The time has finally come.
Major companies and clever candidates are shifting away from the centuries-old ‘apply to job advertisement with CV and interview this way’ approach.
We are accelerating towards AI-powered personality tests, and for good reason.
This is the current, broken state of play;
Candidates use AI to write their CV (>60%)
- Candidates use AI apps to edit their CV to ‘match’ the job descriptions it applies to on your behalf, en masse.
Hiring Managers use AI to write Job Descriptions and Ads
>50% of all job applications are powered by AI recommendations – SEEK.
The average number of applicants per job at the end of 2022 was 60.
Now, less than 3 years later, it is a whopping 350 applications per job and rising – SEEK.
Internal recruitment teams are inundated, so they lean on AI to help them select which CVs (written by AI to match the Job Ad) have the most amount of ‘word matches’ to the Job that AI wrote in the first place.
Hiring Managers meet these ‘best-matched’ candidates and after 5 minutes realise this is a total waste of time.
To say the century-old process is broken is an understatement. The first CV was created by Leonardo DaVinci in 1482 (really), but the CV didn’t become a mainstream part of job applications until around 1960, coinciding with the post-war rise of corporate employment and the need for standardised job applications.
It has taken decades, even centuries, to realise that a CV does not predict a candidate’s performance.
And much less can be said for the typical interviewing process, too. Companies are diving deeper into assessing the exact skills that their position, team and company requires – then designing new ways to accurately assess those personality and behavioural skills.
Everyone has always thought that they know how to interview.
I’m definitely part of the majority of managers who, upon being promoted, are handed the responsibility of hiring with no training, guidance, or support.
No wonder we make so many mistakes in hiring.
Those who are finally learning from these mistakes are designing processes which allows their candidates to prove that they can thrive in this position, in this workplace.
Our clients are getting sick of my motto “if you’re hiring a goal kicker, you need to see them kick goals – and in the situations they will be kicking goals in.” Though I need to reinforce this because a take-home javascript test is like running laps around the field – it does not evaluate match-fitness.
My last post, “Why good candidates aren’t applying to job ads anymore” detailed how good candidates are reacting to a broken system, too. (TL:DR “In record numbers, {candidates} are coming directly to specialist recruiters or direct to companies as a work-around. And it’s working).”
So, the best candidates aren’t using their CVs.
The best companies aren’t requesting CV’s anymore.
They are both meeting in a new arena, in a new way.
Those who aren’t adapting are seeing their ‘time-to-hire’ steadily rise, which means missed talent and slower business.
We are at an inflection point.
What side will you choose?
