Is it OK for jobseekers or employers to use AI?

AI has quietly become part of the job hunt. Candidates are using it to draft CVs, polish cover letters and prep for interviews, while employers are trying to decide where help ends and cheating begins.

Tom, 22, from Maidstone, says he sent out more than 200 applications before landing a restaurant manager role last month. He describes the process as exhausting and demoralising, and says AI helped him survive it. Not in the interview itself, he says, but in the grunt work: cover letters, CVs and the buzzwords that automated screening tends to catch.

He also calls it hypocritical when companies tell applicants not to use AI while using it to sort those same applicants. That tension sits right at the centre of the mess. If a candidate writes for a machine, they risk sounding fake. If they don’t, they may never get seen at all.

The Institute of Student Employers surveyed 155 of the UK’s biggest graduate employers this summer and found they were becoming more accepting of AI at some stages of recruitment. Cover letters and CVs were the most accepted uses, followed by online application questions. But 92% said they had encountered or suspected AI misconduct, up from 85% last year, often in live video interviews or online assessments.

Employers are adapting fast. EDF closed its graduate scheme early after 12,000 applications, a 10% rise on last year, and now reads CVs later in the process while leaning more on skills and behaviour-based tests. Even so, its head of early careers recruitment says some answers sound copied, with applicants pausing as if waiting for AI to feed them lines. The graduate market may have stabilised, the ISE says, but it is still fierce: roles draw an average of 141 applications each, and more than half of employers plan to use AI screening because the pile keeps growing.