Employers have shifted from using AI for sorting resumes to taking its advice on which employees to eliminate in layoffs, according to a recent workforce report.
MyPerfectResume’s survey of 1,000 hiring managers found that 52% use artificial intelligence to generate productivity data for “workforce planning decisions, including restructuring and role evaluation.”
Another 28% of human resources directors said they were considering doing the same, while 20% said they didn’t plan to use AI for issuing pink slips.
Jasmine Escalera, a career expert at MyPerfectResume, said the findings confirm that AI use has “expanded beyond hiring processes and is now being applied to broader organizational decisions.”
“AI can provide valuable insights by analyzing large amounts of data and identifying patterns, but it should not be the sole driver of staffing decisions,” Ms. Escalera said in an email.
The MyPerfectResume AI in Hiring Report found the technology has become widespread among job recruiters: 73% of hiring directors surveyed said they used AI to manage what the report called “an overwhelming volume of applications.”
The findings come as AI automation has driven some technology workers into unemployment, replacing their jobs with AI-assisted positions that require skills they lack.
The consulting firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas reported last week that AI was the top reason for downsizing cited in April for the second consecutive month: Companies cited AI in 21,490 job cuts announced last month, or 26% of all downsizing.
As of last month, the firm found that AI accounted for roughly 16% of job cut plans this year, up from 13% through March. Most of the 83,387 job cuts in April occurred among technology firms.
“Regardless of whether individual jobs are being replaced by AI, the money for those roles is,” said Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer at Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
According to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report, employers added 115,000 jobs in April while unemployment remained unchanged at 4.3%.
That growth came from the retail, healthcare, transportation, warehousing and hospitality sectors. The information services sector, where AI automation has taken its heaviest toll, lost 13,000 jobs.
“AI is no longer operating quietly in the background as an administrative tool,” said Noelle London, CEO and founder of Illoominus, an Atlanta company that provides AI-generated data to HR managers. “It is increasingly functioning as a gatekeeper to employment.”
Workforce insiders interviewed by The Washington Times said the MyPerfectResume report confirms that more employers are quietly using AI to automate jobs, suggest layoffs and craft new AI-assisted roles that require skills their current workers lack.
“The short version is yes, the numbers are accurate, and if anything they may understate where this is heading,” said Joel Marotti, senior managing partner at Vertical Media Solutions, a Michigan-based career coaching firm. “The statistics track fairly well with what we’re seeing out here in the marketplace.”
U.S. employers have used AI algorithms to process and sort resumes since the 2010s.
Andrew Crapuchettes, CEO of the Idaho-based jobs board RedBalloon, said the technology’s recent expansion into layoff recommendations adds to “a major impending backlash against this trend.”
“The adoption of AI in HR today feels like a fad-driven bubble that is fit to burst in a bad way,” Mr. Crapuchettes said. “It can’t decide what is a good culture fit for your company, and evaluate someone’s work ethic.”
AI fears
A January survey from Resume Now found that 60% of 1,006 workers said AI would eliminate more jobs than it creates by the end of this year.
The survey also found that 51% of workers worried about losing their jobs to AI, and 46% said a bot could replace them by 2030. Another 54% expressed pessimism about how the technology would affect their careers over the next three years.
Adnan Malik, CEO of Software Finder, predicted it will take time for companies to develop policies that overcome those fears.
“Deciding whom to restructure or lay off requires talking about legal liabilities, potential bias, and livelihoods, which is why human resources and legal departments usually lag behind technological advancements,” Mr. Malik said.
His technology company found in a recent AI Fatigue Survey that 75% of job seekers use AI to fill out applications — and 36% of employees feared being replaced by technology, while just 1 in 10 trusted it to make fair hiring decisions.
Such fears are not entirely unjustified: Mr. Malik noted that Amazon shut down its AI recruiting assistant in 2018 after realizing it had developed a bias against female resumes.
“Everybody is using this technology in recruitment, but few fully trust it,” he noted.
Experts have flagged an inability of many HR managers to identify AI writing in job applications created with programs such as JobCopilot and LazyApply. Employment attorneys warn this could be leading some bosses to illegally filter out some candidates based on their race, sex, age, disability or religion.
“Many employers now receive hundreds or thousands of applications for a single role, so automated screening tools have become almost unavoidable,” said Haley Harrigan, employment law chair at the firm Gallagher and Kennedy in Phoenix, Arizona. “If an AI hiring tool produces a discriminatory impact, the employer is still responsible and could face discrimination exposure under federal and state employment laws.”
Human touch
The MyPerfectResume report confirmed that AI programs have filtered out qualified job candidates too early in the hiring process.
Among the HR professionals surveyed, 65% noted that their AI bots automatically rejected applicants before human eyes ever saw their applications, and 47% say AI may have filtered out contenders they would have liked to advance.
At the restructuring level, 51% of surveyed hiring managers expressed confidence that “AI is used fairly in layoffs.”
Another 23% expressed doubts, and the remaining 26% said they didn’t use AI in layoff decisions at all.
The report urged employers to share their AI policies clearly with workers and applicants.
“When teams lean too heavily on AI, decisions can become overly data-driven, missing important context such as potential, growth, or how someone might contribute to a team beyond what’s listed on paper,” said Ms. Escalera, the company’s career expert.
Carolyn Illman, a Seattle-based hiring coach who has helped Amazon screen job candidates, expressed concerns that some employers have recently started using AI bots to interview candidates directly or review recordings of them.
But she predicted that the ability to show vulnerability and establish human connections will become more important for the process of finding and keeping a job as more employers expand their use of bots.
“I think at the end of the day, AI isn’t able to take the place of a human,” Ms. Illman said.
