After submitting a lot of CVs recently, I’ve separately been asking recruiters and hiring managers, in-house and agency, how they’re coping now that applications can be written, enhanced or fabricated by AI, and graded by AI.

An in-house recruiter at a 2,000-person company said their ranking tool grades CVs A to D, and the people they end up hiring are frequently the C’s. An agency director trialled fully automated screeners and said they “overlooked some of the strongest candidates”. A hiring manager, after a run of fabricated applications, built their own grader and auto-rejects anyone who matches the job spec too closely, on the basis that no real candidate meets 100% of the requirements. I’ve seen a few similar posts along the lines of “I’d probably be rejected applying for my own job”. Everyone said most CVs now have AI involvement, many are the job spec fed back as experience, and the truth only comes out on the screening call.

If you hire engineers or any other role: has the CV stopped carrying signal for you, and what are you using instead? If AI screening is actually working for you, which tool and how? I’d like the counter-examples as much as the confirmations.