What the BBC found: everyone's using AI to get hired

On September 18, 2026, BBC News released a video titled Everyone's using AI to get hired. Now what?. Its subjects are three young job seekers, an executive in recruitment and the head of an AI consultancy, and its question is whether AI has made hiring harder on both sides of the table. Below is a brief account of what the BBC found about AI in hiring. We have added a few comments, because video interviews are our business.

Application numbers

The average UK graduate vacancy attracted 38 applications twenty years ago. Last year the average was 140. In the past year alone, the three job seekers in the video had each submitted somewhere between 50 and over 200. The BBC's explanation has three parts: vacancies are fewer, graduates are at a record number, and AI tools have made applying fast. According to one survey the video cites, 73% of students and graduates turn to AI somewhere in the application process, to find openings, for instance, or to tailor a CV to a job description.

Employers screening with AI

Candidates and recruiters describe this differently. In a survey the video cites, 75% of candidates thought AI was screening CVs, yet only 21% of recruiters reported using it for that purpose. Matt Weston is a senior executive at Robert Half, a recruitment firm. He says CVs written by AI resemble one another so closely that genuine skills are harder to pick out on paper, which has his team putting more time into checking experience. A Financial Times article on recruiters going back to referrals also gets a mention.

The fairness of AI screening

Kate Young runs a consultancy whose clients use AI recruitment tools. Human hiring decisions, she points out, have never been free of problems. Her example is a candidate turned down for a weak handshake. She argues that a system built well, judging only what the job requires and surrounded by many safeguards, can strip out some of that bias.

Researchers have a name for another risk the video covers: algorithmic monoculture. If employers all rely on similar screening tools, the same people may be favored or rejected over and over. Ten applications then do not necessarily amount to ten independent chances.

Interviews conducted by AI

After screening, a candidate may face an AI avatar, or be asked to record answers to set questions while a timer runs. According to the World Economic Forum, such interviews can reduce recruiter bias and make hiring faster. The three job seekers disliked the experience. One had been told by an AI interviewer that they lacked empathy, and one described the experience this way: "It feels like I'm talking to a robot."

The consequence for live interviews

When applications are nearly indistinguishable, talking to a real person becomes the stage that tells each side the most. Remote interviews bring a difficulty of their own, though: AI interview assistants that follow the call, pick the question off the shared screen and put an answer in front of the candidate within seconds. Two of our articles cover this: how AI interview assistants work and the signs a candidate is using AI in your interview.

SecureInterview runs that conversation as a video interview in the browser, with a shared screen and chat, and the candidate joins from a link with no account and no download. More in what SecureInterview does in an interview and on how it works.