No, ChatGPT can’t screen candidates for you

People will do anything to not read resumes.

Dumbest thing I heard last week: a company used ChatGPT to screen resumes. It let the AI tell it who to interview with a lazy copy and paste job.

Spoiler: It didn’t work.

One of the common narratives on LinkedIn – long before the AI boom – was “how to get past the ATS.” Huckster coaches use it as rage bait to build a following.

In reality, ATS systems are about as outdated as technology gets. Saying you want to “get past the ATS” is like saying you want to “get past the Excel sheet.” Internal recruiters are flooded with more resumes than they can possibly screen. They use basic things like keyword filters and application questions to narrow it down.

Yes, it’s an imperfect process. But it’s not “AI” that’s ruling people out. It’s overworked recruiters using crappy software.

Fast forward to last week. An agency recruiter contact of mine let me know about a hiring manager who thought they found a life hack. Instead of reading the resumes and deciding who best fit the requirements, they let ChatGPT make all the decisions.

Copy and paste. Then asked which to talk to.

The results? No rhyme or reason as to who it chose. No consistency in experience level, background, or salary expectations, etc. People with similar backgrounds were ruled out. Without explanation.

Then, of course, the hiring managers ask for more resumes. With no further clarification on why anyone fell short.

👉Large Language Models (LLMs) do not have contextual understanding. They just spit out text. Whatever plausible sounding answer they think you want to know. They cannot think for you.

I bring this up for 2 reasons:

1. I never would have thought someone would find a way for AI to take a step *backwards* from the pile of outdated garbage that is HR tech.
2. Some other idiot is undoubtedly going to do the same thing.

Tldr: Pretty please. Don’t do this.

James Hornick

Partner at Hirewell. #3 Ranked Sarcastic Commenter on LinkedIn.