AI has broken hiring as CVs lose signal value

Harvard Business Review published Shraddha Sunil and Mudit Saraf’s article AI Has Broken Hiring. Here’s How to Fix It on June 8, 2026. The authors describe a problem many recruiters already see: generative AI has sharply reduced the cost of perfect self-presentation. A candidate can prepare a clean CV, a cover letter, answers to common questions and interview training in minutes. That does not make the candidate more qualified. It means traditional signals are weaker. HBR states the problem sharply: the ability to perform well in an interview is becoming infinitely scalable and practically free. That phrase goes to the core of the issue. Hiring has long relied on documents, first impressions and structured answers. If the same answer can be generated by a tool, the company no longer knows whether it is evaluating a person or the quality of that person’s preparation with AI. The business impact is not limited to HR. A bad hire means higher onboarding costs, slower team performance and a greater risk of departure during probation. In technical and analytical roles, another problem appears: a candidate may look strong online, but real work may show that they cannot break down a problem, check an output or explain a decision. The authors do not call for banning AI in hiring. That would be hard to enforce and pointless for many roles. A better response is to change verification. Companies should give candidates work tasks close to real work, observe the process, ask about decisions and require candidates to defend the result. For jobs where AI will be part of everyday work, it also makes sense to assess how the candidate uses AI: what they ask, what they check and where they reject the output. The legal and ethical dimension will become stricter. If companies themselves use AI to screen candidates, they will need to address transparency, discrimination and decision audits. The European environment will be more sensitive here than the US market. HR therefore faces pressure from both sides: candidates use AI, companies use AI and a reliable proof of ability is harder to find. The winners will bring hiring closer to the work itself. Terms: A hiring signal is information a company uses to estimate a candidate’s ability. Generative AI is a system that creates text, images, code or other outputs from prompts. A work sample is a task similar to real work used to test a candidate’s ability.

AI has broken hiring as CVs lose signal value

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