Hilda Kabushenga has a number on her mind: 1,500. That is how many jobs a single candidate can now apply for in one day, thanks to AI tools that make it effortless to customise a CV in seconds. As CEO of the African Talent Company, which runs Jobberman in Nigeria and Ghana and BrighterMonday in Kenya and Uganda, she has watched this shift play out in real time across her platforms, and it is creating a serious headache for hiring managers across the continent.
The numbers tell the story clearly. On BrighterMonday alone, there are roughly 1.2 million jobseekers and around 70,000 employers. What Kabushenga describes as a stagnation in new job listings means that a vacancy which once pulled in about 80 applications can now easily attract 200. More people are searching, but the number of new roles has not kept pace.
The AI factor makes the problem sharper. Candidates are using the technology to apply for roles they are genuinely not suited for, flooding inboxes with polished CVs that do not reflect real skills. For recruiters already wading through a larger pool, separating the qualified from the optimised becomes an exhausting and expensive exercise.
Employers are responding by going beyond the CV altogether. Kabushenga says competency-based assessments have become one of the African Talent Company's fastest-growing products this year. The logic is simple: hiring managers no longer want to take a candidate's word for what they can do. They want proof before the first interview is even scheduled.
Originally published by African Business.