AI, CVs and jobs
8 March 2024
Much has been written about the impact artificial intelligence (AI) is having on modern life.
AI is behind developments ranging from the website chatbots offering advice to online customers, to programs designed to write sales letters, university essays and other materials on behalf of lazy users.
And apparently some people use the technology to write their CVs and job applications for them. How marvellous: find employment without doing any work to get it!
However, a fascinating view of such job applications was given recently by Brad Kniep, Director of Operations at the American Rental hire business based in Illinois. He was participating in a webinar hosted by Point of Rental Software discussing future hire industry trends and challenges (you can read more about the session generally here).
Brad explained how his company would traditionally ask applicants to send their CV with a covering letter and then go through all the replies. However, the task had become more difficult: some people showed no real interest when contacted for an interview, admitting they had just submitted AI-generated responses to many different advertisements.
The end result was much wasted time and effort.
“You might receive something that looks as though they spent a lot of time doing it, but in fact they didn’t,” Brad said.
“So, one of the things we have started to do is that, on our social media posts for hiring staff, we ask people to just text us if they are interested, instead of it being a super-formal process to apply.
“I or someone else will then just call them and say, ‘Hey, I just want to do a quick informal five-minute phone interview.’ We talk about who they are and what’s important to them, and just have a conversation to weed out that first round of people,” Brad said.
Direct approaches inviting applicants to make an initial response informally by phone or email aren’t new, of course. But they are perhaps more useful at a time when vacancies in hire - and throughout industry - remain extremely difficult to fill.
Neil Holloway, Managing Director of the Wilson Brook executive search consultancy, agrees that AI is by no means a universal panacea.
“People can certainly use AI chatbots to generate CVs, and even the wording for job adverts themselves, and they’ll do it pretty well,” he told me. “But you’d still have to tweak the results and tailor them to the specific requirement.
“And that can only really be one element in the process. For example, we spend time talking to our industry contacts and having conversations with people to discuss openings and opportunities on an individual basis to get the right result.”
So, AI can play a useful role in many areas of modern life. But if used incorrectly, it might end up hindering instead of helping.
