Reflecting on human competencies in the era of AI-driven recruitment: a Corpus-Assisted Discourse Study of Curricula Vitae

Over the last few years, a large amount of research has been carried out with the specific purpose of outsourcing to AI systems the evaluation of candidates through Curricula Vitae screening. In essence, AI applications are now used to scan CVs with the aim of scoring or ranking candidates, and matching candidate profiles with job openings to identify the best fit. This paper firstly speculates on how AI tools applied in hiring processes appear to align with - and even reinforce - the dominant Competency-based HRM paradigm, by treating the human competence at work as something observable, measurable, and even predictable. By focusing on the narrative and discursive dimension of a Curriculum Vitae, whose narrative structure is able to reveal a comprehensive self-representation of candidates, beyond traditional metrics and standardised benchmarks, this paper adopts a Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies approach to the analysis of résumés. In fact, this research is based on a corpus of CVs of recent graduates from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. By comparing the way they navigate and complete standardised sections on competencies and free-text areas which allow them to express themselves, this study examines how candidates construct and represent their professional identities in CVs, thus suggesting a perspective on the notion of competence that results from the interplay between information included - or not - in traditional quantitative indicators and textual fields.