AI tools are making job applications harder to judge and easier to flood

In short: AI is making it easier to produce polished applications and apply in bulk, and that is making hiring noisier and less reliable for many people.

What's going on

Job seekers are using generative AI tools (systems that can write text on request) to improve resumes, cover letters, and written answers. Research from Columbia Business School found that when applicants use AI to polish writing, evaluators become 4% to 9% less able to tell higher-skilled candidates from less-qualified ones. In simple terms, many applications start to look equally well written, even when the underlying skills differ.

At the same time, AI is helping people apply to far more jobs per day. That leads to a flood of applications, including many that are a poor fit. Employers respond by leaning more on Applicant Tracking Systems, also called ATS (software that filters and ranks resumes, like a spam filter for job applications), often using keywords.

This creates an “AI vs AI” loop. Candidates use AI to send more applications, and employers use AI to reject more applications. Good candidates can still get filtered out if their resume does not match the right keywords, even if they can do the job.

Trust is also getting worse. Some employers worry they are judging the AI’s writing instead of the person. Some candidates worry that AI screening is a black box, meaning they cannot tell why they were rejected.

What to watch

More employers may put less weight on cover letters and more weight on skills tests, work samples, and live interviews. The key question is whether hiring shifts toward clearer, more transparent checks of what someone can actually do, instead of how polished their paperwork looks.

Source: NYTimes