time and a place for AI within the recruitment process, and we advise you to use it sparingly, if at all, within recruitment processes you go through.

How is AI used by recruiters?

AI is most commonly used in the early stages of recruitment, to assess CVs, pre-assessment tests, and video interviews. They are not commonly used in later stages, where it’s more beneficial to the organisation to rely on their own assessments of candidates. At the application stage, organisations might use AI to ensure that candidates are meeting ‘killer criteria’ (the stuff usually labelled as ‘essential’ on the job advert) – checking things like graduation date, location, etc.

You might be worried that if you don’t make your CV ‘AI-friendly’ that you won’t progress far through the recruitment process, and might even be rejected at the first stage. For the most part, however, this isn’t the case.

How is AI used by candidates?

In theory, a candidate could use AI in every single stage of assessment where technology is used – however, we do not recommend this as it’s not an accurate representation of you and often puts you at a disadvantage compared to other people who have taken their time to do research, networked with people in the organisation, and have taken their time on constructing their responses. This also means that you might find the role hard if you’ve used AI in your applications, as you might not have understood the role or organisation entirely.

Organisations are increasingly aware of the use of AI by candidates in their applications, and so more and more are creating recruitment processes that are more robust to AI. For example, in psychometrics having no ‘right answer’ (i.e. having two answers which are correct) makes it really hard for AI to produce the right answer. They also use analysis tools to figure out if a candidate has used AI, and some even have a blanket ban on AI usage, so you could get dropped from the process. Therefore, it’s worth taking the time to decide if it’s worth using AI at all in your applications.

There are ways that you can leverage AI to improve the recruitment process for yourself (without risking the opportunity to progress through the process). There are plenty of AI-generated interview questions and assessment mock opportunities that you can access to practice your interview skills. You could also use AI to find out things like salary ranges for the role(s) you’re looking at, or for a (not so detailed) overview of the organisation. You can also use AI to make a start on things like a cover letter – after all, it’s hard to start with a blank sheet of paper! But then you have to tailor it, use your own examples, and make sure the language is authentic so that you get to show the recruiter the real you.