This was the warning to the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on digital hiring came from a technology specialist at a meeting on Tuesday [21 January 2025].

Estelle McCartney, chief growth officer for technology firm Arctic Shores, said recruitment processes need to be “futureproofed” as Generative AI usage has “gone mainstream”, with professional and more experienced candidates joining early careers jobseekers in using AI to apply for work.

Credible research with peer reviews have shown that “free AI tools are a real threat to companies being able to get proper insight into candidates, if they (recruiters) use traditional assessment tools that we’ve been relying on”, McCartney said. “We then also started to hear from companies that we were working with about some really clear trends… organisations were reporting an increase in the volume of applications that they were receiving – not because candidates can use ChatGPT to quickly create or personalise applications but because there are actually apps that advertise as applying for jobs on your behalf while you sleep.

“And so, TA {talent acquisition} teams were seeing that real increase in volume, looking like a real increase in quality of applications, but then seeing a big discrepancy in the performance of candidates at later stages in the application process. We kept hearing from this phrase of the ‘sea of sameness’ of candidates.”

McCartney went on to say: “That has meant that the need to futureproof recruitment in this era of AI has really accelerated.”

Three core takeaways from her talk, she suggested, were: “The use of AI now by candidates is mainstream across all levels of experience and all sectors. We need to give guidance to candidates; we need to think about what a recruitment process looks like and to include AI to understand what the impact is, both from a candidate perspective and also your internal processes.

“And then, thirdly, AI in the workplace is changing the human contribution and what will be needed in the workplace and leading organisations, and, for me, to think about what are the human skills that we need to assess and measure as they go through their recruitment process.”

More than 100 people attended the virtual APPG meeting on Tuesday.

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