Hired or hidden? AI’s new power in the job market

AI is transforming recruitment into a high-stakes arms race where job seekers and employers are both using artificial intelligence to gain an edge—yet the result is a system that feels increasingly broken, impersonal, and self-defeating. Karina, a Ukrainian graduate in Cardiff, applied to over 400 UK jobs and received only five interviews, all mediated by AI. She’s not alone: candidates report being ghosted by bots, while companies drown in thousands of AI-optimized applications that often lack authenticity. Daniel Chait of Greenhouse describes this as an 'AI doom loop'—where job seekers use AI to spray applications, companies use AI to filter them, and both sides end up worse off. Professor Elizabeth Keelan adds that AI can embed bias, such as rejecting candidates with non-standard accents due to training data limitations. But the episode doesn’t end in despair. Chait argues that AI could actually fix long-standing flaws in hiring—like inconsistent human bias and lack of feedback—by enabling every candidate to have a conversation with a company, not just a lucky few. The solution? Rethink the hiring process entirely: use AI to collaborate in real time, not to generate fake perfection. Instead of ghosting applicants, companies should design interviews that reveal who people truly are—through live collaboration, not automated scripts. The future of hiring isn’t about beating the system, but rebuilding it to be more human, transparent, and trustworthy.