Use AI in your search, and know how employers use it

By Justina Lydia · Reviewed 30 Oct 2026 · 3-minute read

The people I coach hear opposite advice about AI every week: use it for everything, or never touch it. Both sides of hiring now use it, so the useful question is where it helps you and where it costs you trust.

Where AI helps

1. Researching a company before an advice call or an interview: its recent news, its customers, the problems a team is likely facing. Check anything important against the company's own site.
2. Comparing a posting with your resume, to spot skills you have but haven't written down.
3. Drafting a first version of a message or a summary, which you then rewrite in your own words.
4. Cutting a connection note down to 200 characters.
5. Practising interviews: ask it to play the interviewer for a specific role, then answer out loud.

Where it costs you

Never let AI invent a number, a title or a skill. You'll be asked about it, and the two-minute test from the skills page applies to everything on your resume: if you can't talk about it for two minutes with an example, take it off.

Don't hide keywords in white text or add hidden instructions aimed at screening software. Employers are looking for it. In Greenhouse's 2025 survey, 65% of US hiring managers said they'd caught applicants using AI deceptively, and hidden prompt injections in resumes were 22% of those cases. At the same time, 41% of US job seekers admitted to trying prompt injections⁠^[1]. Getting caught can end your application with that employer.

Don't read AI-generated answers in a live interview. In the same survey, reading from AI scripts was the most common deception hiring managers named, at 32%⁠^[1].

Skip the auto-apply tools

Tools that apply to hundreds of jobs for you add to a pile that's already large. In Greenhouse's 2024 survey of job seekers in the US, UK and Germany, 38% said they were mass applying to roles⁠^[2]. In its 2025 survey, 49% of US job seekers said they were sending more applications than a year before⁠^[1]. That's the "thirty unrelated applications" problem from choosing a direction, done by software. A few applications written for the role, each paired with a note to a person, use your time better in my experience.

Expect AI on the employer's side

Recruiters use AI to search and to screen. LinkedIn's Hiring Assistant, an AI agent for recruiters, became available worldwide in English in September 2025⁠^[3]. LinkedIn says it builds searches that go "beyond standard keywords or filters", helps draft messages and "pre-screens interested candidates"⁠^[4].

Two practical steps follow from that:

1. Describe what you did in plain, full sentences in each LinkedIn Experience entry, and keep the posting's exact terms too, because people still skim for them.
2. Answer recruiter messages and screening questions accurately and promptly. If one is automated, it may still decide whether a person sees your profile.

Expect identity checks

Employers are more cautious now. In Greenhouse's 2025 survey, 74% of US hiring managers said they were more concerned about fake credentials, deepfakes or misrepresented experience than a year earlier⁠^[1]. So an ID check, a request to turn your camera on, or an in-person final round is normal, and it doesn't mean they doubt you in particular.

Follow each employer's policy

Some employers say in the posting or the interview invitation how they want AI used, or not used. Where they do, follow it. If it's unclear, ask the recruiter: "Is it all right to use AI tools to prepare, and are there any you'd rather I didn't use in the assessment?" Asking shows good judgement.