CVs are becoming more polished.
Applications are better structured, cover letters can be tailored quickly, and candidates have access to tools that help them prepare for likely interview questions.
AI is playing a growing part in that. LinkedIn’s 2026 research found that 81% of people had used or planned to use AI during their job search. At the same time, 66% of recruiters said finding qualified talent had become more difficult.
That creates a genuine challenge for employers.
Candidates have better tools to communicate their experience, but hiring teams can find it harder to distinguish between a well-presented application and strong evidence that someone can actually perform the role.
The answer is not to become suspicious of every polished CV. It is to create a recruitment process that does not depend too heavily on the CV in the first place.
Using AI does not automatically make an application dishonest
Candidates have always received help with applications.
Friends proofread CVs, recruiters suggest improvements and online templates help people organise their experience. AI is another tool within that process.
Someone may use it to improve their grammar, organise their thoughts or express genuine experience more clearly. That does not make the underlying experience untrue.
Problems arise when an application exaggerates responsibilities, invents achievements or gives a misleading impression of the candidate’s personal contribution.
The employer’s job is not to determine who wrote every sentence. It is to establish whether the experience, skills and results being described are genuine.
Trying to detect AI from someone’s writing style is unlikely to give you a reliable answer. A better hiring process validates the substance behind the presentation.
Treat the CV as the beginning of the conversation
A CV is useful. It provides an overview of someone’s background, progression and areas of responsibility.
It is not proof that they can do the job.
Phrases such as “led a successful campaign”, “owned the strategy” or “increased engagement” may all be accurate, but they leave important questions unanswered.
What did the candidate personally do? Who else was involved? Which decisions were theirs? What problems did they encounter? How was the outcome measured?
A strong interview process turns claims into evidence.
Rather than asking candidates to repeat their CV, choose one or two relevant examples and explore them properly:
- What was the original objective?
- What were you personally responsible for?
- Which decisions did you make?
- What did not go as planned?
- What happened as a result?
- What would you do differently now?
Candidates may arrive with a prepared opening answer. The useful information normally appears in the detail and follow-up questions.
The purpose is not to catch them out. It is to understand how close they were to the work and how they think about it now.
Separate team achievements from personal contribution
Most meaningful work is collaborative, so there is nothing wrong with candidates describing a team result.
The hiring team simply needs to understand their part within it.
When someone says, “We increased revenue by 30%”, ask what they personally influenced. They may have set the strategy, managed the campaign, completed the analysis or supported one element of a much larger programme.
Each contribution can be valuable, but they demonstrate different types and levels of experience.
This is particularly important when reviewing candidates from well-known businesses or high-profile campaigns. An impressive, finished result can distract from establishing what the individual actually owned.
The opposite is also true. Someone from a smaller organisation may have worked on less recognisable projects while holding much greater personal responsibility.
Use portfolios as conversations
For creative, marketing, content and product roles, a portfolio can provide valuable evidence.
However, the finished work does not always show how it was created.
Ask the candidate to select one or two examples and explain the original challenge, their personal contribution, the limitations they faced and the decisions they made.
A highly polished campaign may have involved a large team and significant resources. A visually simpler piece of work might demonstrate stronger problem-solving, commercial judgement or resilience.
Understanding the process behind the result helps you assess genuine capability rather than the appearance of the final output alone.
Add a short, realistic task where it helps
A practical assessment can be useful when a particular skill is central to the role.
A content candidate might edit a short piece of copy and explain their changes. A marketer could review a brief and talk through their priorities. A client services candidate could respond to a realistic stakeholder situation.
The exercise should resemble the real role and be proportionate to the stage of the process. Candidates should not be expected to produce a complete strategy or commercially usable campaign without payment.
Often, discussing how someone would approach the task is more valuable than asking for an overly polished presentation.
CIPD guidance recommends using structured interviews and job-relevant skills assessments, rather than relying solely on previous experience or an unstructured conversation.
Structure the process before meeting candidates
Unstructured interviews can feel more natural, but they also make it easier for confidence, similarity and personal chemistry to influence the decision.
A structured interview does not need to feel robotic. It simply means agreeing what you need to assess, asking every candidate the same core questions and recording evidence against consistent criteria.
A simple scorecard might cover:
- Relevant capability
- Problem-solving and judgement
- Communication
- Stakeholder management
- Motivation and working environment
Interviewers can still ask natural follow-up questions. The structure ensures that every candidate has a fair opportunity to demonstrate the same core requirements.
It also helps prevent an excellent presenter from being mistaken automatically for the strongest candidate.
Be curious, not suspicious
Concerns about AI-generated applications can make interviews unnecessarily adversarial.
Employers start looking for inconsistencies, trying to catch people out or treating polished language as evidence that something is being hidden.
That creates a poor experience and may discourage strong candidates who have done nothing wrong.
Good assessment is curious rather than suspicious. It asks people to explain, demonstrate and reflect. Candidates who cannot support their claims will usually become apparent when the process explores sufficient depth.
AI-assisted applications are likely to remain part of recruitment. Employers do not need a perfect method for identifying who wrote every word.
They need a process that looks beyond those words.
A polished application may help someone enter the recruitment process. It should be the evidence behind it that carries them through.
At Beyond The Book, we speak with candidates properly, explore their motivations and qualify the experience behind the application before making an introduction.
Receiving plenty of applications but still struggling to identify the right people? Get in touch and we can talk through the role, the market and the most effective way to assess your candidates.
