While overall UK unemployment is low at 5.2%, the number of jobseekers per vacancy has increased substantially from 1.9 per vacancy in the first quarter of 2025 to 2.6 in the first quarter of this year. More vacancies are being advertised, although that rate is slowing, probably due to the Iran War. And recent research shows that AI-powered job matching is driven by employer satisfaction not job seeker need. Overall, around 60% of job boards rely on employer payments and that means that candidate CVs are merely inventory, aimed at the paying customer. Recruitment software UK like Recruit so Simple, takes a different route. Because it’s designed for both recruitment agencies and HR teams, it’s carefully aligned to satisfy the needs of both client and candidate. It’s candidate database software, but configured to create the best outcomes for both sides – a system that relies on satisfaction in both directions.
AI and recruitment – the hidden truth
The average job board AI’s underlying algorithm can bluntly be summarised as ‘is this person what our funder is looking for?’ This creates a conflict, as AI sophistication allows it to focus more and more on the interests of its paying customers. Recent research from the University of Washington has discovered that AIs trained on what employers prefer will develop a preference for white-associated names 85% of the time and for male-associated names 52% of the time.
This is not evidence that the models were build with bias, it’s simply the case that they learned what employers were choosing and then focused on those preferences in their choices.
In the UK, it’s illegal to charge candidates for finding them work, which includes adding their CV to a job site – they can only be charged a fee if they opt for an additional service such as CV writing or career guidance. This means that recruitment software for small agencies, for example, has to be not only cost-effective but also to prioritise the best match possible to maximise revenue for the recruiter – it can’t be biased solely towards clients and their needs as that would limit the possibility for optimum success.
Finding good matches requires recruitment skills
Instead, Recruit so Simple’s recruitment CRM for agencies uses CV parsing as just one of a suite of tools that help recruiters to identify high quality candidates and to create the relationships with both clients and candidates that become long-lasting and productive on both sides.
