Will AI replace human touch, or augment?
AI CHEAT
On the other side of the aisle, some employers are keeping an eye out for clues that applicants have used AI. Generative AI prompt management company AIPRM Corp., for example, advises watching out for resumés with overly long or complex sentences that contain unusual vocabulary and inconsistent tone, or answers during an interview that sound like they’re being read.
While AI also opens a Pandora’s Box when it comes to the potential for applicants to misrepresent themselves, that kind of fakery can only get you so far, Goefft said.
“If you’re using AI to falsify your experience or your responses, that’s obviously unethical,” she said. “It’ll come out at some point in the hiring process. These hiring managers have done this enough to know if someone is just reading off a script.”
Instead of a tit-for-tat arms race, Goefft sees AI as the catalyst for bettering the hiring process overall. “Employers need to rethink their hiring process and get away from this format that just tests people based on their interview skills,” she said. “As AI becomes more prevalent everywhere, we’re going to need people who can problem solve and think critically.”
Lewis Curley, who advises companies on HR practices as a management consulting partner with KPMG Canada, agrees that the recruitment tides are turning with the rise of AI.
“What AI tools are doing is what organizations have been doing for a while, which is to say ‘does this (CV) match this (job)’. Since these tools are now available to candidates, it brings into question how useful they are on the corporate side if everybody is tuning their CV perfectly.”
The main way the hiring process should change, according to Curley, is finding ways to test for cultural fit within an organization, rather than focusing on hard skills alone. This may mean that more companies recruit from inside their organization — a trend he’s already noticing. “We already know they’re a good cultural fit and skills are transferable.”
He questions how useful it is to train people to specifically detect Ai-use during the hiring process. For one, the kinds of questions a hiring manager might ask to assess cultural fit, such as checking with references and asking probing follow up questions, would likely also weed out applicants who relied heavily on AI to prepare their answers. Indeed, some of the Ai-detection methods AIPRM puts forward do exactly that, including getting candidates to solve real-world problems during a video interview or getting them to explain or defend specific parts of their CV.
Secondly, he doesn’t see AI as an evil that needs quashing. “We’re passionate about AI and technology and using it to improve business and improve society,” he said of KPMG, which offers guidance for businesses through its Trusted AI Principles. Employers who implement a blanket ‘no AI’ policy, including during recruitment, are stymieing their competitive advantage, he notes.
When it comes to the ethics of Ai-use, the consensus among the experts is to keep the human element. That is, use AI to augment human abilities rather than replace them.
“I really don’t think it’s meant to replace our intelligence or our humanity,” Malach said.
Giorgetti, for her part, doesn’t see AI as a threat to her career coaching business.
“The real work I do is connecting people with themselves and what they’d like to do with their lives,” she said. Her work might include connecting people to their values, strengths and what they find meaningful. “Yeah, maybe AI can help with writing your cover letter or preparing a presentation but in my opinion that doesn’t substitute a real human who can sit with you and your feelings.”