ATG Entertainment USA

Lauren Casimir is a talent acquisition and HR executive with more than 18 years of experience in workforce strategy, executive search, labor relations and global compliance. She aligns talent infrastructure with business growth, operational efficiency and enterprise risk management.

When Recruiting Means Checking Whether Candidates Are Real

Let me tell you about the moment I realized my job had changed forever.

I was 12 minutes into a Zoom interview with a senior data engineer. Great résumé, perfect keywords, answers so polished they could have been framed and hung in a museum. Then I asked him to give me a thumbs up.

He froze. Not a ‘let me think’ freeze. A ‘buffering… please wait’ freeze. His face slid half an inch to the left while his head stayed put, like a sticker peeling off the bathroom wall of a gas station rest stop. Talk about wasting my time on a Taco Tuesday, I was interviewing a filter.

Welcome to talent acquisition in the age of AI, where my job description now includes ‘detective,’ ‘exorcist,’ and ‘professional eyeball tracker.’

The Eyes Never Lie, but They Do Wander

Here's what nobody tells you about modern interviews: the most important body part on camera is not the mouth. It's the eyes.

I ask a simple question like, ‘tell me about a time you handled a difficult stakeholder.’ Then I watch the candidate's eyes drift slowly to the left, then to the right and then back to the left, like they are watching a very slow tennis match. That's not deep thought. That's reading.

Somewhere just off-screen, ChatGPT is writing their personality in real time. They are not remembering their career. They are reading it for the first time, just like me.

My favorite was the candidate who answered, ‘As an AI language model, I don't have personal experiences, but…’ Then, without missing a beat, he finished the sentence confidently. Sir, you just outed yourself. You were a robot reading a robot.

I Now Ask for Virtual High Fives

Fifteen years ago, my biggest worry was a typo on a résumé. Today I'm asking grown professionals to turn their heads side to side, give me a virtual high five and wave like they just got caught on the Jumbotron at a baseball game.

Why? Because deepfakes can't handle the weird stuff. Real humans move like, well, humans. We fidget. We touch our hair. We lean in when we are excited and slump when we are tired. Our hands do things our brains didn't approve.

“We need less energy perfecting keyword filters and more energy on real, human-to-human interviews.”

Deepfakes move like a hostage video filmed in a wind tunnel. Too smooth, then suddenly glitchy. A blink every 47 seconds, exactly. Earrings that vanish when they tilt their head. One guy's high five went straight through his own face, and he just kept talking about agile methodology.

Honestly, it is the same energy as people using AI photos for their Hinge profile pictures. Babe, we are going to meet eventually. The jawline is not going to survive the Starbucks lighting.

You Can't Fake a Career Out Loud

In over 15 years, I have interviewed bartenders, CEOs, CFOs, dog walkers, data scientists, engineers and general managers of Broadway theater venues. Wildly different worlds, one shared truth:

Once a real human starts talking about their actual job, you can hear it.

Ask a real bartender why you shake some cocktails and stir others, and their whole face lights up. They'll tell you about dilution, texture, the guest who orders a dirty martini, but not too dirty and what a Saturday night with a broken ice machine feels like. They talk with their hands. They wince at the memory.

Ask a fake bartender, and you get: ‘Shaking incorporates air and chills the beverage efficiently.’ Thank you, Wikipedia.

The same goes for the C-suite. A real CEO doesn't recite leadership principles. They tell you about the payroll that almost didn't clear, the board member they had to win over and the decision that cost them sleep for a month. A real CFO gets a little twitchy when you say ‘cash flow.’ A real theater GM has a story about a show going on while something backstage was very much on fire. Experience has texture. It has scars, tangents and inside jokes. AI has bullet points.

Recruiters: Stop Obsessing Over the Résumé

Yes, résumé screening is brutal right now, especially in tech. AI writes beautiful résumés for anyone with Wi-Fi. Every applicant is apparently a ‘results-driven, cross-functional visionary.’ The ATS is drowning. But the résumé was never the real test. The conversation is.

We need less energy perfecting keyword filters and more energy on real, human-to-human interviews. Zoom to Zoom. Face to face. Personality, curiosity, how someone thinks on their feet when you ask a follow-up they didn't prep for. Because AI can answer the first question, it is the third follow-up that breaks it.

Believe Me When I Tell You: We Know in Under 20 Minutes

To every candidate thinking about letting a bot do the talking: a seasoned industry pro will catch you. Not in an hour. Not after a skills test. In under 20 minutes.

The eyes drifting, the pause before every answer, the suspiciously perfect grammar from someone whose cover letter said ‘I'm passionate about this roll,’ the total silence when we ask, ‘What's the worst day you ever had at work?’ And boom. I got you, AI Sally. I see it.

Natural body language and natural answers will always win. Real talent shows up messy, specific, a little nervous and unmistakably human. So be human. Give me the thumbs up. Talk with your hands. Tell me about the ice machine. And please, for the love of all that is holy, make sure your face stays attached to your head.