"AI is like electricity. Just as electricity transformed every major industry a century ago, AI is now poised to do the same." So says Yoshua Bengio, one of the three “Godfathers of AI”. Like so many other sectors, recruitment is experiencing a boon in productivity powered by AI-based systems as we wholeheartedly embrace the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Over the past couple of years, a seemingly endless slew of tools and applications have emerged to simultaneously enhance my productivity and steal my job (you can read more on the latter in my previous blog here). Some of these tools have proven quite valuable while others are needless add-ons trying to fix something that was never broken. It’s not just on the employer’s side of the desk where the impact of AI has been felt as jobseekers are increasingly taking advantage of some of these tools.
There are certainly things that jobseekers could or should be doing to help them secure their next role. These include:
- Enhancing your CV
- Adding some glamour to your LinkedIn profile
- “Fleshing-out” personal examples for competency-based questions
- Tailoring your CV to a job spec
- Writing cover letters
- Predicting the interview questions (this one is particularly helpful)
- Conducting virtual interviews
However, in all these cases the information provided to the employer must be accurate and true. Most recruiters can spot AI-generated content a mile off and will view this with some scepticism so you should be able to validate everything you present as your own.
Where the use of AI is not recommended is during the interview! You might think I’m joking but I’ve had 3 candidates rejected this month due to using ChatGPT (or similar) to answer questions during a remote (Teams-based) interview. When asked a question they were unable to answer they typed furiously off camera before providing an overly technical answer on which they couldn’t expand.
It’s very possible that some employers are open to such practices as in the real-world Engineers are free to utilise external resources and knowledge bases. However, the purpose of an interview is to assess a candidate’s knowledge and suitability for a given role which is difficult if the answers provided are not their own. These candidates would have been better explaining that while they didn’t know the answer, they are eager to upskill. Or offer to find a solution using AI on the spot rather than attempting to mislead the interviewer which could be seen as dishonest.
Going forward, I will be sure to mention this to interviewees as nothing can be taken for granted these days and my role continues to evolve with each new technological advance. These tools are an excellent resource and once used properly will improve your employability. However, if used incorrectly they will have the opposite effect.
With this in mind I leave you with a quote from another SME in AI, Neil Jacobstein…
“It’s not artificial intelligence I’m worried about; it’s human stupidity."