Can you trust an AI-written CV?

Last reviewed 23 September 2026

What has changed

Applicants can now generate a tailored CV and cover letter for every job in seconds, and one-click apply makes it quick to send many applications. The result for employers is more applications, and applications that look more alike. Keyword matches and a confident writing style tell you less than they used to.

Why not just filter out AI-written CVs?

• Using AI to write a CV is not dishonest. Many good candidates use it the way people once used a friend who was good with words - especially people writing in a second language, or with dyslexia.
• AI detectors are unreliable. They produce false positives, and research has found they disproportionately flag writing by non-native English speakers as AI-generated (Liang et al., Patterns, 2023). Rejecting on a detector score risks unfairness - and indirect discrimination.
• It filters the wrong thing. Whether someone used AI to format their CV says nothing about whether they can do the job.

What to use instead

1. Treat the CV as a starting point, not the decision. Use it to spot what to ask about, not to rank people.
2. Ask about specifics. "Which truck types have you operated, and at what lift heights?" is hard to answer well without real experience, whoever wrote the CV.
3. Ask everyone the same questions. A structured screen compares people on the same evidence. See our screening questions by role.
4. Check what matters later, properly. Licences, certificates, references and right to work are verified with documents, not inferred from wording.

Where BeCareers fits

This is exactly why we built BeCareers the way we did. If the CV can't be trusted on its own, the fairest answer is to talk to every applicant. BeCareers reads each CV against your criteria, then asks each applicant about the gaps in a short conversation - in their own language - and gives you the transcript. See how it works.