AI made hiring too easy—so recruiters want friction
recruiters report ai tools and easy apply buttons flooded them with over 1,000 applicants per job, many fake, forcing a shift back to manual hurdles.
ai tools allowing job seekers to generate tailored résumés and auto-submit applications have broken the recruiting funnel, with postings attracting 1,000-plus applicants instead of the usual 100. hiring managers report paying high salaries to staff who merely sift through this volume, as generic ai submissions obscure qualified talent and bad actors slip through. in response, platforms and recruiters are actively reintroducing friction, such as manual questions or stricter steps, to deter mass applications. this indicates a major correction in the labor market where the removal of bottlenecks via ai has backfired, forcing a return to inefficient, human-centric barriers.