AI Vs Recruitment

AI Vs Recruitment

It feels like a long time ago when I was a fresh eyed public sector officer, being interviewed for my first project manager role. I was nervous..very nervous. So mid-way through the interview when I was asked “what do you think is your biggest weakness?” (classic interview question), I didn’t automatically respond with “I care too much” or “my need for perfection”...No, I went with ‘err…project management’ (on the basis I didn’t have a qualification…honest to a fault I suppose)...for a project manager role…this was not the greatest answer I’ve ever given, I’ll admit that. But I did learn something from the interview that day, the panel were polite with me and fed back shortly after that, maybe I should be better prepared next time.

Fast-forward to today and the job market is feeling like a very different place indeed. I’ve been on both sides of the interview panel, facilitated career development workshops and recently been through the recruitment process myself but I don’t think even I was aware of just how much AI is impacting recruitment.

How is AI changing the recruitment process for candidates?

It can at times feel like an application has been lost down some recruitment black-hole. At its worst applying for a new role can go something like this:

• Generic recruitment email received

• Apply for role by sending CV and resume

• No acknowledgement

• No updates on application

• No feedback

AI is already being used at an exponential rate to be a sort of ‘gatekeeper’, sifting and short-listing candidates before it even gets to the recruiter or the hiring manager. If your application isn’t tailored to the key words of the job description (that the AI algorithm is trained on), you will likely struggle to get your CV/Resume from off the pile and on to the in-person stage of the process. 

So what should you do? Finding yourself a good recruitment consultant helps, there are consultants for every sector and they know the companies recruiting and the jobs available. A good recruitment consultant can be invaluable, but it’s just as important to build your network and make connections. The saying ‘it's not what you know, it’s who you know’, whilst wrecking nepotism, still rings true. Linking in with leaders in your sector and showing them what you can do, gaining mentors, can all create opportunities. As AI becomes more influential in the recruitment industry, those human connections are going to be even more valuable. 

AI is also being used to screen candidates and make initial short-listing decisions. This is where I’m concerned that AI is being used to uphold an inherently broken recruitment system. To those looking for roles in today’s market I say, don’t be ashamed to use AI to support your application. But it’s critical that you do it in the right way, here’s some suggestions:

• To find suitable roles - Upload an anonymised version of your CV and resume into a search engine such as Google AI mode with the prompt ‘highlight any current (insert permanent/interim/agency) roles that match my CV and resume in the (insert location) area at (insert salary) rate’

• For job suitability - Upload both a job description and your anonymised CV/Resume into your LLM of choice (ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude etc) and prompt ‘how do my skills and experience match against the job description? What are my strengths and what are my areas for development?’ 

• For applications and interviews - Use the same LLM to ask questions to support application questions, it’s important here to not use generic answers - use your CV and resume to ensure answers are tailored to your skills and experience. Ideally, write your initial responses and use AI to improve your answers.

Here’s a short video I made on Using AI in Finding New Roles to help. 

How is AI changing the recruitment process for employers?

What is a company's most important resource? Most senior leaders would tell you, ‘it’s people’, and they’d be right.  

Yet it’s fair to say a significant amount of the same people that are so insistent about the importance of hiring the best people, are the same that bemoan the fact they have to spend so long on the actual recruitment process. It’s no surprise I suppose when people are under so much pressure to get someone into position at pace, they rush and look for short cuts with one of the most important decisions they are going to make.

For hiring managers, recruitment is often an additional task on top of their day job and in many industries these same managers are often exhausted, (even at the thought) of a protracted recruitment process with uncertain results. Is it no wonder that companies are looking to AI for solutions and quick-fixes. 

In many cases this is seeing companies fight fire with fire, for the surge in applications created by AI, they are using AI to short list and make hiring decisions. The problem with this is algorithm bias and increased discrimination. If AI recruitment tools are trained on past hiring data, the tools are destined to repeat the same biases. 

However, there is a lot of opportunity for AI to revolutionise the recruitment process and it is already evident in some of the administrative steps in recruitment such as:

• Job description creation

• Writing job adverts

• Creating assessments

• Drafting interview questions

• Scheduling interviews

Some companies still instruct candidates to explicitly NOT use AI in their applications. Is this really practical or desirable in today’s world? The question shouldn’t be “should candidates use AI?”, it should be “why are we still designing recruitment processes that assume they don’t?”. For most knowledge-based roles, I’d now be asking a very different question from candidates: not whether they use AI, but whether they know how to use it effectively, critically and responsibly?  

The AI Arms Race in recruitment.

There is an escalating vicious circle when it comes to recruitment. Companies are more frequently using AI algorithmic screening of applications, whilst candidates are using AI tools such as Claude, ChatGPT or resume builders to flood application portals. It’s both never been easier to apply for a role and thus to be rejected. This is leading to a poorer recruitment experience for everyone involved. 

CVs are becoming less useful.

In an AI-saturated world, CVs, resumes and scripted interview questions are no longer able to measure a candidate's true capabilities for the role. 

Recruitment needs to move to a more human-centred approach.

Some companies are already shifting their recruitment approach in new and innovative ways: 

• Unilever recently reduced its 'time-to-hire' from 4 months to 4 weeks using AI video evaluation and neuroscience based assessments.

• JPMorgan have introduced behaviour based micro games for early career hires, evaluating real time risk taking and problem solving behaviours instead of university credentials. 

Most companies are not prepared for the level of disruption AI is causing their legacy hiring processes, but there is plenty that can be done:

• Interactive skills assessments

• Personalised candidate experiences

• Virtual job simulations

• Companies like Linear implementing paid work trials 

• Innovative recruitment campaign challenges such as Ogilvy & Mathers asking candidates to sell a brick via Youtube videos are likely to make a comeback 

Going forward, those companies that focus on a human-first approach to recruitment, creating a positive experience for candidates, are the ones that will reap the most rewards. There is a shift already happening to focus on:

• More direct conversations with candidates earlier in the recruitment process

• Prioritising soft-skills such as relationship building, problem solving and emotional intelligence

• Collaborative auditions, live incident simulations and in person assessment of the candidates skills including how they use AI tools to solve real company challenges.

So for those companies labouring with the traditional recruitment processes I say ‘good luck’. The current recruitment process was designed for a world where candidates couldn't generate a CV in seconds, employers couldn’t screen thousands of applications instantly, and neither side had access to AI capable of coaching them through the process. There needs to be a fundamental shift in the way we approach recruitment, and it needs to happen now.