Resume-ing Control: (Mis)Perceptions of Agency Around GenAI Use in Recruiting Workflows

TL;DR

This study explores how recruiting professionals perceive their agency when using generative AI, revealing a hidden influence of AI on decision-making and concerns about deskilling and control.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into recruiters' perceptions of agency and control around genAI, highlighting the subtle influence of AI on hiring decisions and workflow.

Findings

Recruiters believe they retain final authority but AI subtly influences evaluation criteria.

Adoption of genAI is often outside recruiters' control, driven by organizational pressures.

GenAI use leads to marginal efficiency gains but causes deskilling and reduces oversight.

Abstract

When generative AI (genAI) systems are used in high-stakes decision-making, its recommended role is to aid, rather than replace, human decision-making. However, there is little empirical exploration of how professionals making high-stakes decisions, such as those related to employment, perceive their agency and level of control when working with genAI systems. Through interviews with 22 recruiting professionals, we investigate how genAI subtly influences control over everyday workflows and even individual hiring decisions. Our findings highlight a pressing conflict: while recruiters believe they have final authority across the recruiting pipeline, genAI has become an invisible architect that shapes the foundational building blocks of information used for evaluation, from defining a job to determining good interview performances. The decision of whether or not to adopt was also often outside recruiters' control, with many feeling compelled to adopt genAI due to calls to integrate AI from higher-ups in their business, to combat applicant use of AI, and the individual need to boost productivity. Despite a seemingly seismic shift in how recruiting happens, participants only reported marginal efficiency gains. Such gains came at the high cost of recruiter deskilling, a trend that jeopardizes the meaningful oversight of decision-making. We conclude by discussing the implications of such findings for responsible and perceptible genAI use in hiring contexts.