This summer, LinkedIn added a response button to join previous options like “Save,” “Copy link to post,” and “Report post.” The new choice: “Seems like AI slop.” During the first two weeks, more than a million people clicked it.
Some employers wish they had that same button. From 2021 to 2024, the number of applications per hire tripled.
“Candidates are using generative AI tools to build résumés that are customized to each job for which they are applying,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “They then can fire off résumés in rapid succession or have bots do so for them. They are also relying on AI to prepare for interviews, which is leading to a sameness among applicants.”
Hiring managers are finding 70 to 80 percent of applications submitted through job boards are from unqualified applicants.
“When we post a position, we usually get between 4 and 10 resumes,” said Eileen Ruter, executive director of human resources at Dordt University. “Recently we posted a data analyst position, and we had hundreds of applications from all over the world. We noticed these individuals weren’t even real people. Something within the job posting was prompting auto-generating resumes.”
Her team was able to narrow the field by asking three questions: Are you eligible to work in the United States? If so, do you require sponsorship? And do you agree with our statement of faith?
They ended up with 10 viable résumés—about the same number they would have pre-AI.
Still, Eileen and Dordt’s director of talent acquisition, Kyle Achterhoff, aren’t overly worried about AI.
“It just adds another level of discernment in the hiring process,” Kyle said.
The Gospel Coalition asked them how they spot AI, whether AI use is automatically disqualifying, and how they guard against being misled.
How do you know when something seems off with a résumé or a candidate?
Kyle: Honestly, if the statement of faith uses too much Dordt language—it’s probably because they used technology to pull from Dordt’s website. It’s a red flag if they aren’t speaking from their experience or if they’re using the same ideas over and over. That’s a little fishy.
How concerned are you when someone uses AI on their résumé, cover letter, or statement of faith?
Eileen: It depends on the job. For example, if we were looking for someone to do public relations, and they wrote their résumé and statement through AI, that would concern me. If we were hiring someone to be a custodian, I would be less concerned.
I do want to hear directly from the person, as honestly as possible. We don’t want them to lean on AI so much that we could just use AI ourselves to do the job. We aren’t hiring bots. We’re hiring people from their hearts and skills and abilities.
But if a cover letter or statement of faith can get to the heart of who a person is and explain the skill set they have to offer, then I don’t mind if someone wants to use AI as a tool to edit their materials. That can show me they’re comfortable with a tool I know is going to be prevalent in the coming years. We do the same thing, using AI to help us improve our job descriptions before we post them.
That said, if I think AI played a part in someone’s materials, I’m going to ask questions in the interview to see: Can they think critically? Are they able to articulate things well? In some ways, AI is really an indicator for us for what we need to dig deeper into.
Sometimes it’s hard to detect AI. Do you ever worry an applicant is going to mislead you?
Kyle: Part of what allows us to be on guard is the number of people we have looking at each application. We have a search team for every position. We start by thinking together about what we’re looking for and the most important aspects of the role. That helps the hiring manager to understand the process and gets everyone moving in the same direction.
I do want to hear directly from the person, as honestly as possible.
Then, the search team gets together to talk over the résumé. For example, we recently had a statement of faith that looked like it had too many AI-generated Dordt words in it. I asked, “What about their other qualifications? What else about them would interest you?” Since there wasn’t a lot, we could eliminate that person.
Of course, there can be other red flags, often when someone is talking about their work history. Maybe the dates of their past jobs are overlapping. Or they say they handled a situation one way, but that doesn’t line up with how they answered another question. You wonder, Are you just telling me what you think I want to hear?
Good point, because I imagine everyone you talk to would really like you to hire them. In that situation, they’re all trying to say what you want to hear.
Eileen: Kyle really is good at picking up on potential problems—discrepancies in dates or self-descriptions—and then saying to the search team, “Did you notice this?”
And then they can dig into that and decide how concerning it is or not. I think we have enough firewalls set up in the hiring process—especially for higher-level positions, with multiple interviews and bringing people to campus—that we feel good we’re catching most issues.
Kyle: It helps to have a lot of different eyes on it. And we always ask the candidates about their faith and their church life. So even if they used AI to write their statement, if they can’t answer it very well, they’re probably not going to get the job.
It seems like AI has made your job more complicated.
Kyle: I am always asking the Lord for discernment, and not just about AI. I also ask him to raise up those that I might not be paying attention to, but maybe to lower those I might be overly excited about.
Eileen: Prayer is a huge part of our interview process too. We start every interview, and most of our search-team meetings, with prayer.
Prayer is a huge part of our interview process.
You have to trust the sovereignty of God. I’ve had so many times in my career where I feel like God has led me to the perfect applicant and the person has said no. And I’ve also had times where I’ve hired a person I know the Lord really led us to, and over time, that person became a poorer and poorer fit for the role, often because of how they were being led.
Things might not end the way that we wanted it to, but we trust that the Lord’s hand is in it all and he’ll work it for good. We just need to keep listening.
This article was published in partnership with Dordt University.
