By Zahra Jawad
When scrolling through LinkedIn, it’s hard to ignore the flood of posts from anxious graduates who’ve applied to over 100 jobs and still haven’t heard back. Behind the silence lies a new algorithm-driven job market shaped by AI-driven Applicant Tracking Systems, where CVs and one-way interviews are filtered long before a human ever sees them.
AI has become more heavily integrated into ATS in recent years. Its main job has been to automate and optimise various stages of the recruitment process, enhancing efficiency and trying to match candidates with the best experiences and skills to the job requirements and role.
These software programmes scan cover letters and CVs to identify keywords and analyse language based on predefined criteria, allowing them to rank and filter candidates accordingly, with the same concept being used in one-way interviews. On 6 March, Andrew Fennell, Founder and Director of StandOut CV, shared publicly available statistics highlighting the growing role of AI in talent acquisition.
StandOut CV revealed that in the UK, 70% of enterprise-size businesses use ATS (Applicant Tracking System) software to screen CVs. Alongside just screening, 43% of large companies are using some form of AI to interview potential hires, which involves candidates being filmed using one-way interviews.
Lindsey Zuloaga, Chief Data Scientist at HireVue (one of the most widely used platforms for one-way interviews), told Goodwork Reporting that AI boosts efficiency and consistency in recruitment.
She said the company’s technology is designed to evaluate candidates’ responses in a way that, in her view, helps eliminate human bias from the hiring process. Even though many who work in talent acquisition state the cost-cutting benefits of AI, a study by Science Direct found that 67% of job applicants think that AI tools lack the nuances of human judgment or human touch.
AI can process thousands of applications in minutes. A LinkedIn survey found that 89% of recruiters agree that using AI decreases their average time to hire, with 32% of recruiters saying that using AI significantly reduces the costs of their business.
But the rhetoric surrounding the job market has been bleak over the last couple of years, and whilst people have blamed Brexit, a post-COVID era and more, A new conversation has entered the table: the role AI heavily plays in talent acquisition and hiring.
The BBC reported that 42% of UK tech firms have used AI to screen and recruit candidates in 2024, and the number is continuing to grow. Graduates have stated their frustrations around today’s job market, with many blaming it on broken hiring practices.
Mohammad Bawa, a first-class mechanical engineering graduate from Kingston University, told London Daily Digital that despite his strong academic background and substantial experience in financial trading, he has secured only three interviews after submitting hundreds of job applications.
He has been searching for work since graduating in 2024. Mr Bawa believes that AI has created more problems than it solves, stating: “The use of AI has just made things a lot harder” “Applicants are churning out mounds of CVs and cover letters that all look generic, simply to beat the ATS and without the right buzzwords, AI screening tools just throw out the applications.”
Many still believe that systematic errors in the AI-assisted process can lead to unintentional discrimination.
Aneesa Shafique, a recent economics graduate from the University of SOAS, told London Daily that she believes AI has made the job market worse for graduates.
“She stated, ‘We’re made to fit a single standard that doesn’t highlight our strengths.” Miss Shafique believes that candidates do not feel humanised anymore within the stages of the recruiting process. “These one-way interviews and AI screening tools make it difficult for neurodivergent candidates too,” she said. “Our brains interpret questions and instructions differently, and the AI doesn’t account for that.”
The discourse presented opens the door to a whole new set of ethical conundrums within AI hiring. Recently, HireVue has come under fire for being accused of having a bias against a deaf native American woman.
Bloomberg Law reported that the financial software multinational Intuit used HireVue to assess the woman when she applied for a promotion within the firm.
Recently, HireVue has come under scrutiny following allegations that its system discriminated against a deaf Native American woman.
According to a Bloomberg Law report, a complaint was filed alleging that the financial software company Intuit used HireVue to assess her for an internal promotion. It was alleged that she was rejected due to her communication style and claimed that she was denied a request for human-generated captioning to access interview instructions and questions.
The ACLU argues that the system used in the Intuit case may rely on automated speech recognition technologies that can struggle to accurately process the speech of deaf applicants or dialects spoken by Indigenous communities. They contend this could potentially violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), though no legal ruling has been made.
HireVue CEO Jeremy Friedman responded to the complaint in a statement to HR Drive, saying it was “entirely without merit” and based on “an inaccurate assumption about the technology used.” Intuit also stated that it did not use a HireVue AI-based assessment in this case.
There have been significant concerns around AI and the biases it may cause when used in the hiring process. AI systems rely on large data sets to train them, teaching them to learn patterns and make decisions. In the context of talent acquisition, if the data contains historical hiring biases that favour specific demographics, it will replicate those biases during the selection, adding to the layer of difficulty for new graduates entering the job market.
Currently, there are no specific laws that govern AI in the UK, especially in the arena of hiring.
It was stated in the King’s Speech that the Labour government is exploring regulations for new and developing AI models. However, further consideration is needed to introduce safeguards that protect graduates from bias in this evolving era of AI-driven recruitment.
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