Like every other sector, recruitment is seeing a rapid influx of AI solutions designed to streamline the hiring process. And to its credit, in some circumstances it is, but it’s definitely not all positive. AI adoption is accelerating across recruitment, often working behind the scenes without recruiters even realising it. Platforms like Seek now integrate these tools natively—not to automatically filter candidates out, but to give hiring teams a clearer, data-driven read on how closely an applicant matches the role. On a lesser level, platforms like LinkedIn also utilise AI to create algorithms, present candidates in certain orders or filter out messages from your inbox. Today we’re focusing on candidate screening, how AI plays a part and if it’s really as revolutionary as it claims.
Is it really more efficient?
It’s hard to deny that AI is speeding up the candidate filtering process. With computers, scanning resumes for keywords within seconds and dismissing candidates that don’t align with the vocabulary of a job brief, a large portion of a recruiter’s initial work in done for them. However, the inflexible nature of AI commands means sometimes they miss great candidates on due to this same process.
Within IT, a very vast and diverse industry, there are a huge variety of words and terms with similar meaning, thus even though candidates may not have had the exact job title or skills listed on their resume, doesn’t mean their experience fails to align with the job brief. When you’re in the business of people things are never cut and dry.
Can we say goodbye to Human Error?
Despite humans handballing some of their more tedious tasks to computers, human error is still very much present. Recruiters are required to program AI software to pick up on the keywords they desire, meaning if the spelling isn’t perfect or terms are varied, mistakes will be made – and that’s just on the recruiter’s side.
AI is finicky, often only working correctly under perfect conditions including formatting. If resumes aren’t formatted in the specific way required by reading software they’re unlikely to be accurately analysed for the role. Small issues like sub-heading font sizes and whether the document is a .pdf or .docx can mean you’re in or out of the race.
If you’re working on a large job brief with applications too large to manually sort through, AI can be your saviour but if that’s not the situation you find yourself in, spending a few seconds actually eyeballing each candidate’s resume is likely to be the best way to find a candidate that suits your role’s unique needs.
