Are your applicants using AI in their applications?
Since the rise of generative AI (GenAI) tools, more and more jobseekers are leaning increasingly towards AI-generated content, from polishing up their cover letters to writing entire resumes, to speed up their application process.
This rapid expansion has presented recruiters a unique challenge as to how to strike the right balance between the ethics behind AI use in this area as well as winnowing for the qualified and genuinely enthusiastic candidates.
While most agree that some AI use is okay, if you are suspicious about someone relying too heavily on AI, there are plenty of AI detection tools you can use to determine AI usage.
This, alongside your own judgment, you can then re-consider the relevance of the candidates application contents and whether it aligns with their background.
Detecting AI-generated content
AI is a complex field that has disrupted traditional approaches and practices. Therefore, a-one-size fits all approach should not be adopted, especially given the rapid changes seen in an AI-driven landscape.
Some potential points for recruiters to look out for when reviewing job applications could include:
- Formal wording: AI tends to generate formal wording like using “elevated” instead of “improved” and other less colloquial words without deeper elaboration.
- US spellings: American spellings can be a potential red flag of AI-generated content. For example, organisation will be spelt as organization.
- Inconsistency: Hirers should watch out for variations in the style of writing between the applicants resume and cover letter within the same document.
- Generic: Applications which have been extensively AI generated will miss out on real-life examples to match with the job advertised. If that is the case, you will need to dig deeper in the interview.
That said, with a growing application pool and limited resources available for recruiters, it would be unfair both for the reviewer and the candidate to go through large amounts of similar worded applications as other genuine responses.
Focus should be to prioritise applicants genuinely passionate in their work, and may have spent hours crafting the best snapshot about their qualifications and not a copy-pasted response generated by a chatbots in a minute or less.
For recruiting, interview humans not ChatGPT
If you are noticing receiving far too many applications with low candidate quality, AI will enable you to find candidates that care about your quality standards and mission and not those who spam hiring teams with artificially written resumes and cover letters.
With the right AI detection tool, you can upload dozens of applications at the same time and see which ones have been written by humans and the ones that are AI-generated. Some tools even integrate with your hr platforms.
A premium AI detection tool that incorporates the latest breakthroughs in AI detection technology will offer granular details and interpretations available only to that tool.
This will easily distinguish between a candidate using “little help” from ChatGPT as against submissions that have been entirely AI generated.
Don’t forget that candidates are even equipped with interviewing AI tools for video interviews. Brush up on the latest technology to know how to better vet your candidates.