Being on the lookout for a job in this day and age, where AI plays such an important role in getting hired or not, can certainly be frustrating. Using AI to tailor your resume for different roles and prepare for interviews (with both human and AI interviewers) has become a go-to practice for many job seekers.
Greenhouse’s new Future of Hiring Candidate Report points out a surprising stat pertaining to that practice: 6 in 10 job seekers are changing how they write their resumes and cover letters to avoid sounding like AI, even as most of them use AI in the job search process.
Some of the other stats are equally shocking (and disappointing in some areas: 81% of U.S. candidates were rejected in the past year without speaking to anyone at the company and 96% wish they could show employers something their application doesn’t (which is a skill set led by their ability to learn and adapt).
We spoke to Ophir Samson, Greenhouse’s Head of Voice AI, who laid out a clear set of rules for job seekers when it comes to what to do and what not to do when using AI to nab their next role.
What should job seekers actually be using AI for today? And what shouldn't they be using it for?
Treat it like prep for a big meeting: what the company is building, where the team is headed, and what the role actually needs day to day. Then use it to come up with your own questions. A good interview runs both ways, and candidates should be interviewing the company too. It can also help sharpen your resume, as long as everything on it truly reflects what you’ve done.
Just don’t read its answers to an employer live. Some things only you can do. A candidate’s thinking is the most valuable thing that they can bring. The moment AI is speaking for you, whether it’s auto-applying to hundreds of jobs or feeding you answers in an interview, you’ve traded away the one thing that makes you stand out.
At Greenhouse, we share our own AI guidelines for candidate AI use, and it’s built out on two-way accountability: we tell candidates where we ask them not to use it, and we tell them how we use it. That includes being upfront that our recruiters use AI to help draft interview questions, and that people make every hiring decision.
A candidate’s thinking is the most valuable thing that they can bring. The moment AI is speaking for you... you’ve traded away the one thing that makes you stand out.
What is one mistake you see job seekers making with AI today that could actually hurt their chances of getting hired?
Treating the job search as a volume game.
Every job seeker we have spoken to recently has said the same thing: it’s getting harder to cut through the noise. If you’re a good candidate applying for a role you genuinely want, you’re competing with hundreds of other applications. Mass-applying just feeds the doom loop: candidates use AI to get past the bots, recruiters use AI to filter the flood, and the first thing it kills is signal. Nobody can tell us who is real or who actually wants the job.
Apply to fewer roles, and put real effort into the ones you want. If an employer offers you a conversation, even with AI, take it. Yes, it’s 15 or 20 minutes of your time. But you know who isn’t putting that in? The bots you’re competing against.
Have we entered an era where job seekers have to use AI to get noticed, but then hide the fact that they've used it?
In a lot of ways, yes.
Every candidate has the same tools now. If you’re one of hundreds of applicants and you all used AI to write your resume, nobody stands out. Our latest candidate research found that 77% of U.S. job seekers used AI in their search in the past year, yet 60% have changed or considered changing how they write so their application isn’t mistaken for AI-generated content.
Candidates are doing what they can to get ahead. What they don’t have is a real chance to be heard, understood, and judged on what they can actually do. The resume has always been the weakest signal in hiring, and today it rewards keyword tricks, formatting hacks, and increasingly, AI-written content. It tells you almost nothing about whether someone can actually do the job; it never has.
And now, when AI can polish a resume or fire off hundreds of applications, the problem has gotten worse. The way out isn’t for candidates to hide their tools. It’s for employers to give them a real chance to show how they think: a structured conversation early in the process.
We found nine in ten U.S. candidates are open to an AI interview, and only 7% would refuse one outright. Candidates aren’t anti-AI. They’re anti-bad AI. They’re right to be skeptical when there’s so much AI slop and so many clunky tools out there. But when AI is transparent and well-built, they lean in.
The resume has always been the weakest signal in hiring, and today it rewards keyword tricks, formatting hacks, and increasingly, AI-written content.
Four in five (81%) US candidates were rejected from a job in the past year without ever speaking to anyone at the company, human or AI. What needs to change to stop job applications from falling into a black hole?
Today, 93% of applicants never make it to an interview.
Most AI hiring tools take the resume, a signal AI has already broken, and just process it faster. That’s automation built on top of a broken system. The answer isn’t adding friction by making it harder to apply; that’s wasted energy. The answer is to give candidates a productive way to use their energy. Candidates need tools to signal to an employer who they are and why they want the role.
Candidates want to know someone is actually weighing their application and where they stand, not just that the form went through. A transparent AI conversation as an initial screening gives every applicant a chance to explain their fit. Recruiters then review the transcript, see how each candidate measured up against the criteria they set, and make the call.
Candidates who completed a Voice AI interview are 3x as likely to reach a final round. Done poorly, with vague disclosure or a clunky experience, AI interviews make things worse. Done right, every candidate gets a fair look instead of disappearing into the black hole.
Your most recent report suggests AI interviews can help candidates demonstrate their skills. How can an AI interviewer assess qualities like creativity, adaptability, and problem-solving that a resume can't capture?
AI interviews ask candidates to reason out loud.
An AI interview allows candidates to explain their work, rather than infer their abilities from resume bullet points. Nearly half of U.S. candidates have taken an AI interview in the past year, and 70% of them said it lets them demonstrate their skills well. A conversation shows how someone thinks and responds to a question in real time, and you can't shortcut a hard question.
Before it talks to a single candidate, voice AI interviews the hiring team to understand what “good” looks like for that specific role. Every candidate then gets the same questions, scored on the content of what they say against the same rubric.
AI interviews ask candidates to reason out loud... A conversation shows how someone thinks and responds to a question in real time, and you can't shortcut a hard question.
Nearly half of candidates who took an AI interview want to know a human will review their answers. What safeguards should be non-negotiable when AI is involved in hiring?
They’re right to want that.
AI interviews should gather better information for the hiring team, not replace its judgment. The first wave of AI interviews was bolted onto an already broken process. Three safeguards should be non-negotiable moving forward.
The first is disclosure. Candidates should know that they are speaking with AI and what it is assessing. 88% of candidates want at least one legal requirement making employers upfront about AI in interviews, led by advance notice (55%). The second is human accountability for every decision. AI opens the door, but it doesn’t decide who walks through it. The third is structure you can verify: every candidate gets the same questions and the same rubric, and is scored only on what they say, not their accent or how fluently they speak. Regular third-party bias audits keep it that way.
AI opens the door, but it doesn’t decide who walks through it.
If you could change one thing about how companies hire people in this current age of AI, what would it be? And what do you think today's job search will look like five years from now?
I’d bring the conversation back to the first step of hiring.
For decades, a piece of paper decided who got a conversation, and today, almost nobody gets one. AI finally makes that possible at scale: a conversation instead of a form, for every candidate, giving everyone an equal opportunity to show what they can do.
Five years from now, I think the resume will no longer be the front door. The conversation will come first, open to anyone who applies, in any language, and it will run both ways, with candidates asking their own questions and sizing up the company as much as it’s sizing them up.
Humans will still make every call, but that gives serious candidates a reason, and a place, to show up.