From the Desk of Brad Smart: Hiring Nightmare: Bots Hire Bots!

Artificial Intelligence is creating miracles in many fields, but one unfortunate trend is that bots are hiring bots! Huh? Yes, the attached article is a must read … for every company, HR professional, and every individual hiring manager, because AI is creating a hiring disaster.

Picture recent college grads, wanting jobs. They’ve been using ChatGPT, so they can easily apply to 100 companies in an hour. How? They enter their resume and note the types of jobs and companies they want to work for. Chat then instantly creates the perfect cover letter (email) and resume. Chat, of course, knows the websites and news articles for said jobs/companies, knows the ads companies are running for jobs, and so the bots apply to many companies in an instant. Easy peasy for job seekers. Or NOT! Reports say companies are so overwhelmed that they don’t reply to the vast majority of applicants.

Many exciting growth companies are deluged with thousands of applicants for every job, so they rely on AI to sift through all the resumes and letters to identify the applicants who come closest to meeting the specifications they tell AI to assess. Again, bam! The companies have their small number of “finalists,” final in the sense that the 2,000 applications they received have been reduced to the 15 people they’ll call for a phone screen interview or … the new trend … use a robot to interview. With AI, such interviews are becoming more “human,” with friendly bots who list/very well ask smart follow-up questions. So, hiring company bots increasingly assess job seeker bots, leaving out those inefficient, overworked, impatient human beings.

To make things even worse, this fast-emerging reality doesn’t identify the fakers. More than 40% of resumes contain serious fiction, with strengths and successes magnified, and failures and serious weaker points hidden. Any job seeker willing to fudge the truth finds AI a brilliant accomplice. Bottom line:

AI enables the 40% of deceptive applicants to FOOL YOU!

They fool you in their resume and in interviews, knowing that they will not be “busted,” because reference calls are almost never with the people you’d want to talk with – the managers candidates have reported to. Why? Because most companies discourage managers from taking reference calls, out of fear that if a manager says something negative about a previous employee, and that person doesn’t get the job, the candidate might sue the manager, the company, or both.

Honestly, The Solution is Honesty.

It’s not cool to send you an article showing a problem and then say, “We are the only company with the solution.” But the solution for rampant dishonesty is, honestly, Topgrading. For 40+ years our hundreds of Topgrading case studies have shown that our method motivates candidates to tell the truth and Topgrading also assures you calls with managers to verify candidate claims (with no phone tag). By identifying the honest, most successful applicants, companies save time and money, and hire more A Players.

One of our Topgrading professionals will be happy to learn your story and hear your hiring concerns. Give us a chance to help you “test drive” Topgrading.

Give us a call! 847-244-5544.


Dr. Brad Smart is Founder and CEO of Topgrading, Inc. Topgrading is dedicated to helping companies of all sizes maximize the hiring of high performers. Topgrading assesses candidates for senior positions (where the costs of mis-hires are high) and trains all managers to create teams of almost all high performers.

Brad has seven published books on hiring; the most recent three (the first, second, and third editions of Topgrading) were all best sellers. Brad, and President Chris Mursau’s new book, Foolproof Hiring (Forbes Books), is available for purchase by clicking here. After just six weeks, Foolproof Hiring, achieved Amazon Best Seller status.

Brad can be reached at www.Topgrading.com

To learn more, download our free eGuide or attend our next Topgrading Webinar. Our webinar explains the most effective recruitment methods, how to immediately identify the most honest, high performing applicants, and how to (finally!) verify what candidates tell you (since reference calls are usually worthless).

Contact us to learn more.


Improve your hiring success with Topgrading. Our proven hiring process will transform your selection methodology so that you get better hiring results across all industries, including hiring HR professionals.  Our leadership and candidate assessment tools will help you assess, hire, retain, and grow outstanding team members. Contact us to learn more!

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