Generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as chatbots, are helping job applicants and may even give them more leverage when applying and interviewing, The Financial Times (FT) reported.

One is a job coach bot called Prepper, developed by job search engine Adzuna. It can generate interview questions for more than one million live roles at large companies, in a variety of industries. For example, for a job in PwC’s actuarial practice, the chabot asks questions such as. “What skills do you think an actuarial consultant should have?” and “How would you explain actuarial concepts to a client who is not from a finance background?” the FT reported. For each question, the bot generates a score out of 100, indicating what worked well and what needs improvement.

“In the recent 12-18 months, it’s gone bananas,” Adzuna co-founder Andrew Hunter told the FT. “It’s of course very hyped at the moment, but there are lots of clever tools [to aid] recruitment, and help people find jobs more easily.”

While AI tools have been used over the past decade by employers to search for keywords in résumés and for video interviews, one organizational psychologist and expert in hiring technologies told the FT that generative AI tools are rebalancing the power dynamic towards applicants. “A lot of the recent improvements we have seen in AI are on the candidate’s side,” said Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. “A few years ago, hirers were pretending to use AI to look cool even if they weren’t. Now they are pretending not to use AI.”

Chamorro-Premuzic recently hired a candidate who admitted to having his CV, cover letter and application all written by a generative AI tool. He said that he respected the candidate’s honesty and decided it was worth hiring someone who was technologically savvy.

Some are concerned that these tools could portend the end of the traditional job process.

“Generative AI can create very good profiles—there may be a few mistakes, but only the individual will recognize them, not the employer,” Matt Jones of recruitment technology company Cielo, told the FT. “This raises the question about the relevance of reviewing CVs, cover letters and applications, particularly at the early career stage. I wonder if this is the death knell of the CV.”

Ayushman Nath, a second-year undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, told the FT that many of his peers have had ChatGPT write cover letters and applications that have allowed them to advance through the hiring process.

“From what I’ve experienced, it’s good at jumping through the initial barriers. The initial filtering rounds are unpersonalized, they feel very remote and dehumanized. Everything is so automated,” Nath said of today’s recruitment processes. Nath and his peers have also been subject to automated video interviews that are assessed by AI algorithms.

Grace Lordan, an economist at the London School of Economics and director of The Inclusion Initiative, which studies diversity in corporate settings, told the FT that AI-conducted interviews could help to remove an interviewer’s “affinity bias, or representative bias, which means choosing people who look like others in the organization.”

But even Adzuna’s Hunter warned that these tools cannot replace a self-written application.

“The caution I would give to jobseekers is that AI can act as a good co-pilot but don’t let the tech try and do it all for you,” he said.”  It’s very nascent tech, it will spit out cookie-cutter answers. If you let the initial interactions with the employer be fully run by AI, then you aren’t going to be able to do the job.”