More than half of Australian workers (57%) have already used AI to support a job search or prep for an interview. That’s well above the global average of 43%. According to new research from Morgan McKinley, reported by ITBrief AU, Australian workers are among the most AI-active job seekers on the planet.

Good for them. Now the question is: what does that mean for you, the person on the other side of the hiring table?

The candidate you’re interviewing practiced with AI

Here’s what’s actually happening. The person who just sent you that polished CV and knocked your application questions out of the park? They may have spent the week before running mock interviews with ChatGPT. Refining their cover letter with Claude. Getting their LinkedIn headline tightened by Gemini.

That’s not cheating. It’s just how job searching works in 2026.

But it does mean your old filters are broken. A tidy application no longer tells you much. Neither does a confident-sounding interview answer. You need to get better at figuring out what someone can actually do, not just how well they prepared.

Skills-based screening is your friend now

The practical response isn’t to ban AI prep or try to detect it. That’s a losing battle. Shift your screening toward things AI can’t fake: real-world problem-solving, working through a scenario live, showing their thinking out loud.

Three things AU small businesses can do right now:

Give them a task, not just questions. A short paid work test, a relevant scenario to walk through, a quick call where you workshop a problem together. These tell you more than any answer to “where do you see yourself in five years.”

Write better job ads with AI. If candidates are using AI to get sharper, you should be using it to write clearer job descriptions that attract the right people and filter out the wrong ones. AI is very good at helping you clarify what you actually need.

Ask about AI directly. Make it part of your process. How do they use AI tools in their work? What have they built with them? You want people who are already using these tools well, not people hiding it.

The fear underneath the polish

Here’s the part that doesn’t get talked about enough. That 57% stat isn’t just ambition. It’s anxiety.

The same Morgan McKinley research found that 42% of Australian employees believe their role could be affected by restructuring, automation, or cost-cutting, which is higher than the 37% global average. Only 43% of employees globally feel secure in their current role. And 49% plan to actively look for a new job in the next six months.

People are moving because they’re worried about what’s coming. They’re using AI to hunt for work partly because AI is what they’re scared of.

If you’re a small business hiring right now, that’s actually useful context. The candidates in your pipeline may be exceptionally motivated. But they’re also watching closely: whether your business looks stable, whether you have a plan, and whether you’re the kind of employer who invests in people or treats headcount as a spreadsheet line.

Fifty-six percent of employees globally say their employer is not investing enough in learning and development. That’s a gap you can close. Talking openly about how you think about AI, what it means for roles at your company, and how you’re helping your team develop is a real competitive advantage in hiring right now.

What not to do

One last thing. Forty-six percent of employees worldwide are uncomfortable with AI being used to assess their interview performance. Automated scoring, sentiment analysis, AI-powered screening tools that rank candidates without human review: these aren’t just ethically murky, they’re not suited to small business hiring where fit and context matter enormously.

Don’t outsource the judgment call. Use AI to write better ads, prep smarter questions, do faster research on candidates. Keep the actual assessment human.

Your candidates came prepared. Time to make sure your process is too.