Greenhouse, the leading hiring platform, has released its 2025 AI in Hiring Report, revealing a rapidly deteriorating hiring landscape defined by AI-driven shortcuts, candidate fraud, recruiter overload, and record-low trust on all sides. The study surveyed more than 4,100 job seekers, recruiters, and hiring managers across the U.S., U.K., Ireland, and Germany, uncovering what the company describes as an “AI doom loop.”
“Neither side is happy with the hiring process right now,” said Daniel Chait, CEO and co-founder of Greenhouse. “Candidates are doing whatever they can to break through the noise, while talent teams are drowning in so many applications they’re struggling to identify what’s real. The result is worse for everyone.”
Chait added that the industry is locked in a cycle where job seekers use AI to flood employers with more applications, while employers use AI to filter the flood back out—often with questionable effectiveness. “Our vision is AI that makes hiring more human, not less,” he said.
Candidates Are Hacking the System
U.S. job seekers are increasingly resorting to AI-based tricks to get noticed:
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49% are applying to more jobs than last year.
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69% say they’ve encountered fake or misleading job postings.
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54% have faced AI-led interviews.
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41% admit to using prompt injections—hidden text in résumés designed to bypass AI filters.
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Among non-users, 52% say they’re considering similar tactics.
Candidates describe these behaviors as necessary to “compete” in a system they feel is opaque and stacked against them.
Recruiters Report an Integrity Crisis
The employer side is equally troubled:
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91% of recruiters have detected candidate deception.
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34% spend up to half their week sifting spam applications.
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65% of hiring managers have caught applicants using AI dishonestly, including:
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32% reading AI-generated scripts,
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22% embedding prompt injections,
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18% appearing as deepfakes.
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Fraud concerns are intensifying, with 74% of hiring managers more worried about fake credentials and deepfakes than a year ago.
Trust Is Collapsing—Especially Among Gen Z
AI bias and lack of transparency are fueling a breakdown in trust:
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46% of U.S. job seekers say their trust in hiring has fallen in the last year.
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42% explicitly blame AI.
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Only 8% believe AI makes hiring fairer.
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35% say AI has shifted bias from humans to algorithms; 18% believe it’s made bias worse.
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Among Gen-Z job seekers, trust erosion spikes to 62%.
Candidates also want clarity: 87% say employer transparency about AI usage is important—but rare.
Recruiters and Hiring Managers Are Out of Sync
The report shows widening internal misalignment:
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70% of hiring managers say AI improves decision speed and quality.
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Recruiters are less convinced:
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Only 50% believe AI has improved hiring overall.
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25% lack confidence in their AI systems.
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8% don’t know what their algorithms prioritize.
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Only 21% are “very confident” qualified candidates aren’t being wrongly rejected.
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Despite promises of efficiency, many teams are moving backward: 39% of U.S. hiring managers are conducting more in-person interviews to verify authenticity.
What Needs to Change
Greenhouse warns that hiring is at a breaking point. If candidates cannot discern what’s real, who evaluates them, or how decisions are made, the system risks losing legitimacy.
The company argues the solution isn’t simply “better AI,” but rather:
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Radical transparency
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“Good friction” designed to verify identity
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A focus on high-quality, human-driven signals—not volume
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Re-centering hiring on human fit instead of algorithmic optimization
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