Fed up of lazy AI use in recruitment

[DerelictWreck]

AIBU? Are others finding this?

We use an online recruitment system at work which is designed to reduce bias - we can only see how candidates have answered work based questions which are designed to assess their ability to do the job. We don't see any personal information or CVs.

As part of the process the candidates are told that use of AI will not help them and when they submit, they have to sign a declaration that it is their own work, not generative AI. Any AI work found will mean they are automatically dismissed from the process.

But over the last year this has so rapidly scaled that I'm now looking at over 50% of applications copying and pasting from AI chatbots. It's blatantly obvious, gives poor answers, massively slows down my recruitment processes, and is a complete waste of the candidates time as they get auto-rejected! I'm at the point where I'm also going to start blacklisting their names from future recruitment, and sharing said list with our sister companies (part of a large network).

I don't understand why they do it - using it to get ideas and editing it I get. But copying and pasting - how stupid do they think we are?!

We ask candidates to answer 3-5 situation based questions and the hiring manager then marks them against a tailored marking scheme. That's why it's so easy to spot AI as we put the questions through AI tools to check what answers are generated.
So your scheme doesn't assess who are the most competent applicants, it merely assesses who is good at re-writing information that can be picked up from the web?
Sounds an excellent system.

No literally the opposite, and it's not MY system.

I don't know why you're so angry but could you possibly take it elsewhere please?

Quite.
just done my company’s GDPR course this morning. You can’t keep names of applicants and you certainly can’t send a blacklist around to other companies!!

OP - I think you're getting grief because people are assuming that you're judging based on how people answer the questions and for some reason, they see that as BAD. I mean, sure, if you are recruiting for someone to paint a mural or something, a written answer might be inappropriate, but I'm assuming you're recruiting for some kind of office based professional job for which being able to write down how you would do something or why you would do something absolutely is relevant.

Regarding your specific AI question, I suspect there are two reasons people do this. The first is because some people are literally just applying for every job going, and putting little to no effort into personalising their answers.

The second is because perhaps they have not had much luck in previous application processes, so they're hoping that the AI is MORE likely to give them the answers they need.

Sometimes the questions are posed in such a way that it does really depend on nuances a person might have missed. I have mixed feelings on that - on the one hand, it seems so unfair. On the other hand, if your instinctive answer is the type of answer the company wants, you're more likely to be the right fit anyway.

This ^^ all day long

I'm not the one who was agitated enough to start a thread. Take your anger out on your not-fit-for-purpose hiring system, not on people stating our view from the other side of the hedge.

I'd be wary of tools claiming to be able to spot AI content. I just typed 250 words into one and it was apparently 90% confident that it had been generated by AI

Where does it say anything about computer screening?

It's an online system which hides personal details from the recruiter so they have to make a shortlisting decision based on written answers to questions and not by any inherent other bias.

It doesn't say anything about algorithms screening people out.

Job applications take constant time, constantly tailoring your cv, cover letter plus 10 page application.

without even a recognition of it being sent or even the effort to let you know you haven’t got the job. Of course people are using AI.

😂 that would require the gargantuan effort of letting people know they haven’t made it. Which is incredibly rare already, let alone the extra effort of separating the reason why.

Yes, this. If anything, it's a better process as it allows for human intervention. Although of course, that depends on the questions being asked and the guidelines for acceptable answers.

Arguably, you are discarding AI generated answers where they are badly done.

AI in this sort of use, should be indistinguishable from real text. I've done quite a lot of content work using AI as a supplementary tool and what has become increasingly clear to me and my colleagues is that the quality of the BRIEF has a massive impact on the quality of the answer. Also, as you say, quite often it needs the human "touch" afterwards to make it your own.

So you might well be accepting answers that have been generated with the support of AI, but you just don't realise it because it's been done well. Badly done AI-generated answers however, are a clear sign that this is NOT someone you want working for anyway so keep on rejecting them.

It’s 100% not @senua who’s coming across as ‘so angry’ 😄

Why don't you just ask for a blind CV? Then people don't have to waste their time writing out 5 company specific questions for every job they apply to just to try to get to the second round.

My 17 year old son is applying for degree apprenticeships. He has to send a cv and a company/job specific cover letter. He then has to do psychometric testing and answer Hireview interview questions, then he has a virtual assessment day where he has to do a group task and have more interviews. Then he sometimes has to go to the place for a face to face interview. He's a kid after an apprenticeship FGS.

The first one he applied to and went through all the stages for has now told all the candidates that the recruitment process in 'on hold' - whatever that means - and so seems to have been a complete waste of his time.

Then companies wonder why people use AI.

A "blind cv" is completely pointless at anything except, possibly, entry level positions. Because all kinds of things can be extrapolated from the details in a CV - from the school/university, degree, length and type of previous experience etc. So, at best, it might help to prevent bias linked to ethnicity and possibly gender, but that's about it.

It's also not infallible even for gender and ethnicity because historically, white men get better experience, better job titles etc so if you're basing your decision making purely on that (vs skills), you would be perpetuating whatever stereotype exists for the role.

However, a properly managed skills based assessment would look at the candidate's ability to understand and solve for specific problems, with no weighting given to their previous job title/experience etc.

But degree apprenticeships are hugely complex and really need a proper assessment process. The cost for firms of hiring for degree apprenticeships is high because there's significant training etc required as well. Ensuring the candidates are going to go the distance, meet the criteria and be a long term value to the organisation is important.

Similarly to grad placements - a City organisation that hires a grad will invest a FORTUNE in their training and development. It's not just the salary they have to consider.

I agree - it's also incredibly simple to let AI be the starting point, edit for syntax and structure, and get past the tools.

Phew. Thank you.

I must admit that I had my fill of the recruitment process long ago. I get jobs through personal recommendation these days.
The "work based questions" stuff is a waste of time because the majority of applicants can do the job, it's only function is to sift out the total numpties.
It's how the team get on together - and actually get the job done - that matters.
For some reason Human Resources aren't very good at Humans.

@DerelictWreck I am also tired of the AI. The first time I came across it in recruitment was a campaign with a lot of applications last year where I was confused that about 1/3 of the applications were absolute nonsense. One of the other sifters pointed out it's AI!

So all this "no wonder they use AI..." - none of the AI applications are actually good and/or convincing. It's a waste of everyone's time. And I don't want to employ the kind of person who wants to cheat the system.

In my experience the more hoops there are in a recruitment system the more it weeds out time wasters.

Try being a pupil with the overeliance on Ed tech delivering an education and profiling you at the same time!

The "work based questions" stuff is a waste of time because the majority of applicants can do the job

I am a consultant, working for my own small company with multiple clients, many of which are part of large, global organisations. If there is one thing I have learned as a result of being able to "see" inside multiple organisations simultaneously, is that in fact, a LOT of people are surprisingly incompetent.

Just this week I was signing a contact with a new client and got myself into an awkward situation where I had to point out to their lawyer that a specific clause they'd inserted did not, in fact, mean what they wanted it to mean.

Or the client who gets me to deal with a bunch of her supposedly super smart product people because she can't cope with their inability to answer basic questions and is concerned she'll say or do something inappropriate, so she leaves it to me (and yes, they really do say the most ridiculous things so I feel her pain. But that's what she pays me for so I suck it up!)

Or my all time favourite example where by the time a white paper landed on my desk, it had gone through a "rigorous" internal review process with multiple senior stakeholders reviewing it and I was asked to prepare a summary to be used in various ways. Except, the entire document could be summed up as 10 pages in which they talked about the history of this activity (nothing particularly insightful either, just a summary of how it used to be done, how it started etc) and one page in which they say they don't know how to x and y. And not a single person had noticed.

Incompetence is widespread.

In my experience the more hoops there are in a recruitment system the more it weeds out time wasters.
That's a very arrogant way of looking at it. Are you sure that it's only time-wasters that you are weeding out?

Yep. It's just draining. Tbh it's started to make me that miserable I am on the brink of just giving up looking for a while because I am spending all my spare time filling out job applications.

Today I finally got atleast an acknowledgement from someone that I hadn't been short listed for interview. But I don't even know why really as I spent hours on the application. Had all the things they needed. Addressed every point in the guidance about applying and made sure I addressed it on the form. Felt like it was a strong application. It is what it is but like it's just exhausting, to just get a no thanks at the end from 1 of 10 applications, the other has just ignored me completely.

This. Those tools are not very reliable. Also they can mark grammarly restructures as ai written when in reality someone has just spell and grammar checked using grammarly and then it's suggested switching the sentence structure to avoid stuff like passive voice. It's not at all getting AI to write something and is valid editing.

Do you advertise salaries for roles OP?

My bugbear is companies who want me to spend time filling in an application only to reject me when they find out my salary expectations. It’s a waste of my time and I no longer bother applying for those unless I can just submit my CV or an application will take 5 mins max.