Having AI scan CVs as the start of your recruitment process is only making it fail faster and cheaper. Better to use proven psychometric assessments to first find candidates whose personality and behaviour matches the role and organisation culture, writes NIK PLEVAN
To maximise productivity, revenue and profit growth at both organisational level and GDP nationally, we need to have the right people in the right roles and working well together for longer.
The hard part, as we all know, is finding the best candidates for structured interview from the often vast number of applicants.
That’s where sifting of submitted CVs is still being used by most as the first step in the recruitment process.
But that ignores the many deficiencies of CVs as a recruitment tool, especially at this stage.
Where CVs fail
Sifting CVs manually is very time-consuming – manually sifting through a high volume of CVs is an inefficient and time-consuming process for recruiters, which can lead to decision fatigue and delayed response times for candidates. Even if you use one of the fancy ‘CV-reading’ systems to identify suitable candidates, having to read the often lengthy and inconsistently-presented CVs of several applicants to compare them is a long and frustrating process.
They contain errors and half-truths – CVs need to be taken with a pinch of salt because candidates often include half-truths and embellish their skills, making it difficult for recruiters to verify the authenticity of claims. As a result, a large proportion of the interview is usually devoted to checking what is in the CV and candidates are often rejected when it becomes clear to the interview panel that key parts are false.
They give only a small part of the picture – education, experience and job history often play only a small part in the overall recruitment decision, except in highly technical jobs. Selecting a shortlist based only on the CV means you could be potentially missing out on the best candidate simply because they didn’t write their CV in the ‘right’ way.
They give no insight into soft skills – CVs will tell you nothing about the candidate’s soft skills – their personality, values and attitudes, as well as strengths and weaknesses. You won’t understand how they handle pressure or get a picture of their transferable skills.
A candidate’s CV makes it impossible to know whether they’ll fit into the team. It’s often said that employers “hire for skills, but fire for attitude”, so wouldn’t it be good to hire for attitude instead?
Low predictive validity – past success is no guarantee of future success – research indicates that education and years of experience – the staple ingredients of a CV – are among the weakest predictors of actual on-the-job performance partly because a candidate’s past success is no guarantee of future success in a different environment.
To guarantee behaviour will be replicated, all other things must remain constant – the job, the line manager, the team, the company culture, the location – the list is almost endless. Clearly, most other things will not be constant, so there is little guarantee that past success will lead to future success.
It’s difficult to compare applicants using CVs – when writing their CVs, job seekers are obviously trying to increase their chances of standing out from the crowd and getting an interview. This often means you’ll face a wide variety of CV formats and styles, making it very difficult to compare one candidate with another.
Many candidates use professionally prepared or AI-written CVs – their CV might be written to directly appeal to your job advert to increase the chances of piquing your interest. While it’s natural for applicants to want to do as well as possible, it can mask the true skills and abilities they possess. A well-written CV may lead you to think the applicant has good writing skills, but this may not be the case.
Susceptibility to bias – CVs contain personal information – like names, addresses, educational institutions and employment history patterns – which can lead to unconscious bias related to age, gender, race or social background. This can result in qualified candidates being unfairly filtered out and hinders diversity initiatives.
Focus on CV-writing skills vs job skills – the screening process can inadvertently place more emphasis on a candidate’s ability to write a compelling or well-formatted CV (or afford a professionally-written one), rather than their actual competency for the role itself.
Why AI is being used to scan CVs
As a response to the time and cost involved in sifting CVs manually, AI systems which scan CVs as the first step are being used more in the UK. An SSR study revealed that in the UK 70% of enterprise-size businesses use ATS software to screen CVs, while 20% of SMEs now do. An overall picture was revealed by an REC survey of senior HR professionals which found 29% saying they were using AI to screen candidate applications.
The research shows four main reasons for this: 1) They help speed the process – LinkedIn surveys show 89% of recruiters agree using AI decreases their average time-to-hire; 2) Saving money – 32% of recruiters say using AI leads to a significant cost saving and a Cognition X survey found AI reduces the average cost of hiring a candidate by 71% and increases recruiter efficiency by up to three times; 3) It fits with existing ATS systems and 4) CVs are still the universal standard for job applications in the UK.
Why AI CV-scanning is failing
Here’s the big problem with AI recruitment systems which start with the candidate’s CV – they aren’t helping employers find the best candidates as they’re rejecting good candidates because of the basic deficiencies of CVs as a recruitment tool listed above. So they’re just helping a bad system fail faster and cheaper – a false economy.
There are also four major issues with the AI parsing of CVs:
Bias & Accuracy – CV-based AI analysis can unintentionally reinforce existing recruitment preference biases if trained on skewed datasets.
AI-generated CVs – With many applicants now using AI tools to write CVs, recruiters face challenges in distinguishing authentic skills from polished text. Reboot Online published research finding 46% believe it’s making things more difficult as candidates are overusing tools like ChatGPT to enhance their CVs.
Candidates can use keyword stuffing to bypass automated screening systems – making it difficult for recruiters to verify the authenticity of claims.
Focus on CV-writing skills vs job skills – the screening process can inadvertently place more emphasis on a candidate’s ability to write a compelling or well-formatted CV (or afford a professionally-written one) rather than their actual competency for the role itself.
Thankfully, the recent The Hiring Trends Report 2026 from Willo found 41% of respondents are actively moving away from CV-first hiring, with 15% of respondents saying they’re exploring alternatives to CVs because just 41% of employers now rate them among the most reliable indicators of talent in an age of AI-generated applications.
Why proven personality assessments should be one of your first steps
Instead of using the CV at the start of the recruitment process and using AI to speed up the parsing of them, you should instead start by checking candidates have the minimum requirements for the job before using long-established and proven psychometric personality assessments to check if their personality is a match for the psychological profile required for the role.
Only after doing that and using a behavioural profile to check fit with your organisation culture should you then move on to other recruitment tools – such as structured interviews, as well as collating further experience and qualifications beyond the minimum and any relevant achievements.
Research shows using psychometric personality assessments at the candidate screening stage offers many benefits for employers, candidates and the recruitment process:
Improved hiring decisions – personality assessments provide objective insights into a candidate’s behaviours, motivations, and work style, leading to more informed decisions.
Increased efficiency – automated online tests can screen large numbers of candidates simultaneously, saving time and resources by helping you quickly identify top candidates before moving to later stages.
Reduced bias – standardised assessments ensure all candidates are evaluated on the same criteria, helping to mitigate unconscious biases that can arise in traditional interviews and promoting a more diverse workforce, which can improve creativity, innovation and problem-solving.
Better candidate-job fit – by assessing personality traits and work-related behaviours, organizations can better match candidates to the specific requirements of a role, which can improve job satisfaction and performance.
Reduced employee turnover – hiring candidates who are a better personality and cultural fit can lead to greater job satisfaction and, consequently, lower staff turnover and recruitment costs.
Stronger company culture – a focus on cultural fit during screening helps build a more cohesive and collaborative team, which can improve innovation, problem-solving and morale.
Development of future leaders – personality assessments can help identify candidates with leadership potential, aiding in workforce and succession planning.
Personalised development – the insights gained can be used to provide valuable feedback to candidates to help them with their own career development.
How eTalent clients have been benefiting since 2009
At eTalent, since 2009 we’ve been using our ATS, which incorporates personality and behavioural profiling at the start of the process, to predict which candidates will succeed in a role and fit in with the organisation culture. It automatically ranks them for review of experience, qualifications and achievements – so you can select the most suitable people for interview.
That’s helped hundreds of employers, especially franchisee owners, reduce their hiring costs through lower churn from better interview candidate choices.
I hope that this year more UK employers, as well as ones overseas, will wake up to why this is a better use of technology in recruitment – for them and the candidates. And we can all benefit as a result.
Nik Plevan is founder and managing director at eTalent a flat-fee applicant-tracking recruitment system which incorporates personality and behavioural profiling to predict which candidates will succeed in a role
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