1) Authenticity Erosion (Employers)
When everyone relies on AI, meaningful signals get washed out. Employers struggle to distinguish genuine capability from polished automation. Candidates sound competent but indistinct. Motivation, judgement and intent – once clear differentiators – are buried under synthetic fluency. Ironically, as AI use increases, authentic human signals become more valuable, yet harder to find.
2) Accidentally Hiring for AI (Employers)
Turning recruitment into a prompt‑engineering contest. While a candidate’s ability to use AI is a genuine advantage, in most roles it isn’t what you are actually hiring for – yet it can easily become the deciding factor if you’re not careful. Robust interview and assessment processes are now even more important.
3) The Double Standard (Both Sides)
Candidates pretend they don’t use AI; employers pretend they don’t use AI. The result is mutual distrust and performative theatre. A healthier norm is: AI is acceptable for efficiency, but the work must be truthful, attributable, and explainable, and candidates should be able to talk to it in plain language.
4) Identical Presentations (Candidates)
Delivering near‑identical presentations: same structure, same order of points, same visuals/colour scheme, same “insights.” It signals you, along with your competitors, merely fed the instructions into AI. You didn’t think – your model did. In a tight market, sameness is fatal.
5) Fairy Tale Resumes (Candidates)
Using AI to invent or inflate experience – claiming projects, leadership, outcomes, or technical depth you can’t evidence. We get it, you want the job and Chat writes you a compelling resume that might get you to interview. But your story will collapse under probing questions, reference checks, or work samples. It’s embarrassing for everyone.
6) Resume vs Selection Criteria Mismatch (Candidates)
Submitting AI‑written selection criteria that align with the job spec but don’t match the resume: different seniority, different achievements, different tone. Either you need to change your resume to focus on the JD or edit your response to make it align with your actual experience. Hiring managers will see you as careless or deceitful – both are avoidable.
7) Buzzword Overload (Candidates)
Replacing real world language with AI waffle – “spearheaded,” “leveraged,” “transformed,” “synergised” – without concrete scope, numbers, or artefacts. Use data, context and examples to demonstrate your experience, don’t sound like a LinkedIn post.