The AI Doom Loop: When Both Sides of Hiring Use AI, Everyone Loses Signal

In Fortune's piece on hiring's "vicious cycle," Greenhouse CEO Daniel Chait gave the problem a name: "We've called that the AI doom loop. Everyone's using their own AI to solve their own problem, but it's making the whole system worse."

It's worth spelling out how that loop works, because it explains why adding one more AI filter on the employer side rarely helps.

How the loop feeds itself

• Candidates use AI to write resumes and cover letters tailored to each posting, so applying to 200 jobs costs about as much effort as applying to 5 used to.
• Employers, buried in the extra volume, use AI and keyword tools to filter.
• The filters look for matches with the posting, which is exactly what the candidates' AI was optimizing for.
• Both sides' tools get better at the same game, and the output (a polished document that matches the posting) stops telling anyone anything.

Chait's point, also quoted in the article, is that this is the first time both sides are unhappy at once: "The market just isn't working for either side."

Breaking the loop means changing the input

AI isn't the problem on its own. The problem is screening on an input that AI can generate for free. A better filter reading the same AI-written resume is still reading an AI-written resume.

A structured written interview is a different input. It asks a candidate to reason through questions about their own work, in their own words, at the moment of answering. We also record behavior along the way: paste events, the share of each answer that was pasted rather than typed, and answers submitted suspiciously fast. Those feed an integrity score and fraud-risk rating that sit next to the candidate's scores.

To be clear, we're not anti-AI. Two of the 17 interview questions ask directly how the candidate uses AI tools in their work, because practical AI skill is something employers want. The line we draw is between a candidate who uses AI well and a candidate whose interview was written by it.

You don't win the AI doom loop with a better filter. You get out of it by screening on something the other side's AI can't write for them.