What the Hiring Headlines Get Wrong About Gen Z, AI, and Personality Tests

Every week it feels like there's another headline telling us what to believe about hiring.

"Gen Z doesn't know how to work."

"AI is rejecting resumes before a person ever sees them."

"Personality assessments can predict who's going to be successful."

Some of those headlines are based on legitimate research. Others come from lawsuits that are still making their way through the courts. And sometimes they start with one person's experience that somehow turns into a sweeping conclusion about an entire hiring trend.

Over the last few weeks, I've had way too many browser tabs open reading research, legal filings, industry reports, and articles about hiring. One source led to another, and before long I realized they all had something in common. By the time the information reached LinkedIn, TikTok, or your favorite podcast, a lot of the nuance had disappeared.

That made me curious enough to stop reading everyone else's interpretation and go back to the original sources. I wanted to understand what the research actually said, where people agreed, where they didn't, and what all of it means for someone trying to make good career decisions.

If you've spent any time on LinkedIn lately, you've probably seen someone sharing a story about Gen Z. Sometimes it's a manager frustrated by an interview. Sometimes it's a recruiter talking about professionalism. Sometimes it's a post claiming employers have stopped hiring an entire generation.

As I followed those conversations, I kept coming back to the same question: Are we talking about a generation, or are we talking about a handful of experiences that have turned into assumptions?

There's no question that some employers have had frustrating experiences with early-career employees. At the same time, this is also a generation that entered college, internships, and the workforce during one of the most disruptive periods we've seen in decades. Those two things can both be true.

I also think expectations have quietly shifted. Entry-level employees are now expected to show up with internship experience, strong communication skills, business awareness, technical expertise, and increasingly, some level of AI literacy. Those are all valuable skills, but they're also things most professionals develop over time rather than bringing with them on their first day.

The conversation is more complicated than "Gen Z is the problem," and I think it's worth slowing down long enough to understand why.

The other conversation I wanted to unpack was AI in hiring because the headlines have been moving much faster than the research.

The Workday lawsuit and the Stanford study are often mentioned together, but they're answering two different questions. One is a legal case that's still moving through the courts. The other is a research study examining how one assessment platform influenced hiring recommendations across multiple employers.

Neither one confirms everything that's been claimed online, but both raise important questions about how hiring technology is developed, evaluated, and used.

One finding from the Stanford study really stood out to me. Hiring outcomes could look relatively balanced when viewed across an entire company, while individual job openings told a different story. That's the kind of detail that's easy to lose once a research paper becomes a headline.

In the episode, I walk through both the lawsuit and the study because I think they're worth understanding, not just reacting to.

This is probably where my own experience influenced the conversation the most.

I've spent years using personality assessments in career development, leadership, and coaching, and I think they're incredibly valuable tools when they're used for the purpose they were designed to serve.

Hiring is a different conversation entirely, and it deserves to be approached with a bit more care and context.

One of the concerns I have is how quickly personality preferences can become hiring preferences, especially when comments about looking for an extrovert, wanting a particular personality type, or deciding someone isn't a culture fit start to blur the line between legitimate job requirements and simply describing the kinds of people we enjoy working with, which aren't always the same thing.

In the episode, I also explain the difference between personality assessments, cognitive ability tests, and skills assessments because they're often discussed as though they're interchangeable, even though they aren't, and understanding that distinction changes the conversation.

One of the reasons I wanted to record this episode is because it's easy to feel like the hiring process is happening to you.

The reality is that some parts of it are outside your control, as employers will continue experimenting with new technology, researchers will keep publishing new studies, and lawsuits will continue working their way through the legal system.

What we can do is stay curious enough to read beyond the headline before letting it shape how we think about our own careers.

That's really the idea behind what I call Realistic Reality. Every career exists within a broader environment that includes hiring trends, technology, workplace expectations, and the labor market. Understanding that environment doesn't mean you have to agree with every headline. It simply means you're making career decisions based on reality instead of reaction.

If you'd like to hear the full conversation—including the research, the Workday lawsuit, the Stanford study, personality assessments, and what I think it all means for your career—you can watch or listen to the full episode of Control Your Career wherever you get your podcasts.

NACE Job Outlook 2025

Job Outlook 2025 – Spring Update

The Gap in Perceptions of New Grads' Competency Proficiency and Resources to Shrink It

The NACE Take: Who Is the Early Career Gen Z Professional?

LinkedIn Workforce Confidence Survey

Workday Must Face California Lawsuit Over AI Bias in Job Screening Tools (Reuters)

Workday Will Likely Face California Claims in Sprawling AI Bias Lawsuit (Reuters)

Workday Must Face Novel Bias Lawsuit Over AI Screening Software (Reuters)

Stanford AI Hiring Research Algorithmic Monocultures in Hiring (working paper)

AI Hiring Tools Can Yield Racial Bias and Systemic Rejection

AI Hiring Tools Are Biasing Job Decisions

Q&A: Algorithmic Monoculture in Hiring

https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/news/qa-algorithmic-monoculture/

Myers-Briggs: The Myers-Briggs Company

MBTI Manual (Fourth Edition)

https://shop.themyersbriggs.com/en/mbti-manual-fourth-edition

MBTI Step II

https://www.themyersbriggs.com/en-US/Products-and-Services/MBTI-Step-II

EEOC: Employment Tests and Selection Procedures

https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/employment-tests-and-selection-procedures

Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures

https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/questions-and-answers-clarify-and-provide-common-interpretation-uniform

SIOP

Principles for the Validation and Use of Personnel Selection Procedures

https://www.siop.org/Business-Resources/Uniform-Guidelines-and-Principles

Bureau of Labor Statistics

https://www.bls.gov/

Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/

Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)

https://www.bea.gov/