Most Recruiters Doubt Candidates Write Their Own CVs Anymore

What happened

A new report covered by TechRadar finds that most recruiters no longer believe anyone is personally writing the CVs they receive. Generative AI has made it far easier to produce polished applications, so the document now reads less like a candidate's own account and more like a text tailored to what a recruiter is expected to want.

The reporting notes that this has made sourcing easier, because candidates are simpler to find and match to roles. The trade-off is that recruiters now spend more time per candidate checking whether the skills on the page are real.

Why it matters

The bottleneck in hiring has shifted. Attracting applicants is no longer the hard part; judging which applicants are credible is. A CV that is fluent, keyword-aligned and free of obvious errors tells a recruiter much less than it once did, so the document is losing its value as a reliable signal.

For organisations, this is an experience problem on both sides of the table. Candidates may feel pressure to optimise their applications for machine-like screening, while recruiters face extra verification work that slows decisions and adds friction to the process. Any AI-enabled hiring operation that focuses only on speed risks adding cost at the verification stage.

The Renascence take

The CV was always a weak proxy for ability. Generative AI has simply exposed how much trust the process was resting on a document that cost little to polish.

Most readers will focus on the fact that AI writes CVs, but the more useful question is why the CV was ever treated as evidence of capability. Behavioural economics suggests people anchor on whatever signal is easiest to read, and a fluent CV is now a signal that anyone can manufacture. Customer-obsessed talent teams should move verification earlier, using structured tasks, work samples and short, role-specific conversations that reveal how a candidate actually thinks. Treat the CV as the start of the conversation, not the test.