Is AI Making the Job Market Harder?
AI is transforming recruitment but as candidates and employers increasingly use the same technology, are we creating an arms race where AI is simply reading AI?
Candidates now use AI to find jobs, tailor CVs, optimise keywords and prepare for interviews. Employers use it to process applications, shortlist candidates and, increasingly, conduct interviews.
The Application Explosion
The job market has become increasingly competitive. With fewer vacancies, more graduates entering the market and AI making it easier to submit applications at scale, application numbers have surged.
For graduate roles, applications reportedly increased from around 38 per vacancy two decades ago to approximately 140 last year.
AI can help candidates tailor applications and include relevant keywords. But when employers use AI to look for those same keywords, recruitment risks becoming an arms race between candidates and employers.
When Every CV Looks Perfect
If AI can produce a polished, highly targeted CV in minutes, presentation becomes less of a differentiator.
When hundreds of candidates have similar keywords and professionally written applications, employers face a more important question:
- Who can actually do the job?
That makes human judgement, interviews, references and candidate verification increasingly important. A CV can describe someone’s experience, but it cannot fully demonstrate how they perform in a real working environment.
- Is AI Really More Objective?
AI could potentially reduce some human subjectivity, but it isn’t automatically unbiased.
AI systems learn from data, and that data can contain existing human biases. If similar systems are used across multiple organisations, there is also a risk of algorithmic monoculture, where candidates are repeatedly assessed against similar assumptions.
Then Comes the AI Interview …
AI is also entering the interview process, with candidates sometimes answering questions from automated interviewers or recording timed responses.
There may be benefits, including efficiency and potentially greater consistency. But for candidates, the experience can feel impersonal.
Recruitment is more than processing information. For many people, finding a job is personal and financially important. Candidates want to feel that someone has actually listened to them.
Is AI Actually the Problem?
AI hasn’t created every problem in recruitment. High application volumes, inconsistent processes, lengthy hiring journeys and subjective decision-making existed long before AI.
The technology has entered an already imperfect system. It may solve some problems while creating others.
The real question isn’t whether AI should be used — it’s how it should be used.
Efficiency vs Experience
AI can help recruiters manage hundreds or thousands of applications quickly. But faster recruitment isn’t necessarily better recruitment.
There is a difference between efficiently identifying relevant candidates and making applicants feel like they are being processed by machines.
The challenge for employers will be finding the right balance between technology and human involvement.
The New Reality
For jobseekers, AI is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. It can help with research, applications and interview preparation, but widespread adoption also creates pressure to use it simply because everyone else is doing so.
AI can make recruitment faster and potentially more consistent. But it can also increase application volumes, make candidates feel disconnected from the process and make genuinely strong applications harder to distinguish.
The future of recruitment probably isn’t about choosing between humans and AI.
It’s about finding the right balance between the two.
Because while AI may be excellent at processing applications, identifying keywords and managing information, candidates still want something technology can’t easily replicate:
to be seen, heard and understood by another human being.
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