A new report reveals a massive trust gap in the hiring world, where companies are rapidly adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) for recruitment while job seekers are actively fighting back against the systems they see as opaque and biased.
According to the 2025 AI in Hiring Report from the hiring platform Greenhouse, a staggering 70% of hiring managers believe AI helps them make faster and better decisions. However, this optimism is not shared by candidates: only 8% of job seekers believe AI makes the hiring process more fair.
The AI “Arms Race” and the Collapse of Trust
The findings paint a picture of an escalating “AI doom loop” where job seekers and employers are locked in an arms race that is eroding trust on both sides.
Distrust Among Candidates:
- Nearly half (46%) of job seekers in the U.S. say their trust in the hiring process has decreased over the past year, with 42% blaming AI directly.
- Concerns about algorithmic bias are significant: 35% of job seekers believe AI has simply shifted bias from humans to algorithms.
- The lack of transparency is a key driver of distrust, as 87% of job seekers say it’s important for employers to be open about their AI use, a practice the report notes is “largely missing.”
Candidates Are Fighting Back:
In a bid to bypass automated screens, 41% of U.S. job seekers admit to using deceptive tactics like “prompt injections”—hidden text designed to trick AI filters on resumes. Furthermore, 52% of those who haven’t used this tactic are considering it. This desperation is fueled by nearly half of all candidates submitting more applications now than a year ago.
Employer Concerns and Shifting Tactics
While job seekers are gaming the system, recruiters and hiring managers are spending more time trying to filter out fraudulent applications and fakes.
- Integrity Crisis: A massive 91% of recruiters reported spotting candidate deception.
- Deceptive AI Use: 65% of hiring managers have caught applicants using AI deceptively, including reading from AI-generated scripts (32%), hiding prompt injections in resumes (22%), or even showing up as deepfakes (18%) in interviews.
- Increased Scrutiny: Despite the initial promise of AI speeding up the process, employers are now reacting by implementing “good friction.” About 39% of hiring managers are conducting more in-person interviews than they were a year ago, suggesting they are spending more time, not less, trying to verify a candidate’s authenticity.
The report concludes that the solution is not simply to build better AI, but to re-establish transparency and ensure that “humanity is not lost at the altar of algorithmic supremacy,” arguing that hiring is ultimately about human fit, not just algorithms.