okrit Movel ’25 was a sophomore majoring in computer science when he first used generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) to help him apply for internships. An early adopter of ChatGPT when it was released in 2022, Movel also began experimenting with the technology to help him write résumés appropriate for various roles—a management consultant, for example—so that he could better understand how to tailor them for various audiences, even if he wasn’t applying for that specific role. “I was using AI to play with voice, positioning, and framing—trying to understand how subtle shifts in language affect outcomes,” he says. Movel is now a software engineer with Amazon.

Gen AI is disrupting everything from how we access information to the very nature of work. And job-search and hiring processes are no exception. Human resources teams, recruiters, and job seekers themselves have access to a wide range of AI-powered tools that can assist with matching talent and job openings—but not without a few caveats.

On the recruitment side, bots are being used for a variety of tasks, including writing job descriptions, screening candidates, and conducting early-stage interviews, to name a few. A 2024 survey of chief human resources officers by Boston Consulting Group found that, among companies experimenting with gen AI, 70 percent were doing so within their human resources (HR) functions. And that’s probably not going to abate anytime soon, since the majority of those respondents (92 percent) were seeing benefits, including significant productivity gains.

Job seekers are also embracing the benefits of gen AI. Career Group Companies’ 2025 Market Trend Report & Salary Guide Mid-Year Update found that the number of job seekers using gen AI to write a cover letter, résumé, or writing sample doubled to 62 percent from just six months ago.

HR technology isn’t new. Companies have been using digital tools like applicant tracking systems, recruitment marketing platforms, applicant screening tools, and others for many years. However, there is an influx of gen AI start-ups focused on the HR space. Future of work and human capital strategy expert Emily Omrod ’16 reports that, on a recent trip to San Francisco, she was astonished by the number of billboards touting AI start-ups. “Being from the East Coast, I think perhaps we don’t appreciate the incubation that’s happening in AI around Silicon Valley, in California, and I’m sure, in other hubs across the U.S.,” she says.

But the impact of generative AI on recruitment is still emerging, according to Omrod. Many of the organizations with which she works are still in the experimentation phase. “We have not yet, in my opinion, seen full-blown AI turned on in any kind of real way in HR,” she says.

Work futurist Terri Horton, founder of the consultancy FuturePath, LLC, works with organizations and higher education institutions to help them navigate AI and its impact on the workplace. Horton—whose LinkedIn Learning AI courses have been taken by more than 300,000 learners worldwide—says she sees teams using AI in virtually every stage of recruitment, including sourcing, screening, scheduling interviews, writing job descriptions and interview questions, and onboarding, among others. “[AI] not only streamlines processes and increases efficiency and productivity,” she says. “It allows them to focus on more strategic aspects of the recruitment process.” So platforms like LinkedIn and others have incorporated semantic matching, which uses context from candidate profiles to more accurately assess skills, qualifications, and fit to match candidates to relevant positions.

However, AI-powered HR tools have demonstrated high-profile instances of bias. HR technology consultant Michelle Marino, founder of AI.M People Solutions, says it’s important for companies to understand how vendors are training AI tools to evaluate candidates. “[Hiring organizations] should ask the vendor about ‘explainability’ [the criteria on which the technology screens candidates] because they want to be able to defend any decision that’s made,” she says.

There are no guarantees that AI-powered screening technology will be any better or worse than human review, she says; mistakes and oversights have always been part of the process. Marino recalls her days working in HR at MTV Networks when she would receive roughly 1,000 résumés for every job opening. “For one recruiter to go through that many résumés, it’s impossible,” she says. “Now, you can use AI to scan based on skills and the job description, to find the top talent.”

Omrod adds that employers should have clear governance in place to guide their use of AI throughout the organization, and hiring managers should be aware of the risks involved. “If you don’t have standard application, you don’t have standard processes,” she notes.

When it comes to AI adoption, job seekers are ahead of the game. “Actually, job candidates have embraced the use of AI well before companies,” says Amy Dufrane, CEO of HRCI, a global HR professional credentialing and learning organization. “For companies, it’s a much more complicated situation that involves careful consideration of how AI will interact—or not—with other systems and established workflows.”

For job seekers, generative AI can be a handy tool when it’s time to spruce up a résumé or write a cover letter. After the marketing agency where she was a creative director shut down, Cincinnati resident Michelle Taute began a job search. She had tweaked her résumé to optimize it for AI-powered applicant tracking systems, including adding the appropriate keywords. But when the first application she submitted received an invitation to interview with the company, she realized it had been nearly two decades since she had last been in a job interview.

Taute wasn’t sure what kind of questions she would be asked, so she turned to ChatGPT. “I pasted the job description into ChatGPT and asked it, ‘What do you think would be the likely interview questions for this job description?’ And it spit out 30 questions that were pretty good,” Taute says. “It definitely brought up questions I wouldn’t have thought of on my own,” she says.

Taute chose to write the answers herself to practice them and make them more authentic. She can see the value for some people who need a little help with answers, although she recommends editing them to be sure they’re genuine and fact-checked. She chose the questions she thought the team would be most likely to ask and says the list was accurate. While Taute ultimately didn’t get that job, she says having those questions helped her feel more prepared and able to focus on other aspects of the interview, such as her body language and how interviewers were responding to her answers.

However, while the technology may be good at tailoring text to include keywords, or even drawing connections between a job seeker’s experience and what the organization is looking for, it’s not good at communicating the more human parts of a job search, says Stacy Bingham, Associate Dean of the College for Career Education at Vassar. For example, AI may capture all of the skills needed for a particular job description, but it likely won’t include parts of your personal story, like the fact that you went to college in the area or that you left the region, but are interested in moving back to where the company’s headquarters is located. According to Bingham, that’s the type of storytelling detail AI often overlooks. “AI wouldn’t include that because it just wouldn’t know about it,” she says, “but these kinds of details can help a candidate stand out.”

In addition to leaving out parts of applicants’ stories, gen AI tools are known for fabricating material—having so-called “AI hallucinations,” in which the output from AI is factually incorrect or even entirely fabricated. So, be sure your bot isn’t embellishing your accomplishments or adding elements that are not true, Marino advises.

She recalls uploading her résumé into a popular gen AI tool to see how it would tailor the document for a specific job description, which she also uploaded. The tool added things that she had never done. “They sound amazing. I’d love to say that I did some of that, but I didn’t,” she laughs. “Here’s a perfect example of where humans need to stay in the loop.”

However, the technology can also deliver helpful assistance and deeper insight into the job-search process. In addition to ChatGPT, Wokrit Movel sought out other gen AI-powered tools and found Simplify, which could not only help him tailor his résumé and anticipate interview questions, but could help him organize deadlines for specific job applications and actually complete those applications with his information. Tasks that took an hour could now be completed in under 10 minutes.

The tools can help you get a lot done, but he notes it’s also important to be aware of the ethical implications of using the them.He points to the controversy around apps such as Cluely, which has been the subject of controversy because of its alleged ability to coach people—in real time—during interviews.

“I think we’re at a point where how you use the tool matters just as much as whether or not you’re using it,” he adds.

Omrod says that the ease with which AI tools allow candidates to create customized résumés and apply to jobs has led to people “applying to more jobs with less intention.” Candidates may apply for hundreds of jobs in less time than it would have taken to do so manually. But Omrod wonders whether that time might be better spent applying to fewer jobs and working on making personal connections that could help with the job search.

Despite AI’s utility to hiring managers and job seekers, there are already signs of backlash. A July 2025 article in The New York Times details the experiences of candidates who were interviewed by chatbots. One described the experience as “dehumanizing.” Another called the interaction “some horror-movie-like stuff.” Recruiters have their own horror stories: A crop of AI-powered apps is now generating answers for candidates, which some have clearly been reading out during virtual interviews.

“Recruiters are increasingly able to flag AI-generated language, and candidates must be able to demonstrate skills and competencies in human-to-human interviews and often across a host of screening assessments,” Horton says. Plus, she notes that because so many candidates are using AI tools to move through the selection process, candidate pools are becoming larger and more inauthentic. Recruiters are looking for ways to “AI-proof” the recruitment process.

As far as where the technology will go from here, Dufrane says the outlook is mixed. “It’ll be exciting and a bit scary,” she says. “Clearly, its potential is far more disruptive than some of the technologies that have previously impacted the recruiting experience, such as cloud computing or data analytics. It’s a game-changer, similar to how the commercialization of the internet changed everything for candidates and companies.”

For now, treating AI as a tool or assistant—with ample human input and oversight—seems to be the safest route for using the technology. As AI continues to proliferate on both sides of the job search process, candidates and organizations alike will need to evolve in their understanding and use of it.