About half of all job seekers use artificial intelligence to use for jobs, flooding employers and recruiters with poor-quality applications in an already tight job market.
Candidates are increasingly turning to generative AI—the variety of AI utilized in chatbot products like ChatGPT and Gemini to create conversational-style text—to assist them write their resumes, cover letters, and complete assessments.
Estimates from employers and recruiters who spoke to the Financial Times, in addition to several published surveys, put the figure at as high as 50 percent of applicants.
A “flood” of AI-powered applications has resulted within the variety of candidates per position greater than doubling while at the identical time “lowering the barrier to entry,” said Khyati Sundaram, CEO of recruitment platform Applied.
“We're definitely seeing higher volume and lower quality, which implies it's harder to sift through,” she added. “A candidate can copy and paste any application query into ChatGPT after which copy and paste it back into the appliance form.”
In recent months, recruiters have received more applications for every job because labor markets on each side of the Atlantic have weakened, leaving employers with fewer vacancies to fill and more people searching for latest jobs after being laid off.
Longer-term trends corresponding to the rise in online job boards, which make vacancies accessible to a wider range of potential applicants and simplify the appliance process, have already led to a rise within the variety of applications.
According to a survey of two,500 UK staff by HR startup Beamery, around 46 percent of job seekers use generative AI to look for and apply for jobs. In a separate survey of 5,000 global job seekers by creative platform Canva, 45 percent had used generative AI to create or enhance their CV.
“We are seeing increasing use of AI,” said Andy Heyes, regional managing director of UK-based tech recruiter Harvey Nash, adding that “telltale signs (corresponding to) American grammar” and “boring” applications provided “a sign of whether candidates have used AI.”
Many recruiters at the moment are coping with large volumes of AI-generated resumes from candidates who’ve used these tools to shine their personal statements and add key keywords. The actual numbers is perhaps higher, some have added, but these estimates are based on the numbers that were obviously recognized, actually because they were copied and pasted without editing.
“Without proper editing, language becomes clunky and generic, and hiring managers can spot that,” says Victoria McLean, managing director of careers consultancy CityCV. “Resumes have to showcase the candidate's personality, their passions and their story, and that's something AI simply can't do.”
Many large employers have a zero-tolerance attitude toward using AI, say several people aware of their processes. The Big Four accounting firms – Deloitte, EY, PwC and KPMG – have warned graduates against using AI of their job applications.
In addition, an increasing number of candidates are using generative AI to cheat on recruitment tests.
“Over the last 18 months, I actually have seen probably the most unrest ever on the employer side,” said Jamie Betts, founder and chief product officer of Neurosight, a consultancy that advises firms corresponding to Virgin Media, Grant Thornton and the NHS on psychometric testing.
Betts highlighted the entry-level sector, where applicants are likely to be younger and “very adept” at using advanced generative AI and “in a position to go undetected.”
Neurosight present in a recent survey of 1,500 student job seekers that 57 percent of them used ChatGPT to help with their application process.
It was also found that users of the free version of ChatGPT were less more likely to pass psychometric tests, while users of the paid version were very more likely to achieve this.
The quarter of job seekers who paid for ChatGPT passed the test “with flying colours,” says Betts. They were “mostly applicants from higher social classes, male applicants, without disabilities and mostly white, as there may be a correlation with socioeconomic status.”
Many employers and recruiters hope that a candidate who has cheated or lied throughout the application process will probably be exposed in the ultimate in-person or virtual interview.
“Candidates are increasingly concerned about how they stand out within the job market, in order that they are simply turning to generative AI to present an inflated version of their actual experience,” says Ross Crook, global managing director at recruitment agency Morgan McKinley.
“Currently all the pieces is automated as much as possible, but … human interaction will all the time be required before the ultimate selection is made.”
