Recruiters are increasingly using AI interviewers to screen candidates for jobs, new research has found.
A survey of 500 recruiters found that four in five (83 per cent) are now using AI to speed up hiring in some capacity. A further 28 per cent rely on it to manage a high volume of applications, the research by CV-Library found.
The increased use of the technology has left job seekers with a lack of trust in the process, with 53 per cent believing their application has been rejected by AI without a human reviewing it. In an additional survey of 1,100 candidates, 63 per cent said that AI-led recruitment was less fair than human judgment.
David, 37, a part-time bartender, describes the experience of interviewing with a non-human agent: “Being interviewed by an AI bot felt incredibly alienating – there's no feedback or human interaction, so you have no idea how you’re coming across.
“It feels like you’re being filtered out, and with so little real communication, it’s easy for the effort you put in to be completely overlooked.”
Use of the technology also goes the other way, the research shows, with nearly 80 per cent of the employers surveyed saying that AI-generated applications have surged in the past year.
A current jobseeker named Simon said: “I stayed away from initial interviews with AI platforms – there's no human interaction and just entirely impersonal. But now AI is in human calls too, taking notes during interviews. After three months without a job, what am I supposed to do? If AI is going to be a gatekeeper, I may as well use it to help me get through those gates.”
The rise of AI use on both sides comes as competition for jobs becomes increasingly high. The number of vacancies per 100 jobs almost halved from 4.1 to 2.2, between May 2022 and February 2025, figures from the Office for National Statistics show.
Meanwhile, in the year to November 2024, the number of applications per job posting soared by 286 per cent according to data from recruitment platform Tribepad.
Lee Biggins, CEO and founder of CV-Library, said: “Candidates have long felt that the human touch is ebbing away from the hiring process and that good people are getting screened out unfairly. This insight from recruiters in both agencies and businesses suggests their frustrations may be justified.
“It’s a timely wake-up call that not everything should be outsourced to AI, especially in recruitment, where every candidate is individually unique. It can add value in automating some laborious process, but good recruiters are using it to support human intuition, not replace it.”
