In this series, business correspondent Timothy Goh offers practical answers to candid questions on navigating workplace challenges and getting ahead in your career. Get more tips by signing up to The Straits Times’ Headstart newsletter.
Q: How are employers using AI in recruitment, and how can candidates improve their chances?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used for high-volume recruitment tasks such as drafting job advertisements, sourcing candidates, ranking resumes, scheduling interviews and conducting first-round screening interviews.
“Where it’s used well, it frees up recruiters to spend more time on judgment calls, culture fit and career motivation – things a system can’t assess once they actually sit down with candidates who’ve made it through the screening,” said Michelle Koh, managing director at executive search firm The Edge Partnership.
Koh also noted that the use of AI chatbots to conduct first-round interviews has moved from “experimental to mainstream” in recent times. Such systems can ensure candidates are asked the same questions in the same order, reducing the “mood of the interviewer” variance that can affect human screening.
Chatbots can also save recruiters’ time by answering routine questions about salary bands and company culture, while allowing candidates to complete interviews at their convenience rather than taking leave to attend one.
But AI tools trained on a company’s past hiring data may also reinforce existing biases.
“For example, if a company has historically hired from the same two or three universities or filtered out candidates who have taken career breaks, the algorithm will keep doing that at scale, just faster and less visibly than a person would,” said Koh.
She said candidates should make use of AI to refine and tailor their curriculum vitae to the role, but warned against relying on it too heavily.
“It’s now easy, and genuinely worth doing, to use AI to review what you’ve written and tailor your CV to what the job description is asking for,” she said.
However, applications that are overly polished or obviously AI-generated can also backfire.
“The AI version of your CV should still be a well-thought-through one,” she said, adding that candidates still need to provide the right input so that their applications reflect both the role’s requirements and their personal brand.
Koh also cautioned against relying solely on AI-generated CVs and online job portals.
“Build relationships with recruiters and people in your field before you need a job, and keep your LinkedIn genuinely current rather than keyword-stuffed,” she said.
“Both the algorithm and the human reading it afterward will notice the difference.”
Kevin Chan, chief executive of HR technology company Epitome Global, said humans should ultimately decide which criteria matter, which requirements are essential and what the system should reward.
“Even when a machine executes a pass or rejection, employers remain accountable for the process behind it,” he said.
Still, candidates are increasingly using AI to generate and tailor applications, creating a recruitment arms race.
“Recruiters receive more polished applications, but many use similar language and reveal very little about the individuals behind them. This is why employers then turn to more automation to manage the volume,” said Chan.
He said candidates can improve their chances of progressing through the hiring process by making key qualifications and skills easy to identify, while backing up claims with specific examples and measurable achievements rather than generic descriptors.
He also encouraged job seekers to build portfolios or other evidence of their work, especially if they have taken a non-traditional career path, and to cultivate professional relationships that can provide context beyond a CV.
While AI can help improve clarity and tailor applications, it should be used as an editing tool rather than a substitute for personal judgment, said Chan.
“The candidates who stand out will be those who can demonstrate what they can do, not simply optimise how they describe themselves,” he said.
As for employers, CVs should be treated as just one source of information rather than the primary basis for hiring decisions, Chan said.
“Generative AI has made professional-sounding claims easier to produce, while automated screening has made those claims easier to process. Neither necessarily leads to better hiring.”
Instead, employers should also consider structured interviews, work samples, portfolios, job simulations, references and consistent assessments, giving career changers, returnees and self-taught candidates more than one way to demonstrate their abilities.
“AI should help recruiters surface relevant evidence, understand the whole person and make more consistent decisions… It should support human judgment, not remove human accountability,” said Chan.
While AI can improve efficiency for recruiters, it may also detract from the candidate experience, particularly for more senior applicants.
Koh cited the example of a finance director candidate withdrawing from a recruitment process with a multinational healthcare company after attending a first-round assessment via “a conversation with a screen”.
“For a senior candidate weighing multiple offers, that signals something about how the employer values the conversation and the candidate experience simply isn’t there,” she said.
“If the most in-demand candidates self-select out at the top of the funnel, that’s a material cost to talent acquisition, not just an optics problem.”
