ZDNET’s key takeaways:
- AI is both a benefit and an emerging hindrance for recruiters and organizations.
- A third of recruiters said AI-polished resumes are the top source of stress.
- Refocusing on human connection is key to shaping AI in hiring.
An annual report from recruiting solutions company Employ — which owns Lever, Jobvite, and JazzHR — found that 74% of HR decision-makers report increased hiring activity in 2026, while recruiter stress has fallen for the second consecutive year, largely due to improved AI tools and hiring systems.
But the pressure is still on to source qualified job-seekers, especially for increasingly prevalent roles in AI development — and AI is bringing a tricky trade-off for recruitment teams and leaders.
“You have a lot of people applying for jobs very easily with the click of a button … I think that makes a recruiter or hiring manager’s job really difficult,” Employ CEO Jerry Jao said. “There are certainly higher volumes of the same-quality candidates because AI is making everyone look the same or similar. It’s absolutely making it more difficult for recruiters.”
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The findings
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Employ found that job seekers are using AI to help construct and refine their application materials and, in some cases, even to falsify them.
More than one-quarter of surveyed organizations (27%) report confirmed AI-driven candidate fraud, up from 23% in 2025. Among teams that have encountered confirmed or suspected fraud, half estimate they have received more than 50 fraudulent applications.
But the nationwide survey, which was conducted by Zogby Analytics on behalf of Employ in August 2026, revealed that outright fraud isn’t even the biggest factor recruiters need to be aware of. Instead, it’s AI polish: cover letters and resumes that read too eloquently, bullet points drafted to be oddly poignant, and application packages that feel too good to be true.
“What we have heard is that people do such a good job with prompting,” Jao said. “The resumes are one thing that we’ve heard… are overly polished. They are so perfect, and they are literally identical.”
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While Jao said cases of outright AI candidate fraud are waning overall, AI tools entering the mainstream are making it much easier for candidates to (often unknowingly) misrepresent themselves and their skills, and to take away unique elements that set them apart from other candidates.
Just over a third of recruiters (33%) said AI-polished resumes are now their top stressor, overtaking a lack of qualified candidates, which had long held the top spot. That’s a first in the Recruiter Nation report’s 19-year history. For nearly two decades, recruiters worried most about a lack of a candidate pool. Now they’re swimming in polished applications that make it hard to tell who’s truly done the polishing — the candidate or an AI tool.
The 2026 survey included a larger share of respondents from small businesses than in 2025 (55% versus 32%), while the share from enterprise organizations decreased from 35% to 19%. Findings also include year-over-year comparisons with 2025 data.
While it’s important to note that fraud isn’t the only element driving this year’s data, as teams look for more ways to confirm who candidates are and what they can actually do, face-to-face interactions create more opportunities to do so.
Where AI helps recruiters
AI in the recruitment process isn’t new. Many current HR systems already incorporate AI to help with recruitment tasks. In fact, 68% of recruiters use AI alongside their recruiting technology, and 66% said it has made their work easier.
This year’s report found that recruiter stress is on a decline, and has been for two years. Just 36% said recruiting is more stressful than it was a year ago, down from 45% in 2025 and 54% in 2024. Recruiters tied investment in AI-powered recruiting technology to the ability to meet candidate expectations.
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Jao said the data indicates that many organizations are looking to expand their AI use. Among businesses increasing recruitment technology spending, 40% are prioritizing interview intelligence and evaluation, 33% are prioritizing screening capabilities, and 31% are prioritizing candidate assessments and insights.
Still, less than 20% of those surveyed said more than half of their time had shifted from administrative work to higher-value tasks — not yet the business-wide productivity shift the AI industry claimed would already be here. Jao said that while AI has helped alleviate some administrative tasks for recruiters, many are still responsible for higher-order tasks that now include sifting and filtering through applications, which makes it more difficult to determine candidate proficiency.
“What [the data] says to us is that AI can take a little bit of legwork and [some tasks] that are maybe redundant or repetitive in nature. But then the fact is, we still need to think,” Jao said.
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He added that harnessing the power of people will be critical heading into 2027 and beyond.
“Everybody’s saying to use AI, but the reality is that no one has actually stopped or slowed people down to say, ‘Hey, this is what AI in a workplace means for your specific function,’” Jao told ZDNET in an exclusive interview. “I do believe that we’ll see a little bit more pushback into human interaction, human decisions, and human instincts in conjunction with what AI can do.”
What candidates and recruiters can do
The report highlighted that some companies are taking a step back and maximizing their greatest asset — their people — to help adapt their recruiting. Further down in the hiring process, traditional onboarding is returning to the office. Forty-three percent of companies now expect to onboard most employees completely in person, up from 36% last year; Hybrid onboarding fell from 55% to 40%.
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While this is an important step in combating AI-related online fraud and resume deception, it’s also key to understanding how HR teams can better narrow candidate pools to identify and understand the best individuals.
For recruiters, Jao said the most important thing to note ahead of 2027 to help propel growth and reset is to find their gaps — and mind them.
“I think it’s just understanding what your key problem or challenges are, or where you’re spending the most amount of time that you want to gain efficiency, and therefore, as you go into 2027, you can find tools or enhancements or products specifically to address your knowledge of your process gaps.”
Thankfully, AI tools are starting to do this. Workera, the AI-skills brand recently announced to be acquired by Pearson, is already piloting a dynamic AI-based skills platform that will allow companies to evaluate and train employees. More tools and systems are sure to follow, but Jao said it’s important for both applicants and recruiters to remember the role human connection can play when coupled with AI, and bridge it.
“What most job seekers may or may not realize is that every role they’re applying for… is really more difficult to cut through the noise than before. So to stand out, I think it’s best to be kind of old-school,” Jao said. “Show personality in a time when AI is making everyone look almost too perfect.”
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Recruiters can do a better job of surfacing opportunities for candidates to share personality, too. Jao said it’s important to ask deeper questions and evaluate beyond what’s already being conveyed on paper.
“We’re not just finding people with a hard skill set… we want people who are just good problem solvers, and I think that’s what meets the eye beyond what resumes or LinkedIn profiles can say,” Jao said.
Jao said candidates need to stay true to themselves, too, and remember that AI is a tool to help tell your story, not be the storyteller.
“Read through what AI writes for you, and then just put your personal touch back into it… find ways to stand out, and talk about why you do things differently,” Jao said of potential job-seekers. Jao also recommended sending that personal note or introduction, as it’s another way to show your realness as a candidate in a system stacked with so many polished personas that may or may not be accurate.
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Ultimately, Jao said one of the biggest takeaways is that 2027 is a great time to recalibrate and refocus.
“We’re at a time where there’s a lot of pullback from AI, and humans still absolutely need to be a critical part and one of the most critical parts of decision-making in hiring,” Jao said. “AI is not as helpful as we thought. So it’s about actually finding a balance, and then [finding] the governance, and then [finding] how we coexist with AI. This is something that’s really important for our recruiters and hiring managers to kind of adapt to and figure out.”
