One of the UK’s biggest recruiters is accelerating a plan to switch towards more frequent face-to-face assessments as university graduates become increasingly reliant on using artificial intelligence to apply for jobs.

Teach First, a charity which fast-tracks graduates into teaching jobs, said it planned to bring forward a move away from predominantly written assignments – where AI could give applicants hidden help – to setting more assessments where candidates carry out tasks such as giving “micro lessons” to assessors.

The move comes as the number of people using AI for job applications has risen from 38% last year, to 50% this year, according to a study by the graduate employment specialist Bright Network.

Patrick Dempsey, the executive director for programme talent at Teach First, said there had been a near-30% increase in applications so far this year on the same period last year, with AI playing a significant role.

Dempsey said the surge in demand for jobs was partly due to a softening in the labour market, but the use of automation for applications was allowing graduates to more easily apply for multiple jobs simultaneously.

“The shift from written assessment to task-based assessment is something we feel the need to accelerate,” he said.

Dempsey said much of the AI use went undetected but there could be tell-tale signs. “There are instances where people are leaving the tail end of a ChatGPT message in an application answer, and of course they get rejected,” he said.

A leading organisation in graduate recruitment said the proportion of students and university leavers using AI to apply for jobs had risen to five out of 10 applicants. Bright Network, which connects graduates and young professionals to employers, found half of graduates and undergraduates now used AI for their applications.

More than a quarter of companies questioned in a survey of 15,000 people will be setting guidelines for AI usage in job applications, in time for the next recruitment season.

Kirsten Barnes, head of the digital platform at Bright Network, said employers had noticed a “surge” in applications.

“AI tools make it easier for candidates of any age – not just graduates – to apply to many, many different roles,” she said. “Employers have been saying to us that what they’re seeing is a huge surge in the volume of applications that they’re receiving.”

Breakthroughs in AI have coincided with downward pressure on the graduate and junior jobs market.

Dartmouth Partners, a recruitment agency specialising in the financial services sector, said it was increasingly seeing applicants using keywords written in white on their CVs. The words are not visible to the human eye, but would instruct a system to push the candidate to the next phase of the recruitment process if a prospective employer was using AI to screen applications.

Vacancies for graduate jobs, apprenticeships, internships and junior jobs with no degree requirement have dropped by 32% since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, according to research released last month by the job search site Adzuna. These entry-level jobs now account for 25% of the market in the UK, down from 28.9% in 2022, it found.

Last month, another job search site, Indeed, reported that university graduates were facing the toughest job market since 2018, finding the number of roles advertised for recent graduates had fallen 33% in mid-June compared with the same point last year.

The Institute of Student Employers said the graduate and school-leaver market as a whole was not declining as rapidly as reported, however. Its survey of 69 employers showed job vacancies aimed at graduates were down by 7% but school-leaver vacancies were up by 23% – meaning there was an overall increase of 1% in a market earmarked for AI impact.

Group GTI, a charity that helps students move into employment, said job postings on UK university careers job boards were up by 8% this year compared with last year.

Interviews with graduate recruitment agencies and experts have found that AI has yet to cause severe disruption to the market for school and university leavers – but change is inevitable and new joiners to the white-collar economy must become skilled in AI to stand a chance of progressing.

James Reed, the chief executive of the Reed employment agency, said he “feels sorry” for young people who have racked up debt studying for degrees and are encountering a tough jobs market. “I think universities should be looking at this and thinking quite carefully about how they prepare young people,” he said.

He added that AI would transform the entire job market. “This change is fundamental and five years from now it’s going to look very different – the whole job market,” he said.