We've had a few clients ask us lately how to spot, and stop, AI-written CVs. It's an understandable question. The CVs landing in inboxes are polished, well structured and often say all the right things. Something feels different, and not everyone trusts it.

But trying to ban or police AI-generated CVs is a fight you cannot win. It's also, we'd argue, the wrong fight altogether.

This genie is not going back in the bottle

Candidates are using AI to write and refine their CVs. Recruiters are using AI to draft job specs and shortlist notes. Employers are using AI to screen applications. This is simply how work gets done now, on every side of the hiring table.

You cannot reliably detect AI-assisted writing, and even if you could, what would you do with that information? Disqualify someone for using a tool that helps them communicate more clearly? That's not a defensible hiring criterion, and it's not one we'd advise any client to build a process around.

The honest starting point is this: written presentation has been raised to a new baseline. Nearly every CV you receive will now be well written, well formatted and confidently worded. That's simply the new normal, not a red flag.

The CV was never proof of anything

Here's the uncomfortable truth this whole debate is forcing us to confront: a CV was never reliable proof of ability. It was always a marketing document, written by the candidate, about the candidate, in the best possible light. AI has not broken that system. It has just made the marketing better.

What this means practically is that the CV needs to be treated for what it always should have been, a starting point for a conversation, not evidence to be trusted on its own. If your hiring process has been leaning on the CV as a proxy for competence, that gap was already there. AI has just made it more visible.

Test what AI cannot fake

The smarter response isn't to fight the tools. It's to redesign how you evaluate candidates so the things that matter get tested properly, in person, in real time.

Some things simply cannot be manufactured convincingly under pressure, regardless of how good the CV looks:

  • Depth of experience: Ask someone to walk you through a real project, including what went wrong and how they handled it. A thin CV dressed up in strong language falls apart quickly under specific follow-up questions.
  • Judgement: Present a scenario relevant to the role and listen to how they reason through it. You're not looking for the textbook answer, you're looking for how they think.
  • Pattern recognition: Ask what they'd do differently if they were starting the same project again. People with real experience have real answers. People without it tend to repeat generalities.
  • Accountability: Ask about a decision that didn't work out. How someone owns a mistake tells you far more than any CV bullet point ever could.
  • Technical understanding: If the role requires specific expertise, test it directly. A conversation about the detail will expose gaps that no amount of polished writing can hide.
  • Comfort with ambiguity: Give them an unclear brief and see how they respond. Real seniority shows up in how someone handles uncertainty, not in how neatly they describe past certainty.

None of this is new advice, exactly. Good interviewing has always worked this way. What's changed is the urgency. When the written layer of hiring becomes less reliable as a filter, the in-person layer has to work harder.

Where this leaves South African employers

For hiring leaders in South Africa, this is actually good news, not bad news. It's a reason to double down on the parts of recruitment that were always most valuable, proper interviews, reference checks that go beyond a tick-box call, and shortlists built on real assessment rather than keyword matching.

This is precisely why we run every search the way we do. Every shortlist we put forward has been met in person, by a partner, before a client ever sees a CV. We're not relying on the document to tell us who's good. We're relying on the conversation.

Technology has raised the quality of the packaging. Our job, and yours, is to make sure the product inside is real.

If you'd like to talk about how to build an interview process that tests for substance rather than presentation, we'd be glad to have that conversation. Get in touch with The Appointment Firm and let's talk about your next key appointment.