For organizations hiring and for people searching for jobs, artificial intelligence isn’t coming; it is already here. Both sides of the employment equation are using it.
Employers are using AI to write and refine job advertisements, identify keywords and qualifications, screen and rank applicants, develop interview questions, assess and communicate with candidates, and analyze data and predict potential “fit.” Most; unfortunately, are unaware there is a fundamental flaw in this use.
Job seekers are using AI to write resumes, create cover letters, answer application questions, research employers, prepare and practice for interviews, improve LinkedIn profiles, find job opportunities, and apply to large numbers of jobs. There is an equally fundamental flaw in this use.
AI has become a powerful new tool on both sides of the hiring table. This reality makes those fundamental flaws dangerous for each side. They may be using it, but in many cases, they are missing something. The question is: are they using AI to improve their processes or simply to make them faster, without realizing the inherent dangers?
AI Is a Powerful Tool, and a Powerful Ally
I am not anti-AI. I use and believe AI can be extraordinarily useful.
For job seekers, it can help organize thoughts, help explain confusing job postings, identify transferable skills, help people recognize strengths, provide tailored interview questions and answers to practice, improve and correct written communication, and even reduce some of the barriers involved in navigating the employment system.
For employers, it can help make complicated information easier to analyze, help identify and eliminate unnecessary requirements, dramatically improve job advertisements, generate ideas for more effective interview questions and screening, help to examine hiring processes for potential barriers, and potentially help managers think about candidates in different ways if they recognize the importance of critical thinking.
The value of AI isn’t simply in the answers it gives us. Its greatest value may be in the questions it helps us think to ask, and that “thinking” is the fundamental flaw that is often absent from both the ways people use AI for hiring and searching processes.
The Problem Isn’t AI. It’s Thoughtless AI.
AI can be incredibly powerful, but, as with so many powerful tools, AI can be used badly.
A calculator can help us solve a problem or help us make a mistake faster. A GPS can help us find our way or confidently lead us to drive into a lake. AI used in hiring or job searching can do something similar.
AI doesn’t automatically decide better than a person not using AI, simply because AI was involved.
If the question is wrong, the information is incomplete, or the assumptions are flawed, AI can produce an impressive-looking answer that is still wrong.
The key is that AI can make a flawed process faster without making it better.
The AI Arms Race
The race between employers and job seekers to make use of this powerful tool is fascinatingly dynamic and fraught with danger for everyone.
An employer thinks I’ll use AI to find the best candidates.
A job seeker thinks, “I’ll use AI to make myself the best candidate.”
The employer starts looking for AI-generated applications.
The job seeker starts using AI to make their AI-generated application sound human.
And both sides increasingly try to figure out: What does the other side, and ultimately the algorithm, want to see?
The danger is that hiring can become a game of optimization rather than a process of discovering genuine compatibility. Rather than finding the best people to do the job, employers are unintentionally searching for “Who is best at navigating the hiring system?” instead of: “Who is actually the best match for the work?”
The Myth of the Perfect Candidate
Our traditional hiring processes are biased because of stereotypical assumptions. Employers may unconsciously associate a “great candidate” with someone who makes eye contact, speaks confidently, answers immediately, is able to tell polished stories, shows enthusiasm in conventional ways, uses professional language, has a traditional employment history, is able to demonstrate a particular communication style, appears comfortable in interviews, and seems like they will “fit in”
But too often, nobody challenges those assumptions to ask, actually, how many of those things actually tell us whether someone can do the job?
This ability to challenge assumptions and established processes is about the importance of critical thinking and ensuring everything an employer does actually reflects what is needed and who can do the job.
When AI Learns What We’ve Always Done
This is a fundamental danger because AI works by finding patterns in information. If historical hiring decisions reflect particular preferences or biases, AI can and will potentially reproduce and strengthen those patterns.
This creates an important distinction: AI can be consistent without necessarily being fair, and AI can make an existing bias more efficient without making it less biased.
An algorithm doesn’t have to intentionally discriminate to produce discriminatory results.
It can simply reproduce assumptions that humans have already built into the system.
Why This Can Be Particularly Important for Neurodiverse Job Seekers
This is where inherent bias and discrimination become a central issue and reveal another fundamental danger of the lack of accompanying critical thinking and AI use.
Neurodiverse people may communicate, process information, or demonstrate competence differently. Someone may need additional time to formulate an answer that is equally or even better than the person who can answer quickly, they may find vague interview questions difficult, they may have difficulty with spontaneous storytelling, they may communicate better in writing than verbally, and again potentially may provide better answers, they may have an unconventional employment history for many reasons including the systematic bias and discrimination they face daily, they may appear less confident than they actually are, they demonstrate enthusiasm differently, and they can have extraordinary technical or analytical abilities that aren’t obvious in interviews.
The crucial point is that difference is not the same thing as deficiency. This leads to one of the greatest dangers, as a hiring system can accidentally turn neurotypical behavior into a proxy for employability. If an employer, or an AI system, confuses conventional behavior with competence, the process can exclude people who could actually be excellent employees.
The Interview Isn’t the Job
This point deserves special attention, as too many people forget that an interview measures someone’s ability to perform an interview. It doesn’t necessarily measure their ability to perform the work in the job.
Consider a question such as “Tell me about a time you demonstrated leadership.” A candidate who is excellent at spontaneous storytelling may produce a fantastic answer. Another candidate may have actually demonstrated outstanding leadership as week but because they struggle to construct the story quickly, the employer will usually rate the first person as better. Employers need to think critically about this and ask themselves who is actually demonstrating leadership, and who is simply demonstrating that they are good at interviews.
AI can potentially make this problem worse if employers use increasingly sophisticated tools to measure things such as communication style, facial expression, voice, or personality rather than focus primarily on evidence of job-related competence.
Job Seekers Can Misuse AI Too
There is no doubt AI can help a job seeker enormously; but it can also become a crutch.
It can be too easy for a job seeker to ask AI to write every resume, to write every cover letter, to answer every application question, to draft potential interview answers, to rewrite everything until it sounds “professional,” to apply to hundreds of jobs, and to tell them what employers want to hear. The danger, eventually, is that the job seeker stops learning how to communicate their own value; instead of AI helping me understand my strengths, the relationship becomes “AI has to make me sound employable.”
That can be particularly damaging to confidence because of the dependency it creates; however, if we accept AI as a tool, not a substitute, the key message becomes AI should build a job seeker’s confidence, not replace it.
The Better Approach: AI as a Thinking Partner
The way I use AI isn’t about using AI to produce answers and then simply copying the answers.
My goal is to begin with what I want to accomplish, use AI to explore, ask questions, and to improve what I am working on, but ultimately, I make the decision about what to use and what not to use.
Example: The cover letter: Instead of asking AI to write a cover letter for a job, my job seekers use a 5-step process to analyze the job posting, look for keywords and phrases, then use their resume to match those skills and experiences requested with their own skills. This is followed by creating a draft that is reviewed line by line until they have a hybrid cover letter that uses a combination of inputs from themselves and AI.
That’s not AI replacing the job seeker. That’s AI helping the job seeker think.
AI Should Make Us Better Thinkers, Not Replace Our Thinking
AI is at its most valuable when it helps us understand what things actually mean, analyze what is really important, question our assumptions, explore what other possibilities exist, prepare for what we might encounter, improve how we can communicate more effectively, and reflect on what is missing. This process is very different from simply asking AI to give us the answer.
What Employers Should Be Asking AI
Rather than simply using AI to screen candidates, employers could use it to examine their own hiring processes. For example, they should be asking AI what unnecessary barriers exist in their job postings. Which requirements are genuinely essential? Could someone demonstrate this competency in another way? Are we evaluating job-related skills or personality? What assumptions about professionalism are embedded in our process? What qualified candidates might we unintentionally screen out? How could our process disadvantage someone who communicates differently?
This ability to apply critical thinking turns AI from a gatekeeper into a tool for improving and helping us to implement a process so the best person is able to access our gate.
What Job Seekers Should Be Asking AI
Job seekers can use the same principle. Instead of asking AI to simply create things for them, they can ask it to help them understand themselves and the opportunity.
For example, asking AI what is this employer actually looking for? Which of my experiences demonstrate those qualities? What transferable skills am I overlooking? What weaknesses might an employer see in my application? How could I address those weaknesses honestly? What questions should I prepare for? Where are my answers unclear? What am I missing?” The answers to these questions will help the job seeker to become a better applicant.
That final question may be the most valuable one of all because it uses AI to see what we cannot.
How to move forward – Ways Employers and Job Seekers Can Use AI Properly.
For Employers: Use AI to clarify the job, not to define the perfect employee. Focus on essential duties, skills, and outcomes rather than personality stereotypes.
Use AI to identify barriers in your job advertisements. Ask AI what requirements may be unnecessary, exclusionary, or difficult to interpret.
Use AI to examine your hiring process for unintended and explicit bias. Intentionally ask what types of candidates could be disadvantaged by your process.
Evaluate evidence of competence, not simply “fit.” Ask what evidence demonstrates that the person can actually perform the work.
Keep meaningful human judgment in the process. AI can help organize information and identify questions. AI should not replace thoughtful human decision-making.
For Job Seekers:
Give AI your real experience. Use AI to communicate your strengths, not invent a professional identity.
Use AI to understand the employer. Don’t just ask AI to create an application. Ask it to help you understand what the employer actually needs.
Use AI to clarify your voice, not replace it. Your goal isn’t to sound like AI. Your goal is to communicate yourself more effectively.
Use AI as an interview coach. Practice questions, explore difficult situations, and receive feedback. Then put the computer away and practice being yourself.
Ask: What am I missing? This may be the most powerful use of AI for either side of the hiring table. Employers can ask: “What qualified people might we be overlooking? Job seekers can ask: “What strengths or opportunities am I overlooking?”
So, Are We Making Hiring Better, or Just Faster?
There is no doubt AI can absolutely make hiring faster, more efficient, more organized, more accessible, and more informative; but none of those things automatically make hiring better.
Better hiring requires us to remain thoughtful about conscious and unconscious bias, accessibility, human differences, job-related competence, communication differences, context, and human judgment. We should never assume efficiency is the same thing as effectiveness. Also, and perhaps most importantly, remember the danger using AI improperly is creating a faster way of making the wrong decision, it is not progress.
Life Directions Perspective
At Life Directions, our goal isn’t to teach people how to beat an algorithm, nor is it to help employers find candidates who look exactly like the people they’ve hired before. Our goal is to help both sides make better connections and better decisions.
AI is a powerful tool to help a job seeker recognize their strengths; understand opportunities they may not have considered, prepare more effectively, communicate more clearly, and build confidence.
AI can help an employer write better job advertisements, remove unnecessary barriers, think beyond traditional hiring assumptions, ask better questions, and recognize talent that might otherwise be overlooked.
Technology should remove barriers, not create new ones.
The Final Message
AI isn’t the enemy of human employment. In fact, used properly as a tool and as an electronic ally, AI is becoming one of the most useful tools we have ever developed for improving employment. But only if we use it thoughtfully.
AI cannot replace our responsibility to think and challenge our assumptions. Used thoughtfully, AI can help a job seeker recognize strengths they didn’t know they had. It can help an employer recognize talent they might otherwise have missed.
Used without thought, it can destroy a job seeker’s confidence, reinforce the biases already present in our hiring systems, and give an employer tremendous confidence in a decision that is simply wrong.
The future of hiring isn’t really about whether we use AI. We are already using it. The real question is what we use it for. Are we using AI to make people fit the hiring system? Or are we using AI to make the hiring system better at recognizing the value people have?
The goal should never be to find the person who is best at navigating an algorithm. The goal is to find the person who is right for the work.
Paul