New insight from talent management solution provider, Talogy, has revealed significant concern among hiring managers about the misuse of generative AI by candidates during the recruitment process. Its report, ‘Hiring Future Ready Early Talent’, reveals that nearly two thirds of managers (65%) say they are ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ concerned about candidates using GenAI to cheat on recruitment assessments.
This contrasts with the views of early career professionals and job seekers, where just 15% said they use Gen AI, and only 22% of job seekers report using it when completing assessments.
As AI rapidly becomes integrated into everyday life, these findings suggest a certain “trust disconnect” between hiring managers and candidates that needs to be addressed. This disconnect has inspired Talogy to introduce ‘honesty contracts’ where candidates agree upfront not to use GenAI, search engines, or other tools during assessments.
Separate analysis by Talogy of more than 2,000 assessment participants show that when an honesty contract was introduced at the start of the assessment, the number of candidates using some sort of assistance, (such as Gen AI, search engines, or even asking family and friends) drops from 28% to just 13%.
This shows that while candidates may have a new tool to enable cheating, most still choose not to. Effective assessments support candidates to find an organization and role that fits their needs and values — something they are clearly not prepared to put at risk.
“Confidence in assessment effectiveness needs to be restored for hiring managers if the recruitment process is to be a success and this is where the honesty contract has a pivotal role to play,” says Ted Kinney, vice president of research and development at Talogy. “It’s important to recognise that although the use of GenAI in assessments could be interpreted as cheating, it’s still early days for AI and its use could also point towards a high potential candidate simply using the available tools and resources in order to succeed.”
