内容来源：https://www.wired.com/story/applying-for-a-job-is-too-damn-easy/

内容总结：

招聘市场深陷“简历洪流”：AI工具泛滥，求职与招聘双双失灵

三年前，软件采购公司Vendr的人力负责人安德鲁·斯托克韦尔曾有一套高效的招聘流程：发布职位、等待数日、审阅几十份简历。而如今，这个流程彻底失控——职位发布后短短一两天内，他便会收到数百乃至上千份申请，其中大量是虚假候选人，更多简历明显由AI生成，内容千篇一律，难以分辨优劣。斯托克韦尔感叹，自己不得不让高薪的招聘专员整天埋头筛选简历。

这并非个例。越来越多的招聘专业人士认为，当前的求职体系已“从根本上失灵”。随着ChatGPT等AI工具在2022年底普及，求职者可以瞬间生成定制化简历和求职信，浏览器插件甚至能自动填写申请，LinkedIn的“一键申请”功能让投递职位如同网购般简单。招聘平台Greenhouse的负责人奥菲尔·萨姆森表示，过去招聘方追求“无缝体验”，结果却是在24小时内收到2000份申请，对所有人都是一场糟糕的体验。

美国劳工统计局数据显示，职位空缺数在2022年3月达到创纪录的1230万后持续下滑，目前稳定在700万左右。职位少了，但投递门槛却更低，导致候选人池急剧膨胀。LinkedIn数据显示，自ChatGPT发布以来，平台人均申请量上升了22%，迫使平台不得不限制自动化投递，并开始向明显不合格的申请者提示“可能不适合该职位”。

前人力资源高管泰莎·怀特指出，当前局面是招聘方追求速度和便捷的代价：“每次我们追求效率，似乎就牺牲了质量。”面对海量简历，许多公司开始求助于AI工具进行首轮筛选和面试，试图区分真伪和诚意，也有人考虑增设严格的筛选问题或技能测试。但怀特认为，这些措施治标不治本，AI无法真正判断一个人的潜力，整个招聘流程亟需彻底改革。

简历的泛滥也加剧了招聘方对内部推荐和熟人介绍的依赖。斯托克韦尔坦言，这不利于多元化招聘。他已于今年2月离开Vendr，亲身感受求职者的困境。他估计，网上投递简历获得电话面试的几率不足2%，只有依靠人脉才能获得机会。他无奈地表示：“公司正在错失大量优秀人才。”

中文翻译：

三年前，安德鲁·斯托克韦尔把招聘流程打造成了一门精确的科学。
作为软件采购公司Vendr的人力负责人，斯托克韦尔发布职位信息，等上几天，然后审阅几十份申请——运气好的话，能收到多达100份。招聘人员还会通过其他渠道物色潜在候选人，再往申请池里加几个人。斯托克韦尔阅读简历、进行面试，把出色的候选人推荐给招聘经理。
斯托克韦尔告诉《连线》杂志：“这真的是关于找到优秀人才、发掘人才、与人才沟通，并甄选出最合适的人选。”
斯托克韦尔说，大约在去年以来的某个时候，一切都变了。流程开始时还和以前一样，但一两天之内，斯托克韦尔面对的不再是100个候选人，而是被数百份申请淹没了。有时，涌入的申请超过一千份。斯托克韦尔说，其中很大一部分是“完全虚假的”——假候选人。还有更多看起来是用人工智能写的，夸大了事实，让人难以区分一个申请者和另一个申请者。数量之多让人不堪重负。斯托克韦尔说他发现自己“付钱给我的人才招聘专员——他们是高薪、高素质的人——却只是整天翻看申请”。
斯托克韦尔是众多认为找工作从根本上已经失效的招聘专业人士之一。到2026年，找工作已经变得像网购一样简单：人工智能能在几秒钟内生成量身定制的简历和求职信。浏览器扩展程序可以自动填写申请，无需人工操作。LinkedIn每天向用户推送几十个职位，其中许多选项只需“点击几下”即可申请。
“一年前，每个招聘人员都会告诉我：我们希望让申请工作变得尽可能简单，”Greenhouse公司语音AI负责人奥菲尔·萨姆森告诉《连线》杂志，“给候选人提供‘无缝体验’。”萨姆森今年早些时候加入这家招聘平台，当时公司收购了他的初创公司——该公司利用AI进行求职面试。“结果他们得到的是24小时内收到2000份申请。这对每个人来说都是糟糕的体验。”
优秀的申请者无法脱颖而出，而不合格的候选人却浑水摸鱼。萨姆森说，招聘人员每天都面临着评判数千名候选人的艰巨任务。他们没有花时间在LinkedIn上搜索理想的员工，而是花数小时在求职者跟踪系统里，调整筛选条件，试图判断哪些申请值得花30秒浏览一下。
现在，招聘人员告诉萨姆森，“实际上，我们有点想要摩擦了，”他说，“摩擦是好事。我们想让它变得更难。”
消除申请流程痛点的愿望是有道理的：如果最优秀的候选人数量越多地申请一个职位，那么公司找到最佳人选的概率自然就越大。所以多年来，招聘人员在招聘网站和LinkedIn上发布职位；他们开通了LinkedIn的“轻松申请”功能；他们向候选人承诺“一键申请”流程。疫情之后，随着雇主难以填补职位空缺，招聘人员简化流程的努力进入了超速状态。
“每个人都在跳槽，因为你真的可以在一个下午拿到三个offer，”房地产巨头仲量联行的首席转型官简·柯伦告诉《连线》杂志。而现在“情况完全相反”。
根据美国劳工统计局的数据，职位空缺在2022年3月达到创纪录的1230万个峰值，随后连续两年下降。自2024年年中以来，职位空缺一直徘徊在700万左右，上下浮动约50万。
但就在职位空缺数量收缩的同时，申请的门槛却进一步降低了。AI——在2022年底随着ChatGPT的公开发布进入主流视野——让申请者几乎可以即时重写简历、跟踪新的职位发布。像JobAssist、Sonara和Ladder的Apply4Me这样的公司向申请者承诺，他们的技术可以处理申请工作的所有繁琐事务，“以比一份手动申请更少的精力提交10倍多的申请”。如果你愿意，一天可以申请几十份工作。
这种模式导致了候选人池的急剧膨胀和招聘流程的费时费力。LinkedIn告诉《连线》杂志，平台上每位申请者的提交数量比2020年2月增长了46%。自ChatGPT发布以来，申请量增长了22%。申请数量的爆炸式增长促使LinkedIn增加了限制，以减少自动化和低质量的申请。本月，该平台正在推出一项功能，通知（看似）资质不足的申请者他们可能不适合某个职位，并推荐其他工作。
“我们现在的处境是，雇主抱怨找不到好人，而人们抱怨找不到工作，”前人力资源高管泰莎·怀特告诉《连线》杂志。
怀特在企业界从事人力资源工作二十年后，于2018年离开。疫情期间，她开始在TikTok上发布内容，通过分享关于就业市场的建议和评论，积累了80万粉丝。她认为目前的情况是行不通的，是招聘人员追求速度和便利的结果。“每当我们似乎追求效率时，似乎就牺牲了质量，”她说。
招聘人员知道自己有问题。当然，对于某些职位来说，如技术工人——雇主需求一直超过雇员供给——大量简历是受欢迎的。但对于典型的失业白领知识工作者来说，仲量联行的柯伦说，“没有足够的流动性，没有足够的职位进入市场。”这意味着这些行业的招聘人员每次发布新职位时都面临大量简历的冲击。
许多招聘人员自己也转向AI工具，希望能把海量的申请整理成更可控的形式。公司使用自动化求职者跟踪系统来筛选简历至少已有十年；现在，许多公司正在使用AI代理进行候选人的首轮面试。
“我们经常听到招聘人员说：他们有1000份申请，但他们知道其中只有30份是认真的，”Greenhouse的萨姆森说。AI面试可以区分认真和不认真的申请者，他说，为招聘人员提供简历之外的背景信息。
虽然萨姆森说这些AI面试不是为制造摩擦而制造摩擦，但它们有一个额外的好处——淘汰机器人和敷衍的候选人。柯伦说她预计一些公司会转向使用淘汰性问题，通过严格的标准来缩减申请池。其他人可能会在流程早期加入技能测试。
但怀特并不认为这些改变能解决根本问题——无摩擦的简历投递已经使申请流程的第一轮变得基本毫无价值。“雇主用目前过时的流程招聘人非常困难，”怀特说，“即使是AI和求职者跟踪系统——听起来那么高科技——也只是看待人和技能组合的一种过时方式。”她说，AI根本不可能准确判断一个人的潜力。
“我绝对认为招聘以及我们做招聘的方式需要进行大规模改革，”怀特说，“而且我甚至不知道自己有正确的答案。”
申请的泛滥增加了招聘人员对推荐和内部招聘的依赖。虽然这种人脉连接一直很重要，但今天，一些人认为这是避开申请洪流的唯一途径。斯托克韦尔认为这种做法有利于背景与现有员工相符的人，这对劳动力的多样性不利。“整件事就是一团糟，”他说。
斯托克韦尔现在正从申请门户的另一端来应对这场混乱。今年2月，他离开了Vendr，目前正在求职。他把找工作当成一份工作来对待，“跑街串巷”，参加线下社交活动。他知道，没有私人关系，真正获得面试机会的概率几乎为零。他在网上申请工作时，估计只有不到2%的几率能换来电话面试。
“我当然对自己的能力有偏见，”斯托克韦尔说，“但公司正在错过优秀的人才。”
评论
返回顶部

英文来源：

Three years ago, Andrew Stockwell had his hiring routine down to a science.
As head of people for the software-buying company Vendr, Stockwell posted a listing, waited a few days, and then reviewed a few dozen applications—up to 100, if he was lucky. Recruiters identified other potential candidates, adding a few more applicants to the mix. Stockwell read résumés, conducted interviews, and passed along sterling candidates to hiring managers.
“It was really about finding that great talent, sussing out that talent, speaking with that talent, and identifying the best possible people,” Stockwell tells WIRED.
Sometime in the last year or so, Stockwell says, everything changed. The process started off the same way, but within a day or two, Stockwell wasn’t looking at 100 candidates. Instead, he was flooded with hundreds of applications. Sometimes, the incoming topped a thousand. A good chunk were “total bogus,” Stockwell says—fake candidates. Many more appeared to have been written using artificial intelligence, stretching the truth and making it difficult to distinguish one applicant from another. The sheer quantity was overwhelming. Stockwell says he found himself “paying my talent-acquisition professionals—who are high-paid, high-quality individuals—just to look through applications all day long.”
Stockwell is one of many recruitment professionals who believe looking for a job is fundamentally broken. In 2026, job hunting has become as easy as online shopping: AI can crank out tailored résumés and cover letters in seconds. Browser extensions can autofill applications, no human necessary. LinkedIn serves users dozens of jobs a day, many with the option to apply with “just a few clicks.”
“A year ago, every recruiter would tell me: We want to make it as easy as possible to apply for jobs,” offering candidates a “seamless experience,” Ophir Samson, the head of voice AI for Greenhouse, tells WIRED. Samson joined the recruiting platform earlier this year, when it acquired his startup, which used AI to conduct job interviews. “What they got was 2,000 applicants in 24 hours for a job. That is a shitty experience for everyone.”
Good applicants can’t stand out, while bad candidates slip through the cracks. Recruiters, Samson says, face the tortuous task of judging thousands of candidates, every single day. Instead of taking the time to search LinkedIn for dream employees, they spend hours in applicant tracking systems, tweaking filters to try to determine whose applications are worth a 30-second skim.
Now, recruiters are telling Samson, “actually, we kind of want friction,” he says. “The friction is good. We want to make it harder.”
The desire to remove pain points in the application process makes sense: If the highest number of qualified candidates apply for a role, it stands to reason that a company can maximize the chances of finding the best possible fit. So for years, recruiters have posted on job boards and LinkedIn; they signed up for LinkedIn’s “Easy Apply” feature; they promised candidates a “one-click” application process. Post-pandemic, recruiters’ efforts to simplify the process went into superdrive, as employers struggled to fill open roles.
“Everyone was job hopping, because you literally could have three offers in an afternoon,” Jane Curran, the chief transformation officer at real estate giant JLL, tells WIRED. Now, “it is the polar opposite.”
Openings peaked at a record 12.3 million in March 2022, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, followed by two years of decline. Since mid-2024, openings have hovered at around 7 million, give or take 500,000.
But as the number of job openings contracted, the barriers to entry for applying declined even further. AI—which entered the mainstream in late 2022 with the public release of ChatGPT—allows applicants to rewrite résumés and track new postings almost instantaneously. Companies like JobAssist, Sonara, and Ladder’s Apply4Me promise applicants that their technology will handle all the busy work of applying for jobs, by submitting “10x as many applications with less effort than one manual application.” If you wanted to, you could apply for dozens of jobs a day.
This formula has led to ballooning candidate pools and laborious hiring processes. LinkedIn tells WIRED that submissions per applicant on the platform are up 46 percent compared to February 2020. Since the launch of ChatGPT, applications are up 22 percent. The explosive number of applications led to LinkedIn adding limits to cut back on automated and low-quality applications. This month, the platform is rolling out a feature that informs (seemingly) underqualified applicants that they probably aren’t a good fit for a role, and suggests other jobs.
“We're currently in a place where employers are complaining that they can't find good people, and people are complaining that they can't find jobs,” Tessa White, a former HR executive, tells WIRED.
White worked in HR for two decades before leaving corporate America in 2018. During the pandemic, she began posting on TikTok, where she has built a following of 800,000 by sharing advice and commentary on the job market. She believes the current situation is unworkable, and is a result of recruiters’ quest for speed and ease. “Every time we seem to strive for efficiency, we seem to give up quality,” she says.
Recruiters know they have a problem. Sure, an avalanche of résumés is welcome for some roles, such as skilled trades workers, where employer demand consistently exceeds employee supply. But for the typical unemployed white-collar knowledge worker, JLL’s Curran says, there “is not enough churn, not enough jobs coming into the market.” That means recruiters in these industries face a barrage of résumés every time they post a new role.
Many recruiters are turning to AI tools themselves, hoping to wrangle the sea of applications into something more manageable. Companies have used automated applicant tracking systems to screen résumés for at least a decade; now, many are using agents to conduct first-round interviews with candidates.
“We frequently hear from recruiters: They have 1,000 applications, but they know that only 30 of them are serious,” Greenhouse’s Samson says. An AI interview can sort the unserious from the serious, he says, offering recruiters context beyond a résumé.
While Samson says that these AI interviews are not friction for friction’s sake, they have the added bonus of weeding out bots and halfhearted candidates. Curran says she expects some companies to turn to knock-out questions that cut down the application pool via strict criteria. Others might add skills testing earlier in the process.
But White isn’t convinced these changes fix the underlying problem—that the frictionless résumé drop has rendered the first round of the application process essentially worthless. “Employers are having such a hard time hiring people with the current antiquated process,” White says. “Even AI and applicant tracking systems, which sound so high-tech, are an antiquated way to look at people and skill sets.” AI simply does not have the capabilities, she says, to accurately judge someone’s potential.
“I definitely think recruiting and the way we do it is due for a massive overhaul,” White says. “And I don't even know that I have the right answers.”
The deluge of applications has increased recruiters’ reliance on referrals and internal hires. While these human-to-human connections have always been important, today, some see them as the only ways to circumvent the glut of applications. Stockwell believes this benefits people whose backgrounds align with existing employees’, which isn’t conducive to a diverse workforce. “The whole thing is a big mess,” he says.
Stockwell is now dealing with the mess from the other side of the application portal. In February, he left Vendr, and is now on the job hunt. He treats the search like a job, “pounding the pavement” and attending in-person networking events. He knows that without a personal connection the chance of actually getting an interview is close to zilch. When he applies to jobs online, he estimates it only leads to a phone interview less than 2 percent of the time.
“I'm biased, of course, about my own capabilities,” Stockwell says. “But companies are missing out on fantastic talent.”
Comments
Back to top