Most companies now use artificial intelligence in their hiring system to select the top candidates, but job seekers can use it also to polish their resume and stand out.GETTY IMAGES
When Aamna Coskun first started her career as a recruiter more than a decade go, she recalls that the “post and pray” strategy was prevalent. “Networking wasn’t even that much of a thing,” she says.
Then, around 2017, applicant tracking systems (ATS) – software that helps hiring managers and recruiters post jobs, screen candidate resumes, schedule interviews and communicate with them – came into the fold.
When it came to reviewing resumes, ATSes used to require filters and Boolean search strings: entering certain parameters and keywords such as years of experience, proficiency in a certain coding language or geographic location, to narrow down the best candidates. But now, Ms. Coskun says, ATSes are increasingly enabled with AI-powered features that automate this process.
“It helps me highlight the high-priority matches,” she explains. “If there’s a list of 50 candidates and 10 of them show up as recommended, I would look at them first.” She says that the recommendations are often accurate – around six or seven out of 10 will be a strong match. “Those are the ones I will quickly interview, so I’m not missing out on them.”
Ms. Coskun believes Canada’s HR industry has been slow to adopt AI in its practices and an Indeed report from March 2025 found that 27 per cent of hiring managers in Canada are using AI-powered tools for recruitment, compared to 51 per cent of American hiring managers.
Ms. Coskun says that companies aren’t required to tell applicants that they’re using AI-enabled software to screen candidates, and that it would be difficult for a job seeker to opt out of the system. But she says that regulations could change.
“Five years ago, we said that companies need to be sharing pay bands, so it’s a slow burn,” Ms. Coskun says of pay transparency legislation that is coming into play in provinces like British Columbia, Quebec and Ontario.
She adds that most candidates are not able to opt out of screening that involves AI or ATSes, unfortunately. Candidates generally need to accept certain terms or conditions when they’re submitting an application through the company’s selected software platform.
There is a concern that the uptick of AI-enabled ATSes could dehumanize the experience for job hunters. A resume could be “auto-rejected” or filtered out by a system when it doesn’t meet the threshold. For example, having eight years of experience when a minimum of 10 years was listed on the job posting. A good recruiter might still consider that candidate if they’re strong in every other aspect, but the resume could be missed, especially if there are too many applicants to review each one manually. When time permits, Ms. Coskun says good recruiters can and should still manually review all candidates.
But, on the flipside, Ms. Coskun explains, using AI to select the right candidates faster can also help those who didn’t make the cut know sooner, so that they aren’t being strung along in the hiring process. Ms. Coskun speaks of “bulk reject” functions that inform unqualified candidates that their applications were declined. Ideally, rejection letters would be sent with a reason, like being in the wrong geographic location or not having enough years of experience.
Being a job applicant in the age of AI means that it’s even more important for resumes to be written in the right way, says Amelia Lam, the head of talent acquisition at Wagepoint, a Calgary-based online payroll software provider for small businesses. “Tailor resumes to make sure it captures some of the skill sets that are required from the job posting,” Ms. Lam advises.
She says that AI can be helpful for candidates in the job-hunting process, for example, to keep a summary statement short but detailed. ChatGPT can also be used to research a company, find out who the hiring manager is and whether the company is a right fit (if, for example, you want to work for companies with small teams of fewer than 50 people or who have a female founder). But she cautions against careless overuse – she’s seen applicants who have used ChatGPT to help generate a summary statement, for example, and copied and pasted the whole response onto their resume, prompt and all.
Ms. Lam has also seen evidence of candidates using ChatGPT during video interviews. “There is always a short pause before they answer my question, and the way they answer sounds very structured and robotic,” she explains. “I have seen a reflection of someone’s screen in their glasses, and someone’s eyes moving back and forth when they’re answering me.” Both Ms. Lam and Ms. Coskun see the greater integration of AI into recruiting as inevitable. While we’re not quite at the stage of inputting natural language into an ATS filled with job applications, such as statements like: “I have a very difficult employee on this team. I need a person who can come in and manage this,” Ms. Coskun thinks this technology is coming.
“There’s a level of emotional intelligence that’s embedded in people’s resumes, and that’s a very hard thing to do without actually interviewing them,” she says. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if there are tools out there that are working towards this kind of custom search.”