Just as HR managers and hiring professionals are using artificial intelligence to screen job candidates, job candidates are using AI to make themselves more attractive to hiring managers — with sometimes alarming results. 

Headlines report fake people being hired and AI-powered schemes that place spies into jobs where they can steal confidential information.

But the more realistic problem for recruiters may be the everyday use of AI that makes every candidate suddenly look like the exact person a hiring manager is looking for.

The AI vs. AI battle

The hiring platform Cadient recently analyzed 3,000 resumes in its database and found that nine out of 10 salaried resumes had logical inconsistencies like overlapping dates and impossible promotions; and 3 out of 4 resumes submitted to what they consider top employers had AI-generated content. They also found that two in five applications would be auto rejected if a recruiter had verified the basics listed in the resume. 

Bill Mastin, CEO of Cadient, said that he was surprised these statistics were so high, especially that 90% of salaried resumes had inconsistencies most likely driven by AI. Recruiting right now is “a battle between AI and AI,” he said. 

A candidate might take the job description from a hiring site, put their resume into an AI platform and tell it to make the two match. “From a recruiter’s perspective, they get 1,000 resumes, and they have 1,000 unicorns,” he said. “All of the sudden everybody’s a perfect fit.” 

In turn, recruiters are using AI to identify who really might be a unicorn and whose resume has been padded with a bit — or a lot — of flimflam. 

Consequences of hiring people with AI padded resumes

Hiring the wrong person can waste time and money but also present security and safety risks if a company hires someone who used AI to bluff their way into a job that requires specific knowledge and credentials. For jobs in healthcare, for example, it could make a life or death difference. 

“There are real world consequences for putting people in the wrong roles,” Mastin said. 

Not screening for AI-enhanced resumes and CVs “could cost a company an enormous amount of money, especially in higher skilled positions,” said RJ Frasca, vice president of channels and partnerships at Shield Screening. Even for roles where someone’s life isn’t in a worker’s hands, hiring someone who isn’t fit for the job can be damaging on multiple fronts — including higher turnover rates. 

That’s because hiring the wrong candidate may possibly push more work onto the plates of workers at the company who do have the skills you want, Frasca said, which then drives them to leave out of frustration. 

What hiring professionals can do

Screening tools can only do so much, experts said. Making sure poor hires don’t slip through the cracks often comes down to the interview, said Katherine Loranger, CHRO at Safeguard Global.

Candidates may use AI to generate what they think questions will be and potential answers. That means those doing interviews need to “get through that AI enhanced component and get down to brass tacks as to who this person is,” Loranger said. 

Recruiters may want to encourage applicants not to lean too much on AI, she noted. “It shouldn’t be who that person is. We want people to come across as human in our interviews, and we want people to not be perfect and show us who they really are,” she said. 

That means not just asking questions about experience but about how someone handled tough situations during that experience. Questions might include:

• How did you make decisions when they didn’t have all the information? 
• How did you navigate ambiguity? 
• What do you do when you haven’t seen a situation before?
• How did you take ownership and work in a flexible environment?  

These kinds of questions can help hiring managers “really understand how they got there,” she said, adding that she doesn’t think that the traditional interview is going to go away or even change too much. “What does change is that we’re less focused on what did you do and more focused on how did you do it.”