Job applicants were already lying on applications—now they have AI

Flagging and removing AI cheaters is the newest challenge for recruiters in the war for talent.

Seasoned recruiters are no strangers to people exaggerating their credentials to land a job, but job seekers now have a new tool to take their deception even further in the form of artificial intelligence (AI).

Capterra’s Job Seeker AI Survey of 250 Canadian job seekers reveals almost half (48%) are using AI tools to help them in their current job search.* And of those that are using AI, 82% say they have leveraged it to exaggerate or lie about their skills on a resume, cover letter, job application, or skills assessment.

For recruiters, hiring managers, or even small-business owners trying to quickly evaluate and hire the best candidate, job seekers using bots and other AI tools to mask a skills deficiency represent a new obstacle in the war for talent. Companies aren’t without their own weapons in this fight, however. With help from the right recruiting software and hiring process changes, you can minimize AI cheating, flag deceptive AI content, and eliminate fraudulent candidates.

Canadians are using AI to land jobs—and succeeding

At the same time that recruiters are evaluating all the ways AI can benefit their operations (Gartner says recruiting has the most current use cases for GenAI in the HR space [1]), so too are job seekers discovering all the ways AI can give them an edge in getting hired.

Do an online search for “job seeker AI tools” and you’ll find an emerging market of applications that are designed to help job seekers in various stages of the recruiting and hiring process:

• Generative AI bots can create or refine resumes, cover letters, and other job seeker writing samples to appear more professional.
• AI-powered job search tools can learn the types of jobs that people are most interested in and mass apply to them on their behalf.
• AI teleprompter tools can listen in on phone or video job interviews and provide real-time suggestions and answers to interviewees.

All told, 48% of job seekers from Canada in our survey say they are using tools like these in their current job search, and another 26% plan to use these tools in the future. Of those that use AI, 56% say it’s very or extremely important to their current job search.

What is prompting this widespread interest in AI? One reason is to stay ahead of the competition. With 85% of respondents saying it's likely that other people applying for similar jobs are using AI to embellish or exaggerate their job applications, job seekers may feel the need to adopt AI simply to keep up with other candidates.

Job seekers that use AI are more successful as well. When asked what they believe is the top benefit of using AI in their job search, the most cited answer was appearing as a better job candidate.

The numbers back up that appearing as a better candidate is working. Comparing AI and non-AI users, we find that not only have AI users completed more than twice as many job applications on average during their current search (172 vs. 80), but they’ve also been 79% more likely to receive a job offer than those who don’t use AI.

Job seekers use AI to refine and deceive

For employers trying to hire the best candidate for the job, job seeker AI usage is a complex issue. Not only can AI content or assistance be hard to detect, but some of the ways that AI is being used by job seekers aren’t even necessarily detrimental to the candidate evaluation process.

For example, the most common ways Canadian job seekers have used AI in their current search are to write/refine their resume (37%), write/refine their cover letter (36%), or find relevant job openings (33%). In many organizations, if the candidate is still truthful about their qualifications, these uses are not only tolerated but often encouraged to demonstrate familiarity with AI tools.

On the other hand, some AI uses cross the line and represent an active effort by job seekers to deceive the employer or disrupt their hiring processes:

• 27% have leveraged AI to mass apply to jobs, clogging recruiting pipelines with undifferentiated applications.
• 25% have leveraged AI to generate answers to interview questions, potentially to hide a lack of relevant skills or knowledge for the job.
• 24% have leveraged AI to complete a test assignment or skills assessment, again to potentially hide a lack of relevant skills or knowledge for the job.

Companies have a difficult time identifying the best job candidate as it is. In a recent survey, more than one in four hiring managers in Canada said they made a hiring mistake last year. [2] If businesses don’t get on top of job seeker AI deception soon, even more costly bad hires will follow.

How to avoid hiring applicants that cheat using AI

The first step for your recruiting team right now is to decide as an organization which job seeker AI uses are acceptable, and which ones need to be flagged as cheating. Your criteria should include the types of roles you’re hiring for, the sources for candidate information in your recruiting process, and the level of risk you’re comfortable with if a deceptive applicant goes undetected. 

Once the decision has been made regarding which AI uses by job seekers should be flagged, here are some ways you can reduce the likelihood of AI cheating in your recruiting pipeline and successfully flag AI content when it appears.

1. Spell out what AI uses are considered unacceptable

Of the job seekers in our survey who don’t use AI, one in four express concern that using AI tools could be perceived as cheating by an employer. Stating outright on your job application page that lying about skills or credentials using AI will result in a candidate’s removal from job consideration won’t stop every cheater, but it will at least give some hesitancy to those that are thinking about using AI to deceive.

2. Use AI screening tools

If job seekers are flooding your inbox with AI-generated applications and resumes, reviewing each one manually will take too much time and delay your hiring decision. Luckily, you have your own AI you can lean on to evaluate candidates more quickly.

Gartner says 80% of recruiting technology vendors will have embedded AI capabilities into their offerings by 2027. [3] If your applicant tracking system (ATS) doesn’t have AI capabilities now, it likely will soon, and one such capability you’ll want to keep an eye on is the ability to automatically screen applications for relevant skills and experience and float them to the top of the consideration list. Just be sure to test the AI’s ability to find the candidates you’re actually looking for before deploying it.

Compare top AI-enabled applicant tracking systems here.

3. Refrain from phone interviews

Job seekers will be more inclined to use AI teleprompter tools to feed them the right answers in interviews if you can’t see them. For this reason, consider minimizing the use of phone interviews and converting them to video or in-person interviews instead.

Read reviews of video interview software systems here.

4. Leverage an AI content checker

Geared more toward academia, plagiarism checker software tools are nonetheless a good tool for recruiters to have on hand now that many have their own AI content detection features. 

Simply paste or upload the text from a CV, cover letter, or test assignment, and these tools will tell you if the content was likely generated by AI (though you should do some testing on your own first to determine accuracy).

Find the right plagiarism checker tool for your needs and budget here.

5. Rely more on references

If a candidate says they have certain experience or a specific skill, the best way to confirm if they really do is through references. Simply asking relevant references, such as former managers or co-workers, if a candidate likely had a skill they put in a resume or said in an interview can give you the evidence you need.

Learn more on our reference check software page.

6. Dedicate sufficient time to candidate screening and evaluation

Our recent survey of Canadian middle managers reveals that they spend only 3% of their week, on average, on recruiting and hiring tasks.** The less time that hiring managers dedicate to recruiting, the more likely they will rely on easily-fabricated content such as resumes and cover letters to evaluate candidates. By shifting the culture around recruiting, and convincing busy managers to prioritize it more as needed, they can lend more of an effort to flag and eliminate AI cheaters.

Don’t wait to get ahead of applicant AI cheating

As more job seekers realize the benefits of AI to their job search, employers will need to move quickly to draw their line in the sand on what constitutes AI fair play. Those that then combine the right AI detection tools with critical recruiting processes and culture changes will have a clear advantage in identifying and hiring truly talented candidates.