With the commercialization of artificial intelligence, it is widely known that companies leave their resume reviews to AI. As AI has become a routine to review resumes, some job seekers are responding by using AI to write resumes. It is also confronting a changed world by applying to hundreds of jobs at a time with AI.
The use of AI in the job market is nothing new. In the early 2010s, businesses introduced a recruitment automation system as job seekers could easily apply through job sites such as LinkedIn. The primary review of most resumes is currently done by software designed to assess and rank individuals’ experiences and educational backgrounds. Recruitment automation has helped ease the burden on recruiters, and as AI technology advances, companies can save time and money on resume review. By the end of 2019, Unilever, a global household goods brand, had saved 100,000 hours and about $1 million through recruitment automation.
LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter, an online job search platform, recommend customized jobs to job seekers using Generative AI. This allows recruiters to create job listings in seconds. Google-supported AI recruitment service Moonhub also has AI robots that search for prospective employees in places such as LinkedIn and GitHub to find suitable employees.
However, recruitment experts are not satisfied with the AI-powered recruitment system. “Many recruitment experts say they are disappointed with AI’s outcome over time,” a business insider said on Wednesday. “Some are concerned about new problems such as ‘ghost employment’ of hiring robots pretending to be humans.” Accordingly, some recruiters do not apply AI to tasks other than automatically writing job descriptions and summarizing information about applicants.
Nevertheless, more and more companies are introducing AI into their recruitment process. According to data released by the Human Resource Management Association in 2022, about 40 percent of surveyed employers introduced AI in human resource-related fields, such as hiring. ZipRecruiter estimates that about three-quarters of resumes written in 2022 were not reviewed by humans. A human resources management official from a Fortune 500 company said, “We know AI is not perfect, but we have to use it because of executives’ demands.”
Despite the limitations of AI, as the application of AI in the recruitment process increases, job seekers also use AI to write and send resumes. For example, a service called LazyApply sends resumes to thousands of companies online for $250.
However, problems also arise during this process. In some cases, AI submits incorrect resumes, and some even include the phrase “This resume has been submitted by AI. If you have any questions, contact us via email.” One job seeker even submitted a resume containing AI’s misunderstanding of the gender of the job seeker. “Recruitment is still the most human-centered process,” Business Insider said. “AI may be an effective tool, but it may be improperly used.”
“Like other industries, AI is in its infancy when it comes to hiring,” said Palavi Sinha, vice president of growth at Humanly, a startup that provides an interactive AI recruitment platform to Microsoft (MS).
AI saves time and money and replaces humans. However, human sensitivity will be hard to replace. Don’t rely too much on AI. It seems like a sad reality to use AI even to express yourself.
EJ SONG
US AISA JOURNAL
