“Give a typical employee a million, and, he is most likely to use the money to print his CV on fancier paper.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

In the age of ChatGPT and increasingly smarter AI it’s no wonder its impact would have arrived to HR industry in some form or the other. A lot of the fuss recently has been brewing with the AI assisted CVs which in some ways hinder the recruitment process as a whole. The more articles I read, the more I don’t understand why the aesthetics and an overall demeanor of a CV would create any new uncertainty for the candidate which already was there to begin with. No HR professional will employ a candidate by just taking a CV at face value, there’s logically a huge risk to that action. Articles such as this and this discuss different parameters on how to mitigate potentially false information but as with any topic on this blog, I would simplify it to maybe one or two aspects which need to be adhered to in order to keep AI assisted CVs in mind. Let’s break it down in couple of different paragraphs.

CVs as just one side of the coin

The simple fact of the matter with this issue is that a CV is just a flip side of a coin. While there’s one side that paints a story, there’s the other one which will basically confirms whether it’s true, spiced up or maybe in rare scenarios, have left out information. To what degree the deciphering part of interviewing a candidate would be hard enough depends on the recruiter’s experience, level of understanding the social cues, social intelligence and knowledge level of psychology. As aforementioned articles mentioned, the important factor is the process as a whole as well, with how it’s structured, is there an assessment, different phases, practice evaluations etc. To simplify it, a recruiter will check a CV, cross-check it with the parameters of the position they need and invite them for the interview to evaluate what’s written in the CV itself. No more, no less. With that in mind, as previously stated, an uncertainty and „doubt“ is always there, regardless of how the CV is written. A good recruiter will master the interviewing phase in which they will know if the actual candidate mirrors that which was written in the CV.

Sales tactics ever-present

I always like to emphasize on this blog that everything (and recruitment) in life is sales and business is no different. A CV is, in a sense, a sales pitch to whomever reads it in order to garner the right or enough sympathy for exchanging services. In this case, a candidate wants to present themselves in the best possible light to prospective employers in order to land the position they applied to. As in anything, there’s such a thing called oversell which is, unfortunately, very present in recruitment and as this topic points it out, AI sort of adds fuel to the fire in this regard. Good sales usually include walking on thin ice with what’s true and false; boosting up experience with different bits and pieces of the industry, trade or specialization always helps but whether it’s true or not is a different story. This is why recruitment in general is sort of in consort with sales and a good recruiter will also know at least some sales tactics which can be used in the recruitment process from the candidate’s side.

Where this is an actual issue

Changing the sentencing and spicing up the wording in a CV actually can hurt time management but only in high-frequency recruitment environments such as recruitment agencies with a very high client portfolio. Screening CVs can take up a lot of time with a huge workload of open vacancies so that scenario would require CV’s face value in order to be called in for an interview. KPIs and due dates in recruitment agencies require a bit different approach and time is of the essence in many scenarios. As with almost anything, I would call this an exception to the rule but that exception obviously doesn’t disprove the rule.

Takeaway

With all of the aforementioned, incorporation of AI only raises the level of uncertainty of the information provided in CVs; the fact is that the base uncertainty was already there and each CV with even the slightest interest has to be invited and evaluated in the interview phase. It’s a negligent occurrence to create such a high buzz in the industry, in my opinion, but then again even the slightest AI news creates a plethora of opinions because it’s the current trend. Companies and businesses don’t need to worry too much about this issue if they have an experienced recruiter with an above average social intelligence on board.