New research from CV-Library, has confirmed what some jobseekers have felt for a while – the growing reliance on AI in the hiring process means some quality candidates are being overlooked or filtered out.
A survey of nearly 500 recruiters and 1,100 candidates has shown that while businesses are receiving more applications, the use of AI to process applications quickly is causing high-quality talent to be overlooked or filtered out.
- 35 per cent of recruiters say they are missing out on top talent due to a lack of human intuition when AI is used in the process.
- More than a quarter (27 per cent) say strong applications are filtered out before reaching an interview.
- One in five (20 per cent) report an overall decline in candidate quality where AI is used.
CV-Library say this view is one that job seekers have long suspected. More than half of the jobseekers surveyed (53 per cent) believe their application has been rejected by AI without a human reviewing it, while 46 per cent say unfair rejection is one of their biggest frustrations when job hunting.
The situation is leading to 40 per cent of jobseekers abandoning or considering abandoning an application due to AI being used in the hiring process – this is particularly the case when AI bots are used for screening.
Younger candidates are particularly sceptical:
- Nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) of Gen Z suspect AI is responsible for rejecting them during early hiring stages, making them the generation most likely to question automated hiring decisions.
- Gen Z is also the most frustrated by unfair rejection (53 per cent), followed by Millennials (47 per cent) and Gen X (46 per cent).
AI adoption has surged as employers try to manage rising application volumes in a challenging market for jobseekers. More than four in five recruiters (83 per cent) use AI to speed up hiring, while 28 per cent rely on it to manage high volume of applications.
However, recruiter confidence in its effectiveness remains limited for now, with just 36 per cent saying it improves speed-to-hire.
Recruiters say it performs best when writing job descriptions (63 per cent) and handling tasks such as interview scheduling (38 per cent). But when it comes to more nuanced qualities, confidence drops sharply; 72 per cent say that AI struggles to identify cultural fit and 55 per cent say it performs poorly at assessing soft skills.
“Candidates have long felt that the human touch is ebbing away from the hiring process and that good people are getting screened out unfairly,” comments Lee Biggins, CEO and Founder of CV-Library, “This insight from recruiters in both agencies and businesses suggests their frustrations may be justified.
“It’s a timely wake-up call that not everything should be outsourced to AI, especially in recruitment where every candidate is individually unique,” Biggins adds. “It can add value in automating some laborious process, but good recruiters are using it to support human intuition, not replace it.”
