When I decided to launch my firm, I had to create the processes for taking people through both the resume writing and interview preparation part of my business. I had heard that someone in my friend group was looking for a new role and after approaching him with an idea, he agreed to let me take him through both parts of my offering – free of charge of course. The first question out of his mouth was “aren’t you worried that people will use AI to generate their resume and they won’t need you?” I explained to him that AI isn’t able to ask probing questions to better understand someone’s role, responsibilities and accomplishments in any given position and translate those to resume worthy, clear and concise bullet points to put on paper. “Interesting” and “that makes sense,” he said. When we talked about gauging his interviewing skills he immediately said he never really felt confident in his interviewing skills and definitely needed some help.
I spoke to a VP level hiring manager recently and asked him what his biggest frustration was in reviewing resumes after the introduction of AI. He felt resumes that use AI are often too generic than those that do not. I interjected that I didn’t feel AI generated resumes used descriptors to talk about responsibilities and accomplishments. He also mentioned that 8 out of 10 times he can tell when someone has used AI to generate a resume and will put that resume at the bottom of the “to review” group, giving preference to those candidates who appear to have not used AI.
Something AI is good for is sentence structure but beware. AI has a tendency to throw in generalized terms to describe responsibilities rather than specifics for each position. For example, “results driven” is a great, wide descriptor of someone’s ability but what companies really want to know are what, specifically, were the results. Words like “increased” or “on time” and “under budget” are not words AI usually offers as options when used for resume writing. These are descriptors both recruiters and hiring managers alike are looking for if that is part of a skillset or accomplishment.
I also read that people are using AI to help alter or embellish their resume to more closely match a job description they were applying for. As a reminder, for any interview (phone or in person) someone is going to be asked to talk about their experience using examples for each question. If you are unable to do so, that will be evident fairly quickly and not move you forward in the interview process. No one wants to be flagged negatively in any company database.
Think about it this way: Your resume is your voice on paper. And what happens when the voice on the paper gets you the interview you want. And now you are in the middle of the interview and the voice on paper is completely different from the voice coming out of your mouth. Sentence structure is different, terminology is different or completely absent. The person on the receiving end is going to notice this immediately and it won’t bode well for you. This is something you want to avoid at all costs.
One thing I do know for anyone helping others create or rewrite their resume is interviewing a candidate based on their background and experience in each role is essential to restructuring and creating a clear and concise new version of any resume. This is what both recruiters and hiring managers are looking for when assessing talent on paper.