Are You Hiring the Candidate or the Prompt?
April 23, 2026, by Joanna Dziekonska
There is a quiet crisis playing out in hiring rooms that most businesses aren't ready to name.
Candidates arrive increasingly role-perfect. CVs well aligned, interview answers structured, personal narratives compelling. On paper and often in person, they pass the test, reflecting what the job description asked for.
And yet something is missing that becomes more apparent once they're in the role.
We've spent years refining how we assess talent. Competency frameworks, interview panels, and psychometric tools designed to find the best person and reduce bias. What we didn't anticipate was a market that learned to reverse-engineer the process.
AI didn't create this problem. It accelerated it. And it goes both ways.
I've written about the illusion of a strong brand — positioning that looks credible but isn't anchored in real work. The AI-perfect candidate is the same pattern applied to hiring.
And here is where it gets more uncomfortable.
If a candidate can pass your process by optimising for it, your process is telling you more about its own limitations than about the person in front of you.
The question isn't only: to what extent did this candidate use AI to present themselves? It's: what does it reveal that your assessment couldn't tell the difference?
Businesses aren't short on hiring processes. What they're often short on is clarity about what they're actually assessing for, the experience of the person assessing, and the rigour to conduct it properly.
A candidate can be coached on competencies. They can optimise their narrative. They cannot fabricate judgment earned through real decisions, awareness that comes from having been wrong and knowing why, or the particular quality of thinking that only emerges under real pressure.
These are not things that can be gauged from a CV. They rarely show up in a first interview. They require a hiring process designed to surface depth rather than confirm expectations. Better yet, a recruiting strategy built around the right kind of direct search and referrals rather than volume.
The companies that build the strongest teams long-term aren’t the ones with the most sophisticated screening or AI-automated tools. They're the ones who know precisely what they're searching for, what they offer, and how to naturally attract the best talent, even when not actively looking.
AI hasn't changed what great candidates look like. It has simply made them harder to find and easier to imitate on paper.
The question worth sitting with isn't how to filter out from a mass of AI-generated candidates. It's whether your hiring process was really designed to find who matters and how you go about it.
Joanna
