Bot or not? Hiring finance talent in the AI era

Hiring for finance roles has historically been a challenge. Now, widespread AI use is making the task even more difficult.

AI—and its younger sibling, automation—have created a standoff of sorts between employers and job-seekers. HR departments and recruiters use AI and software to sift through the “piles” of resumes they receive and filter out the unsuitable candidates. (And let’s not get started on AI interviewers.) People on the hunt for jobs have adapted: Nearly half of US job candidates said they were applying to more positions to increase their chances of getting through the filters, in a 2025 survey from hiring platform Greenhouse. Also common? Using AI to tailor their resumes to job descriptions, even if, in some cases, the jobs aren’t good fits.

CFOs are witnessing this in real time. Mindr, a company that makes blood alcohol detection and other safety-related products, recently received “several hundred” applications after it posted an opening for a manager-level FP&A position, CFO Sonya Evanosky told CFO Brew. “Some of the resumes honestly just didn’t make sense,” she said, and it was obvious that some of them were AI-generated.

Scott Charles, CFO of benefits administration and well-being platform Personify Health, has also been hit by an avalanche of AI-generated resumes. His company got about 700 applications for a recent finance role, “and not one was what we were looking for,” he said. Sometimes Charles sees resumes containing odd phrasing that suggests they were composed by AI.

Charles, who leads a finance team of over 100 people and hires someone every month or two, said he’s also interviewed a prospect for a senior position who he believes was using AI to generate answers during the interview. “One of the candidates, you could see her eyes divert and scroll to the top of the screen, so you could tell she was reading AI prompts before responding,” he said. In fact, a whopping 91% of American hiring managers said they’ve “caught or suspected AI-driven candidate misrepresentation,” according to the Greenhouse report.

Banishing the bots. Thanks to AI, “you’ve got to be way more sophisticated than you were years ago” when hiring, Charles said. He and Evanosky shared the techniques they use to winnow the best candidates out of the clutter.

In video interviews, “make sure their camera’s on, make sure you’re watching their eyes,” Charles said. If you’re concerned that they might be reading answers from AI, “interrupt and redirect them,” he said, “because if they’re truly using AI, that’ll throw them off.”

Both CFOs suggest asking questions that test the candidates’ ability to think critically. For instance, Charles says he asks candidates something like, “‘If in one month revenue was down 10% versus the forecast, how would you determine why?’ Ask questions like this and probe to make sure they actually understand the answers,” he said. “AI wouldn’t be able to solve that.”

Similarly, Evanosky, whose finance team has about 23 people, said she might put up an income statement and say: “You’re going to meet with the head of this division in five minutes. What are the three things that you would want to focus in on, and why?” There aren’t necessarily right or wrong answers, she said, but it helps you see “where people’s mindset is and what they’re homning in on. That gives us some insight as to their problem-solving and critical thinking capabilities.”

Assessing AI prowess. Both Charles and Evanosky look for candidates who know how to use AI well and appropriately. As companies and individuals are at different levels of AI maturity, Evanosky said, particularly in finance, CFOs should ask candidates for specific examples of how they implemented AI on the job and what its impact was. Her most recent hire, she said, impressed her with how he’d used AI to compile sales data from several emails and Excel attachments into a daily report. “He had taken processes that took many hours and he had condensed them down into minutes,” she said.

Charles also asks candidates for examples of their AI use, but also tries to get an idea of their stance on AI in general. For that, he favors questions such as “How do you think AI can be leveraged to improve the business over the next two years?”

And he doesn’t shy away from the downsides of AI: One question he may ask is, “How do you think AI is overhyped?” Charles said. “And I think for me, AI has a role. I think everyone’s still trying to figure out exactly what that role is.”