Recruitment & AI - Volume vs Quality
You Received 100 Resumes. But How Many Real Candidates?
ATS platforms are increasingly promoting their ability to help employers find the “right” candidates through screening questions, knockout questions, automation, and AI.
But wait. Pause.
Before we celebrate the number of candidates an ATS is helping us identify, we need to ask a more fundamental question:
How confident are we that the people entering our candidate pipeline are legitimate candidates in the first place?
There are several issues employers need to consider:
Volume of applications
Quality of applications
Fraudulent applications
How we screen for fraudulent candidates
What our ATS and job boards are actually doing
And how we use AI without creating new compliance and discrimination risks
AI and automated recruiting tools can create enormous efficiencies—but employers also need to understand the limitations of these systems. There are already real legal and compliance concerns surrounding the use of AI and automated tools in hiring.
So let's dive in.
100 Applications Doesn't Necessarily Mean 100 Candidates
You received 100 resumes.
But how many real candidates did you actually receive?
For years, we celebrated application volume.
100 applicants.
200 applicants.
500 applicants.
More applicants must mean more choices, right?
Not necessarily.
We are increasingly dealing with fraudulent applications, fabricated resumes, questionable identities, and candidates whose qualifications may not be what they appear to be.
That means our traditional screening process may need to change.
Start With the Application
Before a candidate ever reaches the interview stage, take a hard look at how your job is posted and how applications are being collected.
Do you know what settings are turned on in your job boards and ATS?
Are you using the screening questions available to you?
Are there opportunities to add reasonable verification into the application process?
Are you seeing unusually large volumes of applications that look remarkably similar?
Are applications coming from locations that don't make sense for the position?
Are you seeing inconsistencies in resumes, unusual employment histories, or contact information that raises questions?
Don't assume your job board or ATS is filtering all of this for you.
Know your settings.
Understand what your technology is doing.
And understand what it isn't doing.
Then Look at Your First Interview
If your initial screening conversation consists primarily of:
"Tell me about your background."
you may not learn very much.
Consider adding simple verification steps to your process.
Turn the camera on.
For positions where video screening is appropriate, consider requiring candidates to participate in a live video conversation.
This isn't about assuming someone without a camera is fraudulent.
It is about adding another layer of human interaction and verification to the process.
Confirm contact information.
Ask candidates to confirm the phone number and email address they are currently using.
Does that information match what they provided on their application?
If it doesn't, ask why.
There may be a perfectly legitimate explanation. People change phone numbers. People use multiple email addresses.
But unexplained inconsistencies should prompt additional questions.
Verify before you trust.
Ask questions that require actual experience.
Don't simply ask candidates to repeat what's on their resume.
Ask them to walk you through a specific project.
What was the problem?
What did you personally do?
What was the outcome?
What went wrong?
What would you do differently?
A candidate who has genuinely performed the work should be able to talk about the experience beyond the bullet points on a resume.
And Don't Forget the Data
This is where AI can become incredibly useful.
AI can help recruiters identify patterns across hundreds or thousands of applications that would be difficult to spot manually.
For example:
Are you seeing the same resume language repeatedly?
Are large numbers of applications coming from the same sources?
Are candidates progressing through your screening process but failing basic verification?
Are certain job boards generating huge application numbers but very few legitimate, qualified candidates?
Are you seeing unusual patterns in contact information, employment history, or application behavior?
Those patterns matter.
Because the number of applications you receive is not the same thing as the number of candidates you have.
Maybe We Need to Change What We Measure
Instead of asking:
"How many applications did we receive?"
we should also be asking:
"How many legitimate, qualified candidates did we identify?"
That's a very different metric.
And it changes how we think about recruiting.
Application volume can make a recruiting team look successful.
But candidate quality is what actually moves the hiring process forward.
Don't Let Your ATS Misguide You - This is perhaps the biggest takeaway.
Your ATS is a tool.
Your job board is a tool.
AI is a tool.
None of them should replace human judgment or cause us to blindly trust the data they produce.
A system can tell you that you have 500 applicants.
It doesn't necessarily tell you that you have 500 legitimate candidates.
And an AI tool can help identify patterns, but employers still need to understand how those tools are making recommendations and whether the process could create unintended bias or discrimination.
Technology doesn't eliminate our responsibility.
It increases the importance of understanding how the technology works.
The Resume Is the Starting Point—Not the Finish Line
The goal isn't to make the application process unnecessarily difficult.
The goal is to build reasonable verification into the recruiting process so that fraudulent candidates have fewer opportunities to move forward.
Because in today's recruiting environment, we can't simply ask:
"How many resumes did we receive?"
We need to ask:
"How many legitimate, qualified candidates are actually behind those resumes?"
That is a very different question.
And perhaps it's time we started measuring recruiting success accordingly.
The resume is no longer the finish line.
It's the starting point for verification.
And as technology makes it easier to create convincing applications, employers need to use technology—and good recruiting practices—to make sure there is a real, qualified candidate behind the application.
Keep the human in recruiting!
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