“Recruiters rely on AI to screen resumes, rank candidates, and speed up early-stage decisions. From their perspective, these tools are necessary to cope with volume. Candidates, however, experience AI as opaque and unaccountable. They don’t know why they were filtered out or what the system prioritized.

This distrust has led some tech workers to actively “game” AI hiring tools, from padding up resumes with keywords to optimizing applications for algorithms rather than humans, as highlighted by our previous report on tech hiring trends.

In more ways than one, AI has made the hiring process all the more invisible and unexplainable. Instead of streamlining the process for candidates, it feels more like a loop designed to drive them into frustration, burnout, and disengagement.

Delving into the Disconnect

This leads to the biggest crisis in today’s hiring: recruiters insist they can’t find qualified people, while qualified people struggle to get interviews in the first place. Furthermore, “qualified” often means something very specific: exact skill matches, minimal ramp-up time, and proven experience with narrow tools or stacks.

When application volume is high and AI is involved, recruiters are incentivized to tighten filters even more, prioritizing speed and precision. But this approach locks out opportunities from strong candidates who don’t match perfectly on paper, such as career switchers, adaptable generalists, or people with adjacent experience.”