Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI
Tyler Sorenson was fed up with his job hunt, so he went old school: He dropped off a paper résumé at a local tech repair company.
Sorenson, 24, had been feeling a common frustration among job seekers. He was seeing “help wanted” signs and hearing about understaffed businesses, but he couldn’t get replies to his online job applications. The store where he eventually landed a job didn’t have openings listed on its website, but when he visited in person, it seemed to need more workers.
“I literally just had to walk into that store and hand them an actual résumé for them to even take a look at me,” he said. It just so happened that the district manager was in. “I got a call a week later where they were asking me to formally apply.”
While his paper résumé may be a particularly retro outlier in a sea of hopeful job applicant, getting a little creative is becoming more necessary in a time when businesses are hiring at nearly the lowest rate in a decade, and there’s AI and exhaustion on both sides of the hiring table.
In recent months, Business Insider has heard from hundreds of frustrated job seekers reporting thousands of unsuccessful applications. On the flipside, hiring managers are flooded with applications, many of them AI-optimized to seem like a perfect fit. In response, a subset of hiring is going old school. Think paper résumés, walk-in applicants, and flying folks out to make sure they’re the real deal.
Business Insider has heard from workers about mounting paranoia, unease, and job fears in the labor market. If you have a story to share, contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at julianakaplan.33. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely. Read more on the topic:
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AI is making hiring into a technological cat-and-mouse game
When Devon Pastorius set out to hire for a new role at his advertising agency, he asked candidates to answer two questions in their cover letters: What were their thoughts on AI in the creative industry, and what were their favorite ads or social media accounts?
Pastorius expected to get some AI-generated answers. What he didn’t expect was 20 eerily similar responses; he surmised they came from chatbots. Ironically, in response to the first question, the AI answered that it was a tool and not a replacement for creatives. Its favorite ad campaigns were always Nike and Coca-Cola, and it often cited Duolingo’s TikTok account — and the applicants’ answers about the campaigns were also practically identical.
That tracks with how LLMs work, Pastorius said. The AI scours the internet for the answers to a question; the brands that it kept mentioning have “phenomenal PR teams,” meaning that their campaigns likely had a lot of coverage out there.
Hatim Rahman, an associate professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University, said AI has made hiring a “cat and mouse game” between candidates and employers, as both use technology to try to suss out the other. Part of that might be seen in the spray-and-pray approach, where applicants use bots to mass-apply for jobs. On the other hand, employers are using AI to sift through candidates and even have virtual agents step in to interview prospective new hires.
That escalation means it’s harder for employers to understand where quality candidates are, and, in turn, for prospective employees to figure out what the firm is like. As a result, he’s observed a push toward finding “more human signals in both the process of searching and applying,” Rahman said.
Cindy Meis, director of undergraduate career services at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, said that employers want what she calls multiple touch points: They want to see candidates who show up and introduce and reintroduce themselves, seek out referrals, or do informational interviews.
“You have to keep going to the career fair, you have to go to that tabling event in order to stand out and reintroduce yourself to those recruiters and have those connections within the organization,” Meis said. “You used to be able to do that with a cover letter.”
For the applicants who made it through to an interview with Pastorius, he made a point to ask follow-ups about what they wrote in their responses. And for second round interviews, he asks candidates to do a sample task at the office on a computer disconnected from the internet. That takes out the potential for AI interference.
Pastorius isn’t anti-AI. He’s noticed that résumé formatting has improved. They’re easier to read, and information on relevant work experience and skills was easy to find.
“There’s ways to use AI to lessen the burden of job seeking, but there’s ways to use AI to make it even harder on yourself,” Pastorius said. “And, unfortunately, parsing between the two is a skill within itself.”
Employers are flying people in and are eager for job hunter walk-ins
Victoria Thomas, the principal and chief business officer of Kellymoss, a Porsche customization and racing company, adopted a new hiring practice in the post-pandemic era — flying in potential candidates to the company’s Wisconsin office, rather than their previous reliance on phone or video interviews.
She said that the company does use AI to help craft job descriptions or rank potential candidates. But she’s also encountered the opposite problem: AI-crafted résumés can make some candidates look stronger than they may actually be. That’s where in-person tryouts come in. She’s hiring for positions that require a lot of physical work, so it’s important to see how potential candidates work with the team.
“We also very much rely on referrals,” Thomas said. “When you have somebody that has a willingness to put their personal name behind someone, so a technician referring a friend, there’s a larger success rate.”
Of course, these tactile methods are still very much in the minority, but more and more companies might adopt them as they deal with firehoses of applications. And while they’re easier to implement at smaller firms, the death of the mega-employer might mean smaller companies are increasingly the future for workers.
Nastashia Wali, the director of front office at the storied Hotel Chelsea, said that a candidate showing up in person demonstrates “eagerness and extra effort.” Online applications have meant more résumés than ever, and so she needs more patience to sift through potential candidates. Wali said that she likes receiving paper résumés — it lets candidates make a first impression on her front desk team, who bring their insights to her.
“When the team gives me a résumé, the first thing I ask is what stood out about the candidate and how their demeanor was,” she said. “If the team notices something, I usually pick up on it too — whether they seemed off, friendly and talkative, or made any other distinct impression.”
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