Recruitment has become a bit of a mess. Candidates don't trust employers. Employers don't trust applications. Recruiters are drowning in AI-generated CVs. Candidates are being rejected by machines they may not know exist. People are applying for jobs that may not really be jobs. Employers complain about receiving too many applications while simultaneously making it possible to apply for a job in roughly the same time it takes to order a pizza.
Everyone has responded to everyone else's bad behaviour by deploying more technology. We appear to have automated ourselves into an arms race.
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AI didn't create this mess, by the way. It didn't invent ghosting, bullshit job adverts, unpaid candidate assignments, six-round interview processes, hidden salary bands or employers advertising jobs they weren't committed to filling. We've managed all of those perfectly well by ourselves. AI has simply made some of our bad habits considerably easier to scale.
So rather than write another article complaining about how recruitment is broken, I thought I'd suggest some workable and sensible rules for fixing it. This isn't draft legislation. I'm not a lawyer, I've conducted precisely zero regulatory impact assessments, and I'm sure there are edge cases I've missed. Some of these ideas would need exemptions, thresholds and rather more thought than I'm going to give them here.
But none requires us to reinvent capitalism. Governments around the world have already started experimenting with pieces of this. Some appear to be working. Some don't go far enough. Others demonstrate quite nicely how a good idea can become fairly useless if nobody bothers enforcing it.
So, dear Government, here are six things I think we should try.
1. Tell me whether a human rejected me
Every rejection email should contain a simple disclosure:
Application decision: Human review / Automated decision / Automated assessment with human review.
If I spent an hour applying for a job and an algorithm decided in four seconds that I wasn't suitable, I think I'm entitled to know that.
This isn't particularly radical. New York City already has Local Law 144, which requires employers using certain automated employment decision tools to notify candidates about their use and conduct bias audits. In the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office says that where significant recruitment decisions are made solely through automation, candidates should be told and have rights including challenging the decision and requesting human review. In 2026, the ICO said it had spoken to more than 30 employers about automated recruitment and written to 16 organisations that subsequently committed to improving their practices.
Both are steps in the right direction, but I don't think they go far enough. The disclosure shouldn't be buried somewhere in the privacy notice candidates clicked through nine weeks earlier. Put it on the decision itself.
New York also provides a useful warning about what happens when regulation becomes too easy to sidestep. A 2025 New York State Comptroller audit found significant weaknesses in enforcement. The regulator had received only two complaints during the audit period, while the Comptroller's own review of 32 companies identified at least 17 instances of potential non-compliance.
Our version doesn't need to be complicated. Human. Machine. Both. Candidates shouldn't need to conduct an investigation to find out who rejected them.
2. Every job advert gets a birth date and an expiry date
Every advertised job should tell candidates two things:
First advertised: 4 September 2026
Applications close: 30 September 2026
And reposting the vacancy doesn't reset the first date. If the exciting new Head of Marketing opportunity you're considering has actually been advertised continuously since February, you should be able to see that.
Employers could extend closing dates. Hiring plans change, searches take longer than expected and sometimes you simply can't find the right person. That's fine. But that history stays visible.
I'd also require employers to state whether the advert represents a genuine current vacancy. If you're building a pipeline for jobs you regularly hire, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Just call it what it is: Talent Pool / Future Opportunities. No current vacancy.
New Jersey legislators are currently considering a bill requiring job adverts to state whether there is an existing vacancy and, where there is one, provide an estimated hiring timeframe. Anticipated vacancies would have to be labelled as such, and those listings would expire after 120 days. The proposal also requires filled postings to be removed and allows enforcement action against non-compliant employers.
I like it, but I'd still add the original posting date.
I also wouldn't try to ban jobs that remain unfilled. Singapore's Ministry of Manpower made the reasonable point when asked about ghost jobs in Parliament in January 2026 that vacancies can legitimately disappear or remain unfilled because business plans change or suitable candidates aren't found.
The sensible rule is therefore not that every advertised vacancy must eventually produce a hire. It's that employers have to be honest about what they're advertising and candidates should be able to see how long they've been advertising it.
Honesty, even if forced like this, could help to rebuild some of the damaged trust of recent years.
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3. If you want candidates to do work, pay them
I realise this one will upset some people, but if you ask a candidate to produce substantive bespoke work as part of your recruitment process, you should pay them for it.
My entirely unscientific starting suggestion is $100 an hour, with the expected number of hours agreed before the candidate begins. Want someone to prepare a three-hour strategy presentation? $300. Want six finalists to do it? $1,800.
I suspect the moment those assignments start costing money, somebody in the business will ask whether six people really need to spend three hours doing them. And that's the idea.
I'm not suggesting employers pay someone $100 for completing a 15-minute numerical reasoning test or demonstrating a basic skill during an interview. There is an obvious difference between assessing someone's ability and asking them to spend half a day producing bespoke work for your company.
Some employment law already recognises that distinction. Australia's Fair Work Ombudsman says a brief supervised demonstration of skills can legitimately be unpaid, but once a trial goes beyond what is reasonably necessary to demonstrate those skills, the work should be paid. It explicitly suggests paid casual employment or probation where employers need longer to assess someone.
I'd go further. A candidate shouldn't have to prove that the employer commercially benefited from the work. If you want three, four or five hours of someone's professional expertise, put some skin in the game.
Right now, asking ten candidates to complete a four-hour assignment costs the employer nothing and costs the candidates a combined 40 hours. Introduce even a modest financial cost and I suspect we'd discover that quite a few "essential" candidate assignments weren't especially essential after all.
4. If it can automatically disqualify me, tell me before I apply
If something can automatically exclude someone from consideration, they should know before they spend time applying.
Degree required? Say so. Visa sponsorship unavailable? Say so. Must live within a certain location? Say so. Specific certification essential? Say so. Minimum experience? Say so. Salary expectations above the approved budget? Perhaps publish the darn budget.
And if an automated system is going to assess or rank me using particular information, tell me that too.
I'm not suggesting employers publish proprietary algorithms or explain the mathematics behind a machine-learning model. Nobody needs a 46-page technical appendix before applying for an accounts job. Candidates should simply understand the criteria and information that can determine whether they progress.
The UK Information Commissioner's Office is already moving in this direction. Its 2026 guidance says employers using automated decision-making should clearly explain when it is happening, how the tools work in the recruitment process and how they might affect an application.
I'd make the practical requirement much simpler. Before someone clicks Apply, give them a plain-English Hiring Transparency Notice:
Automated CV screening: Yes
AI candidate ranking: Yes
Knockout questions: Yes
Psychometric assessment: No
Video analysis: No
Previous applications considered: Yes
Then answer one more question: Can any of these automatically exclude you from the process?
If the answer is yes, tell the candidate which ones.
That seems a fairly modest thing to ask before somebody hands over their employment history, personal data and however much time your application process requires.
5. Job adverts should tell you the actual deal
Can we finally kill "competitive salary"?
Competitive with what? Your competitors? The market median? The cheapest person you think might accept the job? A number somebody in finance came up with in 2023?
If you can't tell candidates what your salary is competitive with, stop calling it competitive!
Salary transparency laws are already spreading rapidly, and this is one area where we have decent evidence that regulation changes behaviour. A 2025 NBER study examining US pay-transparency laws found that they increased the share of job postings containing salary information by around 30 percentage points. Across three datasets, the researchers also found wage increases of 1.3% to 3.6%, with no evidence of reductions in employment, job postings or employer requirements for skills and education.
Employers were required to disclose more information and, broadly, they did. Wages rose modestly and there was no evidence in the study that hiring collapsed as a result.
Compliance still isn't perfect. Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimated that around 24% of job adverts covered by early pay-transparency mandates were still failing to include salary information as of January 2025. Passing a law and enforcing it are two rather different things.
I'd also require employers to publish some basic salary history. Tell candidates not only what the job pays today, but what happened to employee pay over the previous three years.
Most EVPs have a gap. Few measure it. TGS quantifies the Credibility Gap, the distance between what an employer promises and what employees experience across six drivers.
Keep it simple. For each year, publish the percentage increase in the company's total salary bill attributable to pay rises for existing employees, ideally alongside the average increase per employee. That gives candidates some indication of whether salaries actually move once people are through the door.
A company advertising a role at $100,000 might look quite different if candidates can see that existing employee salaries have risen by 1% a year while inflation has been running considerably higher. Equally, an employer with a strong record of increasing pay should get some credit for it.
We spend a lot of time forcing transparency around the salary used to attract someone into a company. I'd quite like some transparency around what employers historically do with salaries once they've got them there.
I'd go further than salary anyway. A job advert should explain the basic deal.
What do I get? Salary range. Realistic bonus or commission. Meaningful benefits. Location. Required office attendance. Flexibility. Contracted hours. Significant working conditions.
What do you expect? Actually essential skills. Qualifications where genuinely necessary. Experience. Travel. Location. Hours. Anything else that materially affects whether someone should apply.
And please distinguish required from preferred.
This doesn't need to turn every job advert into an employment contract. Candidates should simply be able to understand the broad exchange before giving an employer their time and data.
We're supposed to be advertising jobs. Telling people what the job actually offers would be a useful place to start.
6. Once candidates invest serious time, you owe them basic communication
Applying for a job doesn't entitle someone to a weekly phone call from the CEO. If 10,000 people click Easy Apply, expecting personalised feedback for everyone isn't remotely realistic.
But the relationship changes once an employer starts asking more from someone. An interview is different from an application. Three interviews are different again. Three interviews, an assessment and a presentation represent a fairly substantial investment from someone who isn't even being paid by you.
At that point, disappearing for six weeks shouldn't be acceptable.
I'd introduce a basic candidate communication SLA. Once somebody has completed an interview or substantive assessment, the employer must update them at least every 14 days until the process concludes.
That doesn't mean personalised feedback or even a decision. It could simply be: You're still under consideration. The process has been delayed. The role has been put on hold. We've hired someone else.
New Jersey's proposed legislation is already heading in this direction. Under the proposal, employers who interview a candidate would have to tell them within the advertised hiring timeframe whether the position has been filled or, if it hasn't, whether they're still being considered.
I'd make the obligation recurring. Fourteen days may not be the perfect number. Make it 21 if that works better in practice. I'm much more interested in the principle than the exact SLA.
The more time and effort an employer asks a candidate to invest, the greater its obligations to that candidate should become.
That feels like a reasonable foundation for a modern recruitment process.
This isn't about banning AI
Whenever regulation and recruitment appear in the same sentence, somebody assumes we're trying to return hiring to 1997. That's not the idea here.
Use AI. Use matching algorithms. Automate administration. Screen large applicant pools. Use assessments. Let technology remove tedious work from recruiters so they can spend more time doing useful things.
What we shouldn't automate away is accountability. If a machine rejects someone, tell them. If data is being used to judge someone, tell them what data. If you're advertising a job, tell candidates whether it actually exists and how long you've been trying to fill it. If you want hours of work from someone, pay them. If you know what the job pays, say so. If someone has spent six hours talking to your company, don't vanish.
None of that seems especially hostile to employers. It's mostly the sort of transparency we would expect in plenty of other transactions. But, sadly, it's no longer happening voluntarily and it's hurting the whole market.
We've already run some of the experiments
The encouraging thing is that this isn't entirely a wishlist. Governments have already tried pieces of it, which means we have at least some evidence about what happens next.
Research into US pay-transparency laws suggests they have forced significantly more employers to publish salary information without reducing employment or job postings. Australia's Fair Work Ombudsman already recognises that there is a point at which an unpaid trial becomes work and should be paid.
New York City has established that automated hiring tools deserve specific transparency and scrutiny, although a New York State Comptroller audit also shows how much a rule can lose its teeth when compliance is difficult to identify and enforcement is weak. The UK Information Commissioner's Office is already telling employers that candidates should know when significant decisions are automated and may have rights to challenge them.
Your employees know the truth. Does your EVP? At Fathom we measure the "Credibility Gap" between your promise and their reality.
New Jersey legislators are considering rules requiring employers to distinguish real vacancies from anticipated ones and communicate with candidates they've interviewed. Those are proposals, not laws, and we don't know whether they'll pass, let alone whether they'll work. But they're aimed at frustrations candidates have been complaining about for years.
So we're not starting from scratch. We have pieces of the puzzle scattered across different countries and jurisdictions. Some are laws. Some are regulatory guidance. Some are bills that may never become law. The $100 candidate-work rule and a universal first-advertised date are simply suggestions from me.
I'd quite like to see somebody build this out further and drive it forwards.
Recruitment needs a new deal
For years, recruitment operated on a fairly simple exchange. An employer had a job. A candidate wanted a job. They exchanged information and tried to work out whether there was a fit.
Technology has changed the economics of that exchange. It costs candidates almost nothing to fire off another AI-assisted application, so employers receive more applications. Employers respond with more automation, so candidates receive less human interaction. Candidates respond by automating even more of their job search. Employers trust applications less, add more assessments and screening, and complain about candidate quality.
Around we go, with trust disappearing in both directions.
I don't think another recruitment platform, cleverer AI model or employer-brand campaign fixes that on its own. We probably need some new rules, but they don't need to guarantee everybody an interview, prevent employers rejecting people or require humans to manually read 50,000 CVs. They need to restore some basic reciprocity.
Candidates give employers their personal data, employment history, qualifications, time and sometimes hours of professional work. In return, employers should provide some honesty about the job, transparency about the process, clarity about the technology they're using, payment when they ask for actual work, and the basic courtesy of telling people what's going on.
It doesn't seem like an especially radical new deal, which perhaps says something about how far the old one has slipped.
Takeaways
Candidates should know when AI rejected their job application.
Employers should disclose whether a hiring decision was made by a human, an automated system, or a combination of both.
Ghost jobs need greater transparency.
Every job advert should show when the role was first advertised, when applications close, and whether there is a genuine vacancy or the employer is simply building a future talent pool.
Candidate assignments should be paid work.
If an employer asks candidates to spend hours producing bespoke presentations, strategies, designs, code or other substantive work during the recruitment process, they should be paid for their time.
Automated hiring criteria shouldn't be hidden.
Candidates should know before applying which requirements, data and AI recruitment tools could automatically screen them out of the hiring process.
Salary transparency should go beyond the starting salary.
Job adverts should disclose realistic pay ranges, benefits, flexibility and working conditions, while employers should also provide historical data showing how employee salaries have increased over time.
Candidate communication should become a basic hiring obligation.
Once someone has invested significant time in interviews or assessments, employers should be required to provide regular updates rather than leaving candidates waiting indefinitely.
Better recruitment regulation doesn't mean banning AI.
AI can make hiring faster and more efficient, but automation shouldn't allow employers to avoid transparency, accountability or basic candidate fairness.
Recruitment needs a new deal between employers and candidates.
Candidates provide personal data, employment history, time and sometimes professional work. In return, employers should provide honest job adverts, transparent hiring processes and reasonable communication.
