Are recruiters viewing my application or is it AI?

So I'm starting my first proper blog in the early stages of a blistering heatwave. I'm sat in front of a fan, a Shark fan to be precise. It's good, I mean really bloody good. I'm telling you this for no reason other than I currently tell anyone that will listen how good the Shark fans are, so why not add it to this blog too.

Stop asking me about this fan, I'm getting distracted. Let's talk AI in the recruitment process. I'm not talking about the future of AI, I'm not asking if it will take all our jobs and I'm not chucking in buzzwords like LLM or RAG to try and look smart (mainly because I'm smart adjacent) - I want to talk about what matters, who views your job application? A human or AI?

Does AI really reject your job application before a human sees it? In my experience, no.

This is what you see all over LinkedIn, partly from frustrated job hunters (no judgement, I've completely been there) and partly from AI 'experts' that in actual fact are nothing to do with recruitment and have never even heard of an ATS. Being honest, it feels plausible - most ATS' are going big on AI tooling and AI exists to reduce manual work for humans, so why wouldn't it cut out the sifting process for a recruiter?

Actually, I've just caught myself here. An ATS is an Applicant Tracking System, like Workable, Greenhouse or Teamtailor (big up Teamtailor - one of the best in the business). So, long and short, when you apply for a role, the recruiter goes to the relevant role on the ATS and starts sifting through applications.

Now, most recruiters, well, the good ones (and there's loads) want to find suitable candidates, not just look to eliminate them. Yes, it will vary depending on things like company size and employer branding as to how many applications you get. It could be 13 applications, it could be 513 applications. The volume changes, but the task remains, find suitable candidates amongst them.

The first thing the recruiter will look to do is rule out applications that just won't work. For example, if the business has no visa sponsorship license, unfortunately all applicants that require sponsorship will be rejected - that volume has just reduced, maybe to 6, maybe to 306, but we're getting there. From there, they aren't then reading every CV cover to cover, but looking for evidence that you match the job spec - job title, experience, industry alignment - things that can be picked out incredibly quickly.

Next step, is to start viewing, yes literally viewing applications/CVs, AI could come into the frame here as some ATS' will be able to rank applications based on suitability to required skills to the role. This is where I think the confusion comes from. People see AI rankings etc. and assume that it's making decisions. Ranking candidates and rejecting them are two very different things. AI is a starting point, not a final outcome. It doesn't mean that if your CV isn't ranked, it won't be viewed. Any decent recruiter and any environments that I've worked in, we would view pretty much every application from here. Recruiters are incredibly well versed in viewing a CV and assessing suitability in an incredibly quick amount of time. Some roles have more nuance and take longer, some recruiters just have more capacity and can go more in-depth - but ultimately, if you look a suitable fit, a recruiter will find that, very quickly.

Recruiters spend hours and hours (and hours and hours) viewing CVs - AI tools will help rank, help sift, help assess but that's exactly what they are, tools.

Believe it or not, recruiters, much like you, f*ck up. They might miss an application, they might reject someone that shouldn't be rejected, but they really aren't in the business of rejecting suitable candidates for a laugh. That would be mental and frankly, a massive waste of time.

It's really annoying when you get an auto reject from a role you look absolutely bang on for, I know, it happened to me literally this morning.

My first thought wasn't 'AI has rejected me'

It was 'What have they seen that I haven't?'

Maybe they've spent longer in the specific industry or maybe, there's just someone that's a better fit. It's bloody annoying, but it's recruitment.

Agree? Disagree? Want a recommendation on a damn good fan? Let me know!

d to me literally this morning.

My first thought wasn't 'AI has rejected me'

It was 'What have they seen that I haven't?'

Maybe they've spent longer in the specifc industry or maybe, there's just someone that's a better fit. It's bloody annoying, but it's recruitment.

Agree? Disagree? Want a recommendation on a damn good fan? Let me know!

This post was not written using AI, I mean if AI came up with this, all our jobs are safe. It was however boosted by spellcheck.