There's an asymmetry here that bothers me. Companies increasingly use AI to screen candidates (resume parsing, AI interviews, automated rejections), but if a candidate uses AI to help write their resume or prepare answers, it's considered dishonest.

The deeper issue is what this signals about how the company values the relationship. An interview is supposed to be bidirectional — the candidate is also evaluating the company. When you replace that with an AI bot, you're essentially saying "we'll evaluate you, but we won't give you the opportunity to evaluate us." That's a red flag regardless of the technology involved.

That said, I can see a narrow use case where AI pre-screening might actually be more fair than human screening — removing unconscious bias from initial rounds, standardizing questions, giving every candidate the same amount of time. The problem is when it's used to scale rejection rather than to improve the process for candidates.