Two hundred job applications. That's the new benchmark some graduates are hitting, powered not by stamina or genuine interest but by generative AI that churns out cover letters and tailors CVs at industrial scale. Research now indicates this 'spray and pray' approach isn't just ethically murky—it's actively undermining the applicants who deploy it. Yet defenders of the practice argue their generation faces a labour market so algorithmically fortified that fighting AI with AI has become the only viable strategy. ## The Misrepresentation Problem The research highlights a troubling pattern: graduates aren't simply using AI to polish prose or catch typos. They're allowing tools to fabricate skills, exaggerate experience, and craft personas that bear little resemblance to their actual qualifications. What begins as a time-saving shortcut morphs into systematic misrepresentation, creating a mismatch between the candidate on paper and the person who shows up—if they get that far. The backfire mechanism is straightforward. Employers, drowning in AI-generated applications that all sound vaguely competent and enthusiastically generic, are tightening filters and raising scepticism. The very volume that AI enables becomes its own undoing: when everyone can apply to everything, application counts lose meaning. Hiring managers grow warier. The signal-to-noise ratio collapses. ## The Defence: 'We Have No Choice' Some within this peer group reject the criticism outright. Their counter-argument hinges on asymmetry: if companies use automated systems to screen CVs in milliseconds, discarding qualified candidates based on keyword algorithms, why shouldn't applicants automate their side of the transaction? The labour market, they contend, has become a game of beating the bots before a human ever sees your name. Opting out means invisibility. This defence carries weight in a hiring landscape where applicant tracking systems can reject candidates for formatting quirks or missing buzzword