Would AI Hire You?
When the people writing the rules for artificial intelligence use AI to recruit their own staff, we’re witnessing the future arrive.
I stumbled across a job advert this week that stopped me scrolling.
Not because of the salary. Not because it was remote. Not even because the organisation, GovAI, advises governments and frontier AI labs on one of the biggest technological shifts in history.
It was because the first interview wasn’t with a person.
It was with AI.
An AI recruiter called Jill screens candidates before deciding who deserves an introduction to the client. Alongside her is Jack, an AI career coach that helps applicants prepare and improve their chances.
Think about that for a moment.
An organisation dedicated to ensuring AI is developed safely and responsibly has already trusted AI with one of the most human decisions any organisation makes: who gets through the door.
The New Gatekeeper
For years we’ve joked about CVs disappearing into a black hole.
Now the black hole has a name.
Recruitment has quietly become one of the first industries where AI isn’t assisting people. It’s making decisions about people.
In fairness, it’s easy to understand why.
When hundreds or thousands of applications arrive within hours, no recruitment team can realistically read every CV. AI can identify patterns, match skills and reduce weeks of work into minutes.
The efficiency gains are obvious.
The risks are less obvious.
What Does AI Miss?
The question isn’t whether AI can identify experience.
It’s whether it can recognise potential.
Would it understand that someone who has spent decades leading strategic transformation in global banking possesses exactly the operational skills needed to scale a fast-growing AI organisation?
Or would it reject the application because the job title says Programme Director instead of Director of Operations?
Humans naturally recognise transferable skills.
Algorithms often recognise matching words.
Those aren’t always the same thing.
The Hidden Cost
As AI becomes the first reviewer of every application, candidates are learning to write for machines before they write for people.
CVs become keyword exercises.
Experience becomes search optimisation.
Individual careers become increasingly difficult to distinguish from one another because everyone learns the same algorithmic language.
Ironically, the better we become at pleasing AI, the less human our applications become.
A Better Partnership
None of this means AI shouldn’t be involved.
Quite the opposite.
Used well, AI removes administration, accelerates screening and frees recruiters to spend more time doing what machines still struggle with: understanding people.
Perhaps that’s the future.
AI doesn’t replace judgement.
It creates more time for judgement.
Because hiring has never been about finding the perfect collection of keywords.
It’s about recognising the person behind them.
And that’s a decision that still deserves a human conversation.
Lomond Logic
Technology changes quickly. Judgement takes longer.