How this company is using Mariah Carey to filter out excessive job applications

When 1,800 people apply for one entry-level job, the real challenge isn’t attracting talent – it’s finding the few who genuinely want the role.

That’s the reality facing Kavesh Naidoo, national operations manager at EVDealer Group, and it’s pushed him into some of the most creative, low‑tech screening tactics in the market.

At the same time, his approach is a live case study in how businesses can respond to an AI‑supercharged hiring landscape that is transforming how candidates apply – and how employers assess them.

Turning Mariah Carey into a hiring filter

Naidoo’s most talked-about tactic started with a simple brief: test for attention to detail in high-volume, entry-level hiring.

The idea was first sparked by a graphic designer colleague who wanted a way to ensure applicants were carefully reading a job ad. Her original suggestion was to ask candidates to “include a picture of a puppy” in their application as a hidden instruction. Naidoo adapted the concept – and, as a self-confessed superfan, swapped the puppy for a pop icon.

In his own ads, applicants are now asked to include a picture of Mariah Carey somewhere in their application materials.

Anyone who follows that quirky instruction goes straight to the top of the pile.

Naidoo doesn’t pretend it’s a sophisticated psychometric test. What it does measure is whether someone has actually read the ad, can follow instructions, and is willing to put in a small amount of extra effort.

“For the ones with the Mariah Carey, I will always give a call to,” he explained. Even when the resume itself is weak, that signal earns the candidate a conversation.

And it’s not just a gimmick: Naidoo has hired people who probably would never have made it past an initial CV screen if they hadn’t included the requested image.

Why entry-level roles are drowning in AI‑boosted noise

The volume problem starts with language. Naidoo recruits for highly specific automotive roles – such as service advisors – that are virtually invisible outside the sector. If he advertises using internal job titles that “no one outside the Eagers Automotive industry knows,” he tends to attract only people who’ve done the job before, often unsuccessfully, bouncing from one failed role to another.

To expand the funnel, he labels many of these positions as “entry level”, which dramatically broadens the applicant pool. The downside? It also triggers an avalanche of unsuitable and low‑commitment applications.

On one recent entry-level ad, Naidoo received around 1,800 applications.

He isn’t alone. Research cited by the Australian HR Institute (AHRI) shows that over half of jobseekers in Australia and New Zealand now apply for 20 or more roles at a time, often using AI tools to instantly generate or tailor resumes and cover letters.

Some job ads now receive over 600 applications in the first 24 hours, yet only around one in 10 applications are truly relevant to the role.

Analysts at Gartner predict that by 2028, one in four candidate profiles worldwide could be fake, underscoring just how distorted the signal-to-noise ratio is becoming for recruiters.

In this environment, it’s hardly surprising that Naidoo sees more and more:

• Candidates who haven’t read the job properly
• People using AI or templates to mass-apply with near‑identical resumes
• Applicants who accept interview invitations, then simply never show up

Naidoo says the no‑show problem has become particularly frustrating, even after calls and confirmation texts that give candidates an easy way to decline.

Across the wider market, businesses are responding by layering technology with more nuanced human checks. Some employers have introduced multi‑layered filters to flag likely AI‑generated applications.

But experts warn these tools are far from foolproof and must be treated as a prompt for human review, not an automatic rejection button.

Careers nights: from 1,800 resumes to 100 motivated candidates

To cut through the noise in a way that technology alone can’t, Naidoo recently trialled another unconventional, but strikingly effective filter: a careers night.

Rather than booking dozens of one‑on‑one interviews and risking a high no‑show rate, he invited a large portion of his applicant pool to a single evening event.

From that same job ad, he first removed temporary visa holders and applicants unable to work full-time. Then he sent a mass invitation to a Tuesday evening careers night, complete with snacks and a clear message: “We want to meet you, come along.”

The numbers tell the story:

• About 1,200 candidates were invited
• 200 people RSVP’d yes to attend
• Around 100 actually turned up on the night

In one evening, Naidoo surfaced the 100 people in a pool of 1,800 who were committed enough to show up, freeing his team from having to bet on which resumes might represent genuinely interested candidates.

He calls it “a really effective way to get the people that actually wanted a job,” and a powerful mechanism to filter out those applying “for the sake of applying” or only reading the job ad after receiving a phone call.

Interestingly, this mirrors a broader shift many organisations are making: adding human signals early in the process. AHRI’s reporting highlights employers who now ask candidates for a one‑minute video or audio introduction, or run five‑ to fifteen‑minute micro‑interviews to assess enthusiasm and communication before investing in longer rounds.

Like Naidoo’s careers night, these light‑touch encounters weed out generic, AI‑polished applications and spotlight people who genuinely want the job.

Beating AI sameness by humanising the process

Naidoo is clear-eyed about AI’s impact on hiring. With chatbots and templates, it has never been easier to produce a polished resume – or to apply to hundreds of jobs with a few clicks.

Yet, he argues, the reality on the ground is more nuanced: “the amount of crap resumes that I see out of that thousand” suggests many candidates are still not even using basic templates effectively.

Still, in a world where a “good” CV can be machine‑generated, traditional screening is losing its power. You can no longer “just look at a resume and know exactly who's sitting behind it.”

His response is to design processes that reveal the person behind the paper:

• Hidden instructions (like the Mariah Carey image) to reward attention and effort
• Careers nights that test real‑world commitment and enthusiasm
• Job ads explicitly framed as “entry level” to welcome non‑traditional backgrounds

For entry-level roles in particular, he says, what matters most is “a willing to work and some sort of personality,” not degrees or lengthy experience.

Rethinking what “qualified” looks like

Naidoo believes the importance of degrees and traditional markers of prestige has declined in many roles. Where “maybe five or 10 years ago, you needed a degree to even get a look in,” he now sees that as far less critical for early-career positions.

Gen Z candidates, he argues, often “don’t subscribe to the traditional norms of hiring”. They’re looking for career progression, impact, and alignment with values – things that don’t always show up neatly on a CV.

Some of the most driven individuals today are those who build online audiences from scratch, run side businesses, or create content – effort-intensive achievements that rarely translate well into conventional application formats. “That doesn’t always translate onto a resume,” Naidoo notes of these self-starting profiles.

This shift is forcing employers to reconsider where they look for signals of potential. Many are leaning more heavily on trusted networks and referrals to escape the deluge of generic job board submissions.

One company highlighted by AHRI said about 40 per cent of its hires now come through referrals, bringing pre‑vetted candidates and reducing wasted screening time. But this too brings risks if over‑used, potentially narrowing diversity of background and thought, which means referrals must be balanced with inclusive sourcing elsewhere.

Innovating without losing compliance – or humanity

None of this happens in a vacuum. Naidoo is quick to stress the importance of staying compliant and working closely with HR while experimenting at the edges of traditional hiring. He relies on a large HR team to “keep me in check,” and emphasises the need to consult and collaborate on any new approach.

He also cautions against seeing AI as either a cure‑all or a threat. In his view, AI isn’t the enemy – indifference is. If you “just keep doing things the same way,” he warns, you’ll simply become more inefficient.

Here, too, his instincts line up with emerging best practice. Many organisations are turning to AI and automation to handle high‑volume, low‑judgment tasks – such as scheduling interviews, sending confirmations and answering basic questions – while deliberately keeping humans in charge of anything involving judgment, character or cultural fit.

At the heart of Naidoo’s philosophy is a simple reminder: behind the AI, behind the bots, there are people.

His job – and the job of every modern hiring manager – is to find and connect with those people.

Whether it’s a careers night, a hidden instruction in a job ad, a short work-sample task or some future tactic yet to be invented, Naidoo believes the winning strategies will be the ones that re‑humanise an increasingly automated process.

In his words, these small, quirky touches “humanise… that very non-human process of applying for jobs” – and help employers see beyond the resume to the person who’s actually going to show up.