Job Seekers Dehumanized by AI-Driven Hiring
Job seekers are experiencing frustration and a lack of personalized attention during the application process. They feel their applications are often processed by impersonal AI systems, leading to generic rejections, wasted effort on cover letters, and a sense of being treated as data points rather than individuals. The current job market exacerbates these issues, making the search feel overwhelming and discouraging.
SOURCES (60)
“Mine was date of birth, full home address, and last 4 of SSN. For a job I never heard back from. submitted by /u/Party_Bar8135 [link] [comments]”
“If you're curious what it's like now, it's bad enough that. You need your resume Some places need a cover letter and references. You need to schedule through an Ai assistant. Some interveiws will just be a recording that will be used to train their Ai. And some places are using Ai to screen resumes so you get an IMMEDIATE rejection email followed by a call a few days latter saying it was a mistake.”
“I've tried lying but I guess I need to just lie harder. Bigger lies! All of my work is AI! I'm actually an AI masquerading as a human! I'm the architect of the Matrix! But seriously though thanks. I guess I just need to lie more.”
“I just had an "interview," which was speaking with an AI chatbot, and then, once complete, I was told the AI would analyze my answers and send me a personality profile based on what I wrote. I never agreed to have my personality analyzed, but is this the new dystopian way to hire? I've spoken to no one from the company yet, but it feels icky. submitted by /u/turtle-11 [link] [comments]”
“So instead you want to build SaaS software that no one will like? Adtech? Mobile games that take advantage of whales?”
“Hey all, my girlfriend (doesn’t have a Reddit account) is doing a PhD on AI ethics. For her research she needs to interview some people around experiences they’ve had in job interviews that are with an AI. If you’re interested in having a short chat and answering some questions that would be hugely helpful. Thanks. submitted by /u/BSH53 [link] [comments]”
“It's likely because people are using AI to write their resume and auto apply to every job posting they come across. Both sides, those hiring and those applying, are being screwed by AI automation. HR departments are filtering most candidates out with AI, and conversely, candidates are using AI to make perfect resumes to beat the AI filtering while mass applying to hundreds of jobs each month.”
“How are you guys doing it honestly? I've had phases where I would non stop apply everyday to any job that I came across I then applied to targeted roles I then used AI to match and apply I upskilled I talked to strangers for getting tips I reached out for referrals I gave interviews which turned out to be voids I enhanced cv pointers I cold mailed people Then I get demotivated And then I see people switching their 4th jobs in 3 yrs How tf are people doing it???? submitted by /u/t”
“Has anyone here had any success tailoring your resume to the specific job??? I have heard this “works” but have not had any luck myself. Plus it takes forever submitted by /u/Top-Inflation7542 [link] [comments]”
“Any of those in favour of making companies sign automated rejection emails to be "after an AI scan" rather than "after careful consideration? Would help in finding out if I need to beat the system or genuinely need to improve 😁 submitted by /u/IceCapz [link] [comments]”
“Agreed, I am available by the way. Microsoft team behind this AI job search think job seekers want to type long essays for every search, like they think job seekers enjoy being unemployed. The second problem is that the AI job search hides all relevant jobs while listing only the job slop from paying HR companies. Microsoft has hired people so low skilled in product development, they are unable to understand simple things like trade off, whether its linkedin, microsoft games or windows 11. The g”
“Not sure if this popped up in anyone else’s feed, but this sounds like a horrible idea. https://www.reddit.com/r/RecruitmentAI/s/uNpT2cJZW3 submitted by /u/Honest-Bonus-2639 [link] [comments]”
“if one more person says tailor it! with zero instructions i'm going to lose it. i tried hand-tailoring 20 resumes in one weekend and my brain leaked out my ears. what actually worked: one master doc with every bullet i've ever written, then careerflow to suggest JD-matched phrasings so i'm choosing not writing (the ai wording is samey so i still rewrite half, but it beats a blank page). that + only touching the top third of page 1 got me from ~50 min per app to like 12. still feels d”
“yeah tailoring is the part that can burn you out fast. i've been using rankresume.io to cut that down to like 60 seconds per job—pastes the JD and tweaks the resume and cover letter. helps with ATS stuff too. worth a look if you're trying to keep up volume without sacrificing quality.”
“playing into the game isn't evening the playing field it's just further entrenching the system...instead you're just making an AI application bot that will just force the recruiters to use more AI and around and around we go. This is not revolutionary, this is just part of the same system. lol that's literally what i just said.... are you actually going to provide any meaningful insight into the discussion or just provide morilizing arguments about the current state of affairs? i”
“There is no business logic to why that feature still needs to exist. Is recruitment software still that backwards that it can't parse CVs properly into a consistent format for display?”
“okay. So we input the data about ourselves. Does the CV generation get customized per job description? edit: nvm you just said it did.”
“Had a zoom interview a couple of days ago for a full time remote position. Interviewer proceeded to pull up a PowerPoint with the Primerica Logo. submitted by /u/wassssuupp5678 [link] [comments]”
“Meanwhile in corporate recruitment, we're being trained to spot purely AI generated resumes and prioritize candidates that provide context in their resume that AI wouldn't include. A lot of the AI generated resumes I receive are very generic, or straight up fabricate experience I can tell the candidate doesn't have based on where they're currently working.”
“I applied to a firm few days ago and was rejected. The rejection mail stood out since it’s from app review gem and NOT from the companies domain. My gut feeling is my resume didn’t each reach the recruiter eyes so the application tracking system marked resume as non attractive or something. Is this true? submitted by /u/bad_detectiv3 [link] [comments]”
“After roughly 700 job applications, one candidate was interviewed four times by the same AI recruiter without a single human follow-up or rejection. So when it called a fifth time, he let ChatGPT answer. The bots talked in circles, complimented each other, and ultimately ghosted each other. WIRED article attached. submitted by /u/dzanong [link] [comments]”
“nah, nobody is asking for that....Hiring managers don't want to read some 500 word essay. But, did you even read the job description? Because 1/2 their stack of applicants look like they didn't. They want to find people that actually know what job they applied for and want to do it. And like it or not, advantage is on the hiring side at the moment. This makes it exhausting for the hiring folks to have to weed through a 100 applications from folks playing the numbers game and applying to”
“Well at least I am getting paid for it. Nothing I can do about it except find a blue colar job.”
“Headline says it all. These companies don’t know up from down at this point. I was headhunted for a job, highly niche, which I perfectly fit and applied to. They didn’t know I applied when I asked if I found them or they found me. I passed the hiring manager interview and got an assessment that was supposed to take “2 hours” yet it was a three part assignment with like 6 open-ended questions within each section. Of course, this took me longer than 2 hours… I submitted it on a Tuesday… no word al”
“There's essentially no other way left to stand out. Projects are meaningless because of AI, starting a company can get you attention but you can't exactly get hired by an actual company if you're actively running a different company, resumes are equally worthless due to AI. The ONLY things left are: What college you went to and what was your GPA? GPA matters far less than school tier obviously What company are you currently at, if any? How famous are you? That's it. Once you'”
“Many of the 'AI training' platforms require you to take 'technical interview' with their AI screeners. I see at least a couple of advantages to attending these screeners You get to practise your interviewing skills with voice-interview bot that can take you broad or deep in your area - DS, Coding, SW-Engineering on PM. At the end you also get feedback and know if you are selected or not. Icing on the cake - if you are selected and still interested, you can actually work on the &q”
“One time I got a manually written rejection email and then a couple days later I got the automated one. I assume the 2nd one is just a spam blast to everyone after the position closes in their system. Maybe it was something like that.”
“A company that tells you a rejection reason after scanning your CV is a good company. --> It believes in positive feedback and wants to build an employer brand. A company where 2 recruiters work on the same job ID independently and converge on the same answer is a great company. --> They give operational freedom to the people who take decisions everyday in shaping their workforce of the future. :shrugs:”
“New fear unlocked: HR making a compilation reel of my awkward video introductions to laugh at during lunch.”
“the constraint doing the work here is "interview within 7–30 days". that is a state people announce, not an attribute you can target, so posting where testers live is the wrong shape for it. what you want is the thread where someone just wrote that they have an onsite next week and are dreading the behavioural round. r/cscareerquestions , r/interviews and the relocation subs produce those daily. answer their actual interview question first, offer the mock second. and do not screen for”
“not too sure how many people are students on handshake here but i definitely always knew these recruiter messages are automated but i just thought this was funny LOL never seen this kind of AI mistake before esp coming from someone at amazon pretty unprofessional submitted by /u/Equivalent_Fee_3063 [link] [comments]”
“I would respectfully suggest that the criticism of this job ad is easy just based on this post, but would suggest to consider some things as well. OP left out which company is hiring. There is more context in the actual job ad as I read it, and I'm sure even more context would be given in an interview as to why they choose "AI first". Many tech companies are changing how they operate, to models that are best supported by AI. Typically, quick experimentation, rapid A/B tests and qui”
“The entire ATS and AI resume screening is a joke. All it does is score those candidates who are using AI to game the system. The biggest issue is that it ignores actual accomplishments as it is only looking for keyword matches to the job descriptions. I bet if someone just copied and pasted a job description into a resume the ATS would score it the highest. Of course the hiring manager would reject it. Going direct to the hiring manager and bypassing ATS is the best approach.”
“Feels damned either way. Either you handwrite it and it gets blocked by their AI or you AI write it and it upsets the manager. Fuck AI.”
“You know how at the end of an application, you always have to answer questions about your race and if you're a veteran and whatnot? Well, I always click "prefer not to answer." Would it benefit me to explicitly say I don't have any disabilities? Does it make a difference that I'm just a boring white guy or that I'm not a veteran? Would it make a difference if I were a veteran? I also never agree to receiving texts or to follow them on LinkedIn or any of that other annoy”
“Don't think I want to work for anyone whose default assumption is that 'we all' use ChatGPT.”
“I'd like to ask mid-level white collar job seekers... What percentage of your applications are resulting in a screening interview? submitted by /u/iwegian [link] [comments]”
“I'm gonna be the contrarian in this thread and point out that the letter says you're in a creative field. Yes, if you're in a creative field and trying to stand out from other people, you should put more effort into doing so.”
“I would let them know. If youre already not getting the job, what have you got to lose? I would say something like this: "I appreciate your response, and the fact that you took the time to provide feedback. However, I feel obligated to inform you that I did not use AI in my resume. I despise the use of AI and believe its proliferation is actively harmful to people everywhere. Case in point, we no longer know when content is human (real) or generated by an LLM. I avoid it in my work unless r”
“I've been accused of having a writing style that is so informal that it borders on being unprofessional as well as sounding like a pompous academic intentionally making my resume difficult to understand. I guess I can't win either way.”
“No I didn't do a follow up interview, no I didn't reach out to them. Probably some bot auto sending out emails in the middle of the night. Yeah sure Kroger, I was waiting on bated breath for this job for *six weeks.* And I got a rejection email immediately after sending a thank you email, within *minutes.* Do these companies get some kind of bonuses if they interview a bunch of people they have no intention of hiring? submitted by /u/Turbulent-Maybe-1040 [link] [comment”
“Yow! Any updates regarding with the application? I don't want to waste my energy and time about the application and assessment process.”
“I am not trying to promote putting pictures and I absolute hate putting mine up. But my experience is quite different. I got more contacts from recruiters after I put my shitty pictures there. That said not many converted to interviews though.”
“yeah thats the last thing im gouing to do to appeal to recruiter intelligence. you can use ai now to do the heavy lifting and infer if the guy in resume has needed skills. so no, there is no F***g excuse to just skim resume in 20 secs and make a decision. there is zero excuse to do this.”
“Interesting, why? Seeing it a lot in interview processes and HR at the moment”
“I'm tired of no results. i cant take that disappointment anymore. Its extremely frustating to recieve fake scores and false hopes. How does your app prevent fake inflated scores?”
“How’s that misconduct? People run caffeinate all the time for their AI agents to not sleep, make the code run overnight”
It’s just a screener. There are product cases like anywhere else
“You already named the three things. Location, work mode, and a salary range on the post, close it when someone is in the seat, and a one-line rejection even if it's a template. I don't sit in a recruiter inbox, so I can't answer the last part well. The leftover open listing is the one we can't fix from this side. I keep filling a form for a role that was filled last week because it still looks live.”
“Micro1 floods job boards with remote roles and sends applicants through AI interviews with “Zara.” Then I read their own Candidate Privacy Policy. They explicitly say interview audio, video, transcripts and assessment results may be used to “train and enhance our proprietary machine learning models.” They also changed the policy in July: the current version now specifically says they don’t give candidate data to other AI companies for model training - while still reserving the right to train the”