Recruiters are fed up because candidates use AI to do assessments

(Dan Tri) - Many candidates abuse AI to complete online competency assessments, leaving many employers helpless.

"Open your tail" during a face-to-face interview

In charge of a company's talent training program, Vu (23 years old), a recruitment officer, still vividly remembers a case that made the entire recruitment committee question its honesty.

In the first round, this candidate scored almost perfect in the online competency assessment, easily entering the group to move on.

The almost perfect results made the organizers consider this one of the potential faces of the recruitment season.

However, during the online interview round, the candidate showed some unusual symptoms such as frequently hesitating for a few seconds before answering or rarely looking directly at the camera.

A part of employers reflects that more and more candidates are using AI to do the entire competency assessment (Illustration: PV).

But everything only really became clear during the live question and answer round.

"The applicant's performance is completely different from what was shown in the previous rounds. You have almost no professional knowledge, nor can you use English to communicate like in the initial assessment," Vu said.

The huge gap between online assignments and actual abilities made Vu begin to question whether candidates were using AI to complete online assessments and interviews.

Not just one case, Vu said traces of AI appear more and more in the times he participates in recruiting for different positions.

"When interviewing a large number of candidates, on some general questions such as introducing yourself and explaining why you are suitable for the job, I see that most candidates give almost the same answers," Vu shared.

Many candidates have good online work but are confused when they have to explain the content they did in front of the employer during the face-to-face interview (Illustration: CV).

In particular, what makes it easy for him to recognize the presence of AI is that the application emails follow the same pattern, have a mechanical look, are rigid and have no personal writing style.

This fact was also noted by a number of other employers.

As someone who has directly recruited human resources for many years, Thu Duong (28 years old) said that what worries her recently is that more and more people are completely dependent on AI when taking assessments.

"Input assessments are sometimes very simple, but you also put them all on AI tools like ChatGPT to do them. What's worth mentioning is that some people almost don't check again and just submit the results returned by AI," she said.

That makes the recruitment process more difficult, because scores or neat answers on paper no longer accurately reflect the candidate's abilities.

Employers are not opposed to AI

Like many other employers, both Duong and Vu believe that AI should not be viewed as a negative tool.

According to Thu Duong, knowing how to apply AI is an advantage, but if technology completely replaces the thinking process, no matter how good the assignment is, it will no longer be valuable.

She affirmed that recruiters can completely recognize articles supported by machines. There are tests that are very smooth and neat, but when entering the interview, the candidate hesitates and cannot explain the assessment he did.

Thu Duong affirmed that knowing how to apply AI is an advantage, but if technology completely replaces the thinking process, the review, no matter how good, will have no value (Illustration: CV).

"If you just need to give the problem to AI, then businesses don't need to recruit more personnel. What businesses are looking for are people who have the capacity and know how to solve problems, not someone who only knows how to write commands for AI," Duong affirmed.

Similarly, Vu also realized that AI can become a useful assistant if used for the right purpose.

"Candidates can ask AI to analyze job descriptions, suggest ways to edit resumes, prepare for interviews or learn more about the business," Vu listed.

On the contrary, if AI were to do the entire assessment, it would no longer be support but fraud, because the business is considering the candidate's capabilities, not the capabilities of a language model.

He expressed the opinion that if the applicant knows how to use AI to suggest solutions to the assessment, then implement it himself and can explain and defend what he wrote when meeting face to face, that is a plus point.

However, as AI is increasingly used by candidates, many businesses have chosen to change the way they evaluate and apply technology to find out candidates' true capabilities.

Many businesses tend to deploy online assessment platforms that integrate monitoring and fraud detection technology (Illustration: CV).

"Some corporations switch to using assessment platforms developed by third parties, and users will have limited access to other applications or cannot use support tools when taking the test," Vu said.

For example, Deutsche Bank has deployed an integrated monitoring assessment platform that automatically detects unusual signs such as unauthorized extensions or suspicious behavior in real time.

Meanwhile, Scaler, an educational technology platform, is redesigning its recruitment system to measure higher-order thinking, judgment ability and applying knowledge into practice.

Another option that many companies seek is to invite candidates to the company to take a supervised direct assessment combined with a professional interview immediately afterward.