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Fast Company
17 hours ago
- Business
- Fast Company
How to use AI to write your résumé
Love or hate AI, it's reshaping how we apply to jobs. While nearly a third of job candidates think AI is hurting their job search, according to recent research from Career Group Companies, the same report found 62% of candidates using AI to write a résumé, cover letter, or writing sample for a job application—up from 32% just six months ago. So if you can't beat 'em, how do you join them and use AI to write résumés that stand out in a sea of applications? Résumé writing experts say it's important to avoid common pitfalls and know when a human touch is irreplaceable. Where AI shines The most common resume mistakes job seekers make is overlooking the fact that they need to make a good impression on hiring managers who are strangers, Marc Cenedella, founding CEO of Ladders, a résumé and career services company, pointed out. Résumés need to be clearly formatted and free from errors to help these strangers focus their attention on getting to know a candidate, what they've already done, and what they could do in a new role. AI can help with the 'common, silly errors that end up hurting [candidates] in the job search,' Cenedella said. Some of these errors can be fixed by simply asking AI to reformat or proofread a résumé. AI programs can also help change the tone or word choices in a résumé to match what a certain company is looking for. For people looking to switch jobs or enter a new field, AI can also make a good career coach, said Dana Leavy-Detrick, founder of Brooklyn Resume Studio. It can help brainstorm new roles that fit a candidate's existing skill set, and it can analyze job postings to anticipate how a candidate's résumé will stack up against the competition. AI can make it easier than ever to create a polished résumé. But with so many candidates using AI, résumé experts emphasize that human insight is still necessary for crafting a résumé that will stand out to hiring managers. 'What I've noticed is that the floor of resumes has gone up,' said Keith Wolf, cofounder and CEO of ResumeSpice, a résumé consultation service. He pointed out hiring managers are seeing more 'okay' résumés, those he'd rate a 5/10. 'It's really easy to go from a zero or two to a five [due to AI], but there are so many fives,' he said Taking your résumé to the next level requires understanding how to differentiate yourself with a human touch. Where human insight matters Although AI is evolving rapidly it still can't communicate the full experience of a candidate the way a human-written résumé can. 'There are always nuances about your field and about the way humans talk about experiences that AI doesn't quite pick up on,' Cenedella said. Using words that accurately describe a previous role—rather than just the words AI might come up with—helps lend credibility to a job seeker's application. This concern about credibility and authenticity is particularly relevant given that as many as 10% of job seekers admit to having lied on their résumé, often using AI tools like Open AI's ChatGPT to do so, according to a recent survey from AI Resume Builder of nearly eight thousand U.S. adults. 'It's pretty easy to spot when somebody's used AI to just throw in a bunch of keywords and terminology that doesn't really relate to what we know somebody at that level would be doing,' Cenedella said. Beyond capturing the nuance and correct terminology used in a job seeker's field, AI may also struggle to keep up with changes in hiring processes. Recruiters' preferences about résumé formatting and the types of applicant tracking systems they use are always changing, Wolf said, so it's important to customize a résumé before sending it out—even when using AI. How to leverage AI For job seekers who want to use AI in their résumé writing process, résumé experts say it's important not to expect its first attempt to be a perfect fit for the job you are applying to. Because AI relies on aggregating initial information, 'at best, you're sounding like what's already out there,' Leavy-Detrick said. One way to avoid writing a generic résumé, Cenedella suggests, is to ask the AI program to answer questions—such as, What are 10 pieces of advice for improving this résumé?—from the standpoint of a recruiter. By asking the program to act as a recruiter in their field, job seekers can get more targeted suggestions. Another key piece of advice, Cenedella said, is to ask AI to help candidates quantify the impact they had in previous roles. 'Every job in every field on planet Earth in 2025 can be described in numbers,' Cenedella added. Adding those numbers is an effective way to help recruiters understand a job seeker's potential, and AI programs can suggest ways to seamlessly add these numbers into the résumé. Above all, the résumé experts suggested staying true to your own story and experiences throughout the job search, rather than letting AI take the reins. 'At the end of the day, what you're doing is getting a story across,' Leavy-Detrick says. 'You want to put your own voice on it. Trust your own voice, because [AI] can't tell that story for you.'
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The job hunt is as bad as it seems—a quarter of candidates have been looking for year
About 20% of job-seekers have been looking for work for at least 10 to 12 months or longer, according to a new report from Career Group. Both candidates and hiring managers have a hand in why it's taking so long. For many of those on the job search, sending in job applications can feel like throwing résumés into an abyss. Turns out the hunt is as bad as it seems. It can take an absurdly long time to find a job: About 20% of job seekers have been searching for at least 10 to 12 months or longer, according to a new report from Career Group which surveyed 765 candidates across many industries. Most applicants, about 30%, say they've been looking for four to six months, while 23% have been on the hunt for two to three months, nearly 17% have been on the prowl for up to one month, and about 7% were seven to nine months deep into the search. The fact that nearly a fifth of professionals have been job-hunting for over a year isn't surprising. Despite the labor market being relatively strong—the unemployment rate is low right now at 4.1%, and there's been some job posting growth—there are a litany of horror stories on finding work. One job-seeker said he applied to over 1,700 roles, but didn't hear a peep from recruiters until venting about the situation on TikTok. In 2024, 40% of unemployed professionals said they didn't have a single job interview that year, according to a Harris Poll survey. Findings like this can be validating for white-collar professionals down on their luck; it can be incredibly isolating and mentally draining sending applications into a black box. There are a few reasons why landing a gig takes so long nowadays, and they fall on job seekers and recruiters alike. 'In cases where it takes 10 to 12 months to find a job, there are many variables,' Susan Levine, CEO of Career Group, tells Fortune. 'Are candidates realistic? What are their salary expectations? Are they flexible? Are they turning down jobs being offered to them? While the hiring process is taking longer now, that alone wouldn't explain why it might take several months for a candidate to secure a role.' Applicants have the right to be choosy about where they work—after all, they'll be spending a third of their waking hours on the job. But they may be shooting themselves in the foot being too picky. Although the share of professionals thinking they're likely to be unemployed soon hit a record high last year, job-seekers wouldn't accept less than about $81,500 salary at a new role, according to a 2024 survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It's understandable that workers want a wage that is comfortable and livable, but it narrows the field of options they can apply to. And even when job-seekers are turning in their applications, they're leaving hiring managers high and dry. About 29% of Gen Z and young millennials have 'career catfished' recently, ghosting their prospective bosses after making it to the final interview round, according to 2025 data from PapersOwl. A good chunk did it as a dare, some thought they'd be better off elsewhere, and others admitted they 'just weren't feeling it.' Levine says it's imperative for job-seekers to be open to new possibilities. After all, careers aren't always an upward climb, but rather a squiggly path to success. 'It is important for candidates in any market to be flexible, open-minded, and excited to explore opportunities,' she says. 'The market is competitive, and to gain an edge, you need to be extremely well-prepared and genuinely invested in learning as much as possible about the companies you're interested in interviewing at.' But the job-seeking process taking so long for so many can't fully be pinned on workers. Some eyebrow-raising hiring trends have been on the rise—and they're out of applicants' control. There's a reason why so many job-seekers complain about radio silence after sending in their resumes to hundreds of positions: They're hitting 'apply' on gigs they have no chance of actually landing. About 81% of recruiters say that their employer posts 'ghost jobs,' gigs that either don't exist or are already filled, according to a 2024 report from MyPerfectResume. And it's not just one or two postings that are fake. Around 36% of these hiring managers admit a quarter of their open opportunities are indeed ghost jobs. 'Companies are trying to project, 'We're okay, we're still maintaining hiring, that we're still moving in a growth-oriented trend. In this market, our organization is doing well.' That ties into why these fake jobs might be appearing more,' Jasmine Escalera, a career expert for MyPerfectResume, told Fortune. 'It really is about the business, the bottom line, showing growth, showing trends, and how that can connect to maintaining profit.' Not only are recruiters posting ghost jobs, but they're also expecting more from applicants. It was once considered sacrilegious for a candidate's résumé to be longer than one page—anything more would be a time-suck for hiring managers. But now, as more are using AI to filter top candidates to the next round, over half of recruiters now want a two-page résumé from applicants, according to a 2024 report from Criteria. They also want to suss out job-seekers for a longer period of time; unemployed professionals have complained about having five, six, seven, or eight interviews before getting an answer. The standard used to be around two or three rounds before an employee is picked. Plus, getting an update between the interviews can take several weeks or months. The process is undoubtedly being dragged out at many companies—it's turning employees off, and making them abandon hope. 'We often hear job-seekers saying, 'I'm tired, I'm depressed, I'm desperate,' using these very harsh words when it comes to the job market,' Escalera said. 'This is one of the reasons why they are losing faith in organizations and companies.' This story was originally featured on
