The Slippery Slope of AI Hiring: Why Both Candidates and Recruiters Lose

By Lydik Grynfeltt, Director, HR Bridge Consulting

Reading the recent Economist piece “Job applicants are winning the AI arms race against recruiters” felt like a confirmation of a concern that has been growing for years: Recruitment is on a slippery slope towards full deshumanisation, trapped in an AI vicious circle that both sides are reinforcing day after day.

The AI vicious circle in recruitment

Recruiters embraced AI hoping to streamline job descriptions, scheduling and screening, only to be buried under a tsunami of AI‑generated applications as candidates weaponised the same tools. The Economist cites Greenhouse data showing a 239% increase in applications per candidate since ChatGPT’s release, fuelled by services that send tailored CVs and cover letters while applicants sleep.

Faced with hundreds or thousands of applications per role, the industry has doubled down on applicant‑tracking systems (ATS) and platforms like LinkedIn, outsourcing the first selection to algorithms that filter at scale. Recruiters cannot realistically review 500 CVs in two days without this machinery, so the primary filter has become a machine gatekeeper rather than a human judgement.

When everyone must cheat to survive

Once the first gate is algorithmic, candidates are almost forced to “cheat” just to stay in the game. If your CV does not tick the exact boxes defined by the recruiter and encoded in the tool, your chances of surviving the first cut are close to zero against 500 or even 2,000 competitors. An entire sub‑industry now exists to “make up” careers so they look 95% aligned to a job description, optimised for keyword matching rather than genuine fit.

The Economist describes how tools like LazyApply and similar services tailor applications to a tee, industrialising this make‑up process. In parallel, companies use AI to sift applications and even to recommend candidates for alternative roles, while reassuring us that “humans make the final decision” somewhere at the end of the pipeline. By then, many potentially strong profiles have already been discarded by the ticking game of the algorithm.

Jack and Jill: everyone becomes an input

Solutions such as Jack and Jill, the American AI recruitment platform, illustrate the next stage of this vicious circle. They promote a proprietary model in which both recruiters and candidates effectively become ingredients in a 100% AI‑driven selection process, feeding data into a black box that promises a “perfect” match.

In this vision, matching is no longer a shared human exploration but a process fully orchestrated by the platform, which analyses every interaction and profile, then serves up a shortlist that users are encouraged to trust as objectively superior. Like the dating apps that decide who is “right” for you, Jack and Jill’s model risks replacing mutual discovery with a system where the machine silently optimises for its own definition of fit, and everyone must play by its opaque rules.

The death of serendipity

Historically, careers have often changed direction thanks to a handshake, a chance encounter, a conversation at a conference or a pub talk that simply “felt right”. In today’s ATS and LinkedIn‑centric process, governed by promises of non‑biased, standardised and fully inclusive governance, those informal and human moments no longer fit the model. If your CV does not neatly match a predefined list of requirements, there is almost no room for serendipity.

The Economist notes that even as AI use accelerates, the time to fill vacancies has only declined slightly since 2021, suggesting that efficiency gains are modest compared with the human value being sacrificed. In other words, organisations sacrifice rich human signals in exchange for marginal efficiency, and everyone must accept the shortlist delivered by the “mincemeat machine” in full opacity.

Smoke, mirrors and the risk of destroying the industry

Both sides are losing in this smoke‑and‑mirrors game. Candidates are pushed to polish, embellish and sometimes fabricate; Gartner even predicts up to one in four candidate profiles could be fake by 2028, a risk already illustrated by Amazon blocking 1,800 North Korean applications for remote IT roles. Recruiters, in turn, rely on increasingly opaque tools to sort the deluge, while regulators ask them to demonstrate fairness and avoid discrimination.

Alongside Jack and Jill, tools like Juicebox’s People GPT and LinkedIn’s Hiring Assistant promise to automate sourcing and halve the time to find candidates, while some industry leaders even imagine a future where AI agents on both sides negotiate matches and job adverts disappear altogether. This may sound efficient, but it also resembles a machine war for recruitment: a battlefield where only algorithms can cope with the volume of AI‑generated CVs, and where large parts of the recruitment profession risk being hollowed out rather than empowered.

Restoring the human in the loop

HR professionals and leaders cannot simply stand by and watch this vicious circle accelerate. They have a responsibility to re‑introduce human judgement and human contact into the process, and to design recruitment journeys where technology augments, but never replaces, meaningful human interaction.

That will mean:

• Setting deliberate quotas for human‑reviewed profiles, including “wild cards” that do not perfectly match the role on paper.

• Re‑opening curated spaces for serendipity: informal conversations, exploratory calls and networking events that sit alongside structured, compliant processes.

• Using AI transparently as a decision‑support tool, not as an invisible arbiter that no one can challenge.

  
  

The Economist article shows clearly that the current trajectory is unsustainable and that over‑reliance on automation is eroding trust on both sides of the table. It is time for HR to step in, break the vicious circle and design recruitment models where algorithms serve people, not the other way round.

At HR Bridge Consulting, we are a boutique firm bridging the UK and Europe, with a uniquely British touch. With deep expertise in cross-border HR strategy, transformation, and leadership coaching, we help organisations thrive in complex global markets. Notably, we stand at the forefront of integrating Artificial Intelligence into HR, guiding businesses through the intricacies of EU AI Act compliance, AI risk management, and talent-centric digital transformation. We blend cultural finesse with cutting-edge solutions, empowering clients to navigate regulatory change and unlock the full potential of people and technology.