AI ruined job applications. But the humans running the system weren’t doing so hot either.
Over the weekend, the NYTimes ran this whiny headline:
“Employers Are Buried in A.I.-Generated Résumés.”
And the top Reddit comment nailed the tone:
“Considering that a hand-crafted resume gets rejected by AI within 30 seconds because it didn’t contain the exact correct keywords, what did they expect?”
Exactly. That’s the story.
Except the article had more:
+ LinkedIn gets 11,000 job applications a minute. You’re not paranoid.
+ Recruiters say it’s harder to tell who’s qualified. (That’s always been the job.)
+ Companies are now using AI video interviews… and applicants are using AI to cheat them.
We’ve officially entered the AI arms race.
Jeremy Schifeling, a career coach who regularly conducts technology-focused job-search training at universities, said, “As students get more desperate, they say, ‘Well, I have no choice but to up the ante with these paid tools to automate everything.’ And I’m sure the recruiters are going to raise the bar again.”
This sounds unnervingly antagonistic to me. This is one of those “HR is not your friend” kind of situations. I’m less mad at recruiters - your gut will tell you who the good ones are. They are out there trying to match your skills with the right employer.
This about hypocrisy in the hiring process:
Do as we say, not as we do.
The people who automated their resume filters are now upset that people automated their resumes.
Come on.
As the job market continues to shift in ways that we’re still all adjusting to, feels like there needs to be some easing up on the process. On the hiring side.
I’m not going to 'both-sides' this thing. They have all the power.
If a resume is accurate and the only difference is that it was cleaned up by AI to beat the ATS… that’s not cheating. That’s literacy. How is it different than a person painstakingly rewriting their resume to the same effect? It’s not dripping with the wasted life-force of the author?
The answer likely isn’t pulling more AI into the hiring process but less.
Get human eyes on your candidates and you can tell real quick if they are a potential fit.
Make the hiring process human again.
Because this right here is messy.
Also: network.
This is a both-sides thing.
Go out there and meet the people in your industry.
Get a feel for the landscape.
Then when there is an opening, you either know a potential fit already or you are that fit and boom: you’ve saved yourself from the deluge of slop applications.
We are, after all, social animals. (Even IT and Post people.)
Because we are human...
And we're gonna need humans to do the job.
Just look at what a mess AI has brought to the hiring process.
#careerpath #atsreform #jobsearch #ATS
