AI-generated resumés, AI-driven hiring processes: ‘These tools are new for everyone and we're still trying to figure out how to leverage them’
Timelines can be crucial when an organization is trying to hire new talent, but AI may actually be making things worse, according to a recent survey.
The survey, conducted by Robert Half, found that 61 per cent of HR leaders say AI-generated applications are slowing down hiring rather than speeding it up and nine in 10 HR teams have heavier workloads because of it. In addition, nearly two-thirds of hiring managers say AI-generated resumés are presenting significant challenges.
A companion survey in the US found similar responses — two-thirds of HR leaders acknowledge that the hiring process has slowed down due to AI-generated applications and more than eight in 10 say their HR teams are experiencing heavier workloads because of it.
The findings come as many employers adopt automation in recruitment while trying to protect quality of hire and the candidate experience. Philippe de Villers, chair of the board at CPHR Canada, says the problem can start with a feedback loop: employers use AI to generate job postings, candidates use AI to tailor their resumes, and then AI is used again to screen what comes back.
“I'm having these conversations quite frequently with other professionals and it's come to a very ironic space, where employers are starting to do job postings more and more with AI to help us be much more efficient, then applicants put the job description in Copilot, ChatGPT or what else, and ask it to produce the best resumé or tweak the resumé on that job description that was built by AI,” says de Villers. “So now AI does the resume on AI, and then there's an AI tool that does pre-selection of those resumes — it's AI on AI, kind of an AI inception thing.”
Validation work expanding
Deborah Bottineau, managing director at Robert Half Canada, sees the high number of survey respondents saying AI creates more time and workload in the hiring process as partly due to the fact that many organizations are still trying to figure out how to integrate AI, and the pressure is coming from both employers and employees.
"The challenge, from a candidate application perspective, is if you don't leverage AI, you're maybe getting screened out because the AI tools aren’t picking up your application, but if you overutilize it, now we find ourselves in a situation where we might actually be misrepresenting or embellishing,” says Bottineau.
She believes that, from an employer standpoint, because people are using AI and matching that to the job requirements, organizations are getting similar applications.
“I think everybody involved, employers and applicants, are trying to land on what is the right balanced approach where applications that are aligned with requirements are making it through this process,” she says. “I think we're in just a bit of this rut right now, where these tools are new for everyone and we're still trying to figure out how to leverage them to gain efficiencies and to portray the best ultimate match, but we're not there yet.”
For HR leaders, that can translate into extra time spent validating experience, clarifying responsibilities and confirming skills through conversation, according to Bottineau. That sameness can leave recruiters with less useful information for differentiation, pushing more emphasis onto interviews, work samples and other ways to validate what is on the page, she says.
“They’re spending more time because the reality is, they're not able to take at face value what they're seeing on the resume — it's not so much that applicants are trying to mislead or misrepresent, but the reality is, these tools are creating synergies between someone's experience and what the role is requiring and it can land on an embellished submission,” says Bottineau. “So employers are having to dig a little bit deeper through their screening process to make the connection between a skill set and the experience represented on the resumé.”
Efficiency versus efficacy in the hiring process
De Villers says HR and talent acquisition leaders should consider where AI supports the process and where it risks weakening the candidate journey, particularly if organizations become too reliant on automated steps.
“We find more and more that for organizations leaning on AI tremendously in the hiring process, it may sound very efficient, but in terms of the efficacy of that decision, it's quite low,” he says. “Because when people get hired for a position, what they're getting into is a work environment with actual people, and the candidate experience is part of the employee experience as well — this is where the journey starts.”
De Villers cautions that starting a candidate journey with an AI-centric process wastes an opportunity to show the organization in its best light: “That's where organizations need to be very careful when you think of your candidate journey — where are those places that AI can bring value and where are those places that the human touch should always stay, because that’s important for the organization and its employer brand.”
Bottineau says some employers are responding by taking a step back and adjusting how the process is designed, including reconsidering the point at which a human should engage. “It's creating some frustration and a need to sometimes go back and refine job descriptions, or figure out, ‘Do we now need to insert a human touch point earlier on in that process?” she says, adding that such a redesign can create more work in the short term if HR teams need to update job descriptions, adjust screening questions, or recalibrate what hiring managers treat as non-negotiable requirements.
Shifting, not reducing, the workload
Natalie Simjanov, Vice President of Organizational Effectiveness and Talent Acquisition at FGF Brands, agrees that the current moment is less about an overall slowdown and more about a reallocation of effort. In her view, AI is moving the pinch points to the evaluation stage. “On the talent acquisition side, we're trying to get faster to candidates, and then our candidates are getting quick to adjust to what we're looking for, so it ultimately comes down to where the human interaction exists, and the focus ends up becoming the human evaluation and consideration of talent,” says Simjanov. “Ultimately, no matter how you play this game, the candidates will start using AI in their processes and the recruiters will start using AI in their processes, but at the end of the day, there still needs to be human conversation and human connection — so more different types of validation are happening.”
That shift can affect recruiter workload because it pushes the focus toward judgement-heavy work: assessing skills, evaluating communication and confirming that a candidate understands the role beyond what a generated resumé can say, according to Simjanov.
In order to keep a reasonable time-to-hire, Simjanov says transparency on how AI is being used is critical on both ends of the process. “Even if using AI for the administration of the process can help create efficiencies, making the critical judgment decisions still needs the human as much as possible,” she says. “That's going to help us stay compliant, because we're able to reduce the biases as much as possible in that regard.”
Governance, adaptation — and compliance?
Something else on the horizon that could potentially slow the AI-influenced hiring process is the spectre of increased compliance demands as governments look to regulate the use of AI, says de Villers. “It's definitely a big concern that, if there's too much reporting to be done or proof to be provided on the right use, it could probably cripple some of those initiatives and some organizations would say it's just not worth it, he says. “But at the same time, I have a feeling that maybe we're more in the [wild] west state where there's too much going in all sorts of directions.”
Simjanov believes that talent acquisition teams are best able to adapt to the new wave of AI-generated applications because it’s already at the front end of the candidate journey. “It has the most opportunity to rapidly evolve, be exploratory, and understand what's coming and new,” she says. “That's the nature of talent acquisition as it is — we're always trying to find something new to be able to find talent, so adopting AI in talent acquisition is going to help us stay ahead, understand some of the tools, but also in a safe way, because governance is going to be important."
Determining how to deal with and use AI in the hiring process should be part of the CHRO’s overall vision for the organization’s use of AI, says de Villers. “This is where their role is to ask questions to their staff and have the right balance to encourage boldness while at the same time being careful about the right use of those tools,” he says. “This is the challenge for CHROs, putting the right governance in place — it’s a preoccupation of all of them that I speak to right now.”
