You can't spell Anthropic without ironic...
When Your Product Is Too Good to Use
Anthropic, the $15 billion AI company building “AI you can trust,” has a surprising rule for job seekers: don’t use AI when applying for jobs with them.
Yes, you read that right. They build AI tools designed to write like people… but don’t want people using them to write.
The company says it wants to evaluate “non-AI-assisted communication skills” and gauge candidates’ personal interest in the company. Understandable, in theory—nobody wants a cover letter written by Claude applying for a job at Claude.
But here’s the real issue: if AI-written resumes scare you that much, maybe the real problem isn’t the tech. It’s the old process that makes them useful.
Think about it, resumes and cover letters have been broken for decades. They’re templated, generic, and designed more for applicant tracking systems than human readers. Of course people are reaching for AI to level the playing field.
So before banning AI, maybe hiring leaders should ask themselves a harder question: is policy the solution, or is the process the problem?
Instead of forcing candidates into PDFs and portals, what if companies updated how they evaluate talent? Imagine a hiring funnel built around video introductions, conversations, and real human insights—where people are more than bullet points on a page.
Because the truth is, if your system can’t tell the difference between a great candidate and a great prompt… the system is what needs fixing.
AI isn’t the enemy of good hiring. Outdated processes are.
