The increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) to consider—or discard—job applications has prompted some job seekers to opt out of allowing their résumés and applications to be scanned by the technology, The Wall Street Journal reported. But opting out does not guarantee that their applications will be reviewed by a human.

New York City passed a law last year that allows job seekers to opt out of having their résumés and job applications evaluated by AI. In addition, some companies are extending the choice to non-New York applicants.  But employment lawyers and researchers warn that opting out may not work in the applicant’s favor.

Software has been used for years to screen out candidates who get rejected for reasons such as résumé gaps or failing to use the right combination of keywords, according to a 2021 Harvard study. But forgoing being screened by AI can hurt one’s chances because companies aren’t obligated to review all the applications they get.

“I’d say you’re more or less guaranteed not to be looked at,” Joseph Fuller, a professor at Harvard Business School who was the lead author on the study, told the Journal.

Two-thirds of U.S. adults said they wouldn’t want to apply for a job with an employer that used AI to help make hiring decisions, a 2023 Pew survey on AI in the workplace found. Among those surveyed, more than 70 percent opposed allowing AI to make a final hiring decision, while another 41 percent opposed using AI to review job applications. 

Athena Karp, chief executive of HiredScore, which supplies AI-powered hiring software to employers, told the Journal that AI can offer benefits to job seekers, such as scanning for other job postings at a company that might match an applicant’s skills, even when the person is rejected from the role initially sought. 

Jeff Sepeta, an IT manager in Chicago who works as a contractor, gets called in to troubleshoot problems and move on. But he said that he worried that an AI reviewing his résumé will judge him negatively if it misinterprets his short tenures, particularly when applying for noncontractor roles. “At least when I’m dealing with a human I can explain,” he told the Journal.

Another IT manager, Robert Kerans of Lake Bluff, Ill., agreed to AI vetting while applying for a technology-support manager role at Accenture and was rejected within 45 minutes. That made him question whether the system really worked because he believed he was well qualified for the role.

Accenture said that it uses AI to help inform its decision-making but that humans always have the final say on whether a candidate advances in the recruiting process. But Kerans has decided not to agree to AI vetting anymore.

“It can fail,” he told the Journal. “The reality is that having the human connection is more important.”