The AI Hiring Arms Race
We seem to be stuck in an ever escalating battle of recruiter vs applicants using AI tools to get an interview. Is there a better way?
Every other post on LinkedIn tells me that hiring is broken. That it has become an impossible AI arms race to the bottom. Applicant vs hiring manager (or recruiter). Maybe it’s time for a bit of de-escalation?
A couple of weeks or so ago I put up a LinkedIn job posting for a Junior HPC engineer. It was a pretty boring and vanilla posting just stating a few requirements. As expected within an hour or two it had over 50 applicants almost none of whom were a good fit for the role.
As I saw it, I had a couple of choices at this point, follow the same path as everyone else and start filtering aggressively using automated (AI driven?) tools, or reframe the situation. I picked the latter.
I rewrote the job post. I made it more human. I explicitly stated a desire to de-escalate the hiring arms race. I won’t use AI tools if people don’t apply unless they’re a good fit.
It worked.
I have had far far fewer applicants since then but, a huge proportion of applicants have been really strong candidates. I think I declined one single candidate because they didn’t meet the criteria in the updated job posting. One. Instead of over 45.
I can’t promise it will work for you, but where’s the harm in giving it a try?