AIHawk Turns the Table on Recruiters

The use of AI by talent acquisition teams has been explored by more articles, more panel discussions and more conference presentations than I can count. Now, in what seems like an inevitable step, AI has become available for job-seekers as well.

It comes in the form of a bot called Auto_Jobs_Applier_AIHawk. If you know a bit of Python, you can set it up to apply for hundreds of jobs a day on LinkedIn. Unless you want to tweak its work on the fly, it’s completely automated.

The bot, which is available on GitHub, is meant to “balance the use of artificial intelligence in the recruitment process,” AIHawk’s creator, Italian software developer Federico Elia, told 404 Media. “By automating repetitive tasks and personalizing applications, AIHawk reduces the time and effort required from candidates, increasing their chances of being noticed by employers,” he said.

Whether AIHawk delivers better job search results or simply clogs an employer’s ATS remains to be seen. Still, it should find a willing user base. For years, candidates have complained about the hiring process — from its clunkiness (enter your resume in the text field, then upload it as a pdf) to its weight in favor of employers (ghosting is acceptable … for the employer).

And, indeed, AIHawk already has thousands of users, reports 404 Media. To start, they must install Python, modify a bit of code and program an API key. Once that’s done, users enter information about themselves that the bot can tweak for a particular job or range of jobs. Career experts urge candidates to create a customized resume and cover letter for each position they apply for. AIHawk takes care of that by creating original answers to screening questions.

And AIHawk doesn’t just apply for jobs. It also identifies opportunities that it sees as aligning with the job seeker’s background.

AI for Job Seekers: Viability, Adoption and Reception

In a recent interview on my podcast PeopleTech, Geoff Webb, analyst at 3Sixty Insights and author, said the emergence of an AI tool for job seekers was inevitable, but not necessarily welcome.

“I think it speaks to this almost sort of sense of an arms race between recruiter and the recruitee, as far as getting through the process is concerned,” he told me. “It feels like it's almost becoming very adversarial between the people applying for jobs and the companies to which they are applying.”

He calls AIHawk “an unexpected but rather sobering twist to the story right now.”

Elia argues that AIHawk’s complementary approach — that is, putting AI in the hands of both candidates and employers — “fosters more targeted and meaningful connections between job seekers and employers.”

Whether candidates are attracted to the idea of more meaningful connections or simply blasting out applications to as many employers as possible isn’t clear. Overall, AIHawk users on GitHub report good results and plan to take full advantage of the bot’s capabilities.

“I’m gonna have it run 24/7,” wrote one user. Another said he used AIHawk to apply for more than 2,800 roles over three months, generating four interviews and one offer for a senior data engineer’s position. Not stellar statistics, but a job offer is a job offer.

A word of caution, though: AIHawk isn’t without bugs, so allowing it to run on its own can lead to problems. Sometimes, for instance, the bot submits incorrect information or provides responses that don’t align with the question they’re meant to address. On top of that, it sets up a situation where AI-generated job applications are reviewed by another AI. As 404 Media puts it, this creates “a bizarre loop where humans have essentially been removed from the job application and hiring process.”

The Ethical Dilemma of Machine vs. Machine

The idea that the talent sourcing process can occur without human intervention defeats the purpose of a well-managed search for both candidate and employer, Webb said.

“As you remove the person from the process, what are you left with? Essentially, you're left with their resume, and you're not hiring a resume,” he said. “At some point, the actual person has to turn up, interact with other actual people and do a job that needs to be delivered.”

He believes creating machine-to-machine interactions simply delays the point where both sides can make “an actual evaluative judgment” about whether there’s fit of candidate and team, candidate and company, and candidate and culture.

Whether industry experts have concerns or not, it seems AIHawk’s arrival on the recruiting scene marks the beginning of a new class of job-seeker tools. And already, similar products are under development to improve upon AIHawk’s approach. A company called JobMagic, for example, eliminates the need to know Python.

“My sense would be that this is the opening salvo in what is inevitably going to continue, that people are going to use these tools, the tools are going to be developed,” Webb said. “You’re going to see this [develop] as applicants automate the process of reaching further for more jobs, looking to get through the hoops that are put in place [as employers] filter the applicants and route them and rank them ... I would expect to see more and more of these tools coming up.”

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