How AI keeps both job seekers and employers from filling roles

Jobseekers and recruiters are at a technological standoff. Candidates upload (and retype) their resumes into an applicant tracking system (ATS) with no sense of whether or not their applications are getting seen. Recruiters are buried under hundreds or even thousands of applications for a single listing. Frustrated jobseekers are doing everything they can to better their chances of a callback, increasingly through the use of AI. This means parsing job posts for potential keywords, generating cover letters that mirror the wording of a job description, or even using bots that send out thousands of customized applications for jobs with a button click. Recruiters are adopting AI too. These tools can help find certain qualifications faster (and with more flexibility) than an ATS, authenticate candidates, and automatically reject candidates based on their eligibility. They’re also using AI to sniff out bots and to make sure candidates are who they say they are. The use of AI on both sides of the job hunt has created what Daniel Chait, CEO of software company Greenhouse, calls an “AI doom loop”: thousands of applicants sending indistinguishable AI-generated resumes that leave recruiters to rely on their own AI tools to sort through the slush. “Employers optimize for filtering because they feel overwhelmed. Job seekers therefore optimize their visibility. Then employers double down on filtering, so job seekers double down on visibility,” says Sarah Trumble, a researcher of ATS design and job applications. In the hiring world, AI has accelerated a war of attrition that neither side wants to wage—leaving neither applicants nor recruiters happy. How AI enables people to apply at scale “I look at trying to find a job the same way I view dating. I’ve become very jaded. It’s a numbers game,” says Mike, a freelance writer in Toronto. He requested to go by a pseudonym to speak freely while job hunting. He’s been on the job market for two months, applying through the usu