‘Everybody’s applications are starting to look more and more alike’

For job-seekers and recruiters, the job market can feel like a too-crowded party where AI is the DJ.

With little room to sneak a foot in the door, applicants are slinging gobs of AI-tailored resumes and cover letters at anyone in a position to change their fate. In response, some recruiters, HR professionals, and hiring managers are tapping AI to help deal with the deluge. Job-seekers, believing that artificial intelligence is pushing their application to the bottom, are then coming up with more AI-based hacks they think will cheat the system.

Daniel Chait, the CEO of the hiring platform Greenhouse, calls this a “doom loop,” or “the idea that each side is using AI to try and help themselves.”

“You have this huge increase in volume, but everybody’s applications are starting to look more and more alike,” Chait said.

With low overall hiring rates, 1.1 unemployed people for every opening, and a lot of available talent for employers to choose from, this would be a tough labor market even without automation as a part of the equation.

But for job-seekers who feel they’re being unfairly passed over, AI provides as good a scapegoat as any.

AI as a screener? It’s happening.

Greenhouse data shows the average recruiter is receiving about 400% more applications than they did just a few years ago, Chait said. Recruiters are also having to deal with straight-up fraudulent candidates.

To swim through the onslaught, Johnny C. Taylor Jr., CEO of SHRM, an industry group for human-resource professionals, said his organization has used AI to screen resumes to ensure they meet a role’s minimum job requirements. A role they recently posted received 150 applications in its first day online. Small companies simply don’t have the human resources and recruiting teams to review such an avalanche of applicants, he said.

“I can tell you confidently that, generally speaking, the candidate is not seen if the AI tool has screened them out,” Taylor Jr. said.

To be sure, humans are still sifting through resumes in plenty of circumstances, despite applicants’ fears of AI automatically rejecting swaths of qualified candidates based on opaque reasoning, recruiters told Yahoo Finance.

“There’s so much misinformation, and that’s the problem that I see,” said Elias Cobb, director of the Denver-based staffing and search firm Quantix and author of the book “From a Recruiter’s Brain.”

In his view, though, AI’s use in screening resumes is limited. Sure, some larger applicant tracking systems have AI features, but “it’s a minority of companies that use them.”

“Job-seekers feel like everybody uses them,” he said. “But they really don’t.”

What’s more, “there’s no AI that automatically rejects anybody,” Cobb said. “There’s always a human who has to at least press a button.”

Jim Riney, talent acquisition manager at the engineering, planning, and consulting firm Freese and Nichols, said that while he’s seen AI-based products that help recruiters evaluate and sort applications, “we’re not outsourcing our decision making.”

“The key to me — and we haven’t implemented anything like that — is that it always has to come down to a human making a decision,” Riney said.

Nicole Lawlor, director of client partnerships at recruiting agency Veridic Solutions and co-founder of TechYeet, a leadership tech community with nearly 9,000 members, noted that companies are still coming to agencies like hers because they want a human touch.

But she also knows that some companies use AI to screen candidates themselves.

“My agency, we’re not going to do that,” Lawlor said. “But for a company that can’t utilize outside agencies, I think sometimes they have to do that.”

Advice from a boss: AI doesn’t make a good first impression

On the other hand, David Hack, the founder and CEO of Crush Yard, a pickleball bar and lounge with several locations and around 250 employees, said he sees some job-seekers leaning heavily on AI to craft their applications.

That can scrub away their personality or make it come across as if they’re not willing to do hard work.

“I think that sometimes younger folks are using shortcuts where you can clearly see everything, from their email to the cover letter, are all built out by AI,” he said. “If you’re already just allowing AI to do everything, that’s not a good first impression.”

Job-seekers are frustrated and “rightly concerned about what role AI is going to play,” Chait of Greenhouse said. But AI slop helps no one. At this point, application volumes are so high, and resumes are so same-y, that AI is more helpful in sifting out fake applications and bringing in more people for voice interviews so applicants have an opportunity to show off their humanity, Chait said.

“Companies are looking at that more positive aspect of AI now as well: How do I go out there and find people that were getting overlooked, and how do I look through all of my inbox, and actually give people the opportunity to show more than just what was on a generic resume or LinkedIn profile?” Chait said.

Emma Ockerman is a reporter covering the economy and labor for Yahoo Finance. You can reach her at emma.ockerman@yahooinc.com.

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