by Lynda Morrissey, HR Recruitment Transformation Consultant and Talent Acquisition Manager
AI is now one of the most powerful forces reshaping talent acquisition. Gartner identifies AI as one of the two dominant drivers transforming how organisations attract, assess, and select talent through 2026.[1]
AI has the potential to support recruitment teams by improving speed, scale, and efficiency. We are already seeing many organisations use AI to support with drafting job adverts, scheduling interviews, taking interview notes, generating banks of interview questions and scoring indicators, and producing employer branding and recruitment social media marketing material.
Many organisations are understandably slower to adopt emerging technologies that support CV screening and candidate response analysis, as they seek greater testing and assurance around ethical, fairness, and bias considerations.
A Gartner survey found that only 26% of job applicants trust AI to evaluate them fairly, and many candidates say they trust employers less when AI is used in assessment.[2]
At the same time, AI use by candidates is now widespread. Between 45% and 65% of applicants report using AI during their application or interview preparation.
For most, this use is pragmatic rather than deceptive. Candidates are researching employers, improving spelling, clarity and structure in applications, tailoring CVs and cover letters, and correcting language – activities that closely resemble support traditionally provided by career coaches.
However, examples of manipulative and problematic behaviours do exist. These include: fully AI-generated applications with minimal personalisation; fabricated or exaggerated examples; auto-apply for hundreds of roles at a time with AI doing all the CV and cover letter tailoring; AI-assisted completion of psychometric assessments; hidden text designed to bypass automated screening; real-time AI prompting answers to real time interview questions during live video interviews; and using AI tools to alter their appearance or voice to appear more professional or to conceal identity traits.
Without appropriate safeguards, these behaviours can undermine hiring accuracy, fairness, trust, and long-term team performance. Not to mention that talent acquisition teams are increasingly receiving higher and higher volumes of applications, and spending at least half their week sifting out unqualified applications.
With AI making it easier for candidates to embellish or automate their applications, organisations do need stronger checks – just not at the expense of a fair and accessible hiring process.
The Organisational Response: Audit and Evolve
Organisations must evolve their assessment design, hiring manager and interview panel capability, and talent strategy to protect candidate quality, fairness, and future readiness.
I don’t have all the answers – we are all learning to address this directly, but I do propose some very pragmatic and practical foundations that are important to get right.
1. Establish Transparent AI Hiring Policies
Organisations should publish clear AI usage statements across careers sites and job advertisements. Transparency is no longer optional – it is foundational to employer trust.
2. Audit and Stress-Test Recruitment Processes
End-to-end hiring processes must be reviewed through an AI-risk lens. Where could AI misuse distort outcomes, introduce bias, or weaken evidence quality? Organisations should stress-test their processes and redesign critical steps to ensure fairness, ethics, and inclusion.
3. Build Interview Intelligence In Your Organisation
In an AI-enabled market, interviews must once again become high-fidelity assessment tools – capable of distinguishing genuine capability, skills, values, motivation and potential – from rehearsed performance.
Most organisations would benefit from deliberately investing in advanced interview skills training for hiring managers and interview panel members to assess and hire the right people for their teams.
Organisations need to conduct structured, evidence-based interviews with anchored scoring. Managers need to be trained to ask evidence detecting clarifying questions that evaluate authentic mindset, trade-offs, mistakes, and learnings – not just fluency. This needs to be done in a way that is fair and inclusive to all candidates in the process.
Interviewers should also be trained to recognise signals of misalignment – such as examples that do not align with career timelines, lack operational detail, or are perfectly structured but unravel under probing.
4. Use Work Sample Assessments
Real work simulation assessments, role-plays, and live scenarios remain one of the most predictive indicators of future performance. They are also the most effective hedge against AI generated polish.
Observing candidates perform job relevant tasks – or talk you through how they approached a real problem – provides insight into judgement, execution, and thinking that AI cannot replicate convincingly. Clear scoring indicators need to be designed to ensure consistency and fairness.
If your organisation uses psychometric or online skills assessment tests, ensure they are stress-tested for AI vulnerability. Be aware that some candidates pay for AI subscriptions that generate high-scoring responses to online assessments, making the process unfair, unethical, and biased if left unmitigated.
A Strategic Opportunity for TA Leaders and Professionals
For talent acquisition leaders and professionals, this represents a strategic opening: invest in interviewer capability that preserves fairness, detects authenticity, and measures future potential – and pair it with transparent AI usage policies and robust, AI-resistant assessment design.
Organisations that do this well will not only earn candidate trust; they will secure stronger hiring decisions and long-term performance advantage.
Sources and Further Reading
[1] Gartner (2025). AI Revolution and Cost Pressures Are Two Forces Driving the Top Four Trends for Talent Acquisition in 2026. Gartner Press Release, 7 October 2025.
[2] Gartner (2025). Survey Shows Just 26% of Job Applicants Trust AI Will Fairly Evaluate Them. Gartner Press Release, 31 July 2025.
Deloitte (2025). Global Human Capital Trends 2025: Closing the Experience Gap. Deloitte Insights, March 2025.
Gartner (2025). By 2027, 75% of Hiring Processes Will Include Certifications and Testing for Workplace AI Proficiency. Gartner Predictions, October 2025.
Deloitte (2025). Talent Acquisition Technology Trends: AI in Talent Acquisition. Deloitte Insights (Italy).
About the author
Lynda Morrissey is a HR recruitment transformation consultant and talent acquisition manager with over 12 years’ experience leading hiring strategies, projects, and campaigns within mission-led human rights, humanitarian, and Tech4Good organisations, including Concern Worldwide, Save the Children UK, Zen Educate, and Amnesty International. Lynda specialises in building future-ready talent acquisition capability, aligning hiring strategy with organisational priorities, and strengthening hiring quality through innovative, data-informed, inclusive recruitment practices. Her expertise spans employer branding and EVP, DEI recruitment strategy, interview and assessment methodology re-design, hiring manager training and enablement, and recruitment social media marketing. She is passionate about sharing the future of hiring at a systemic level to deliver measurable, long-term impact.
