“Talent acquisition” has become the most dominant task in human resources, as we have pivoted away from developing talent from within. Hiring is the focus not only within HR but also in the organization as a whole because it makes “talent management” so obvious.

AI was supposed to help make better hiring decisions, but it might be fair to say that, so far, the biggest change has been that AI has expanded the opportunities for applicants to cheat. Hiring is one of those situations where we expect the seller (in this case, the applicant) to not tell us the whole truth (e.g., “What’s the minimum salary you will accept?”) and to exaggerate their value.  Lying about things that are material is not acceptable, but it is widespread, with estimates that half of people lie on their resume, which is remarkably blatant because those lies can be checked.

What constitutes cheating in hiring, though? If someone posts the questions an employer asks in interviews (which is widespread by the way), is it cheating if you see them before the interview? The lines may be fine, but some things are clearly are over the line. Cheating, defined as breaking established rules with respect to assessments of your attributes, is pretty clearly wrong. It’s a set of actions not dissimilar to what we would see in college, with students getting unauthorized help answering questions and plagiarizing written assessments being the most common.

AI makes cheating in hiring ‘easier’

Aiseptor, a company that examines cheating, published an assessment of the extent of cheating in hiring, and it is a stunner. Attempts to cheat doubled this past year, and over 60% got through undetected. In assessments of technical skills, cheating happens almost half the time. They report that scores on tests that are unproctored, which means not being watched for cheating, were four times higher than those that were proctored. Cheating is greatest in campus recruiting. I’d like to think that graduating students are more tech-savvy and not that they got more practice cheating in college.

AI makes cheating easier because it can come up with most answers immediately and can write virtually anything in a credible manner, including an essay about yourself. What facilitates that, however, are remote interviews and screening.

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