AI, or Artificial Intelligence, has been making a lot of waves over the past year for its ability to automate more tasks such as writing, coding, research, and even art. The massive morality issue aside, many people have fun playing with AI and often use it for things like scheduling. But can it also be used to make a better resume more easily? When it comes to doing things like beating the filters, is a machine the best way?
Benefits of Using AI to (Help) Create Your Resume
It’s important to note that if you are going to use something like ChatGPT or AI builder to build your resume, it still has its limitations, and you should still be ready to do some work of your own. But we’ll look at some of the benefits of using this system, particularly if you aren’t particularly good at putting words to paper or you’re worried about missing something.
One of the big benefits of using AI to help with your resume is that it is very good at giving you ideas, inspiration, or a starting point. It can be used to highlight keywords from the job description, skills needed, experience desired, etc., and to track the density of those keywords in your own resume. AI is also quite good at handling formatting, most proofing, and simply making sure your resume looks clean.
And of course, if you’re not the best at using a word processor, AI can take some of that tech worry off your shoulders. Of course, this assumes that you are comfortable with feeding the AI the correct information in order for it to turn out a resume. That rather leads us well to some of the drawbacks of using AI for your resume.
Drawbacks of Using AI to Create Your Resume
AI is best used collaboratively because while it can be a neat tool, it’s definitely not human. It doesn’t (well yet), have the ability to intuitively draw connections between different work experiences to get the best transferable skills. It can’t utilize the idea of themes or narratives to create a cohesive flow from different parts of the resume, and it cannot tie your resume to your brand. It also just feels artificial, something which many HR managers can spot and may discard your resume as a result.
Another issue is that ChatGPT and other AI tools only goes to a certain year (2021 or prior in the case of Chat GPT). This means that the system won’t be up to date on the latest resume trends, market and industry standards, and jargon. Some career paths require a unique approach and wording, which AI won’t pick up on. Again, the end result sounds artificial and generic, which is not generally something you want from your resume.
At worse, your resume may produce something that has been plagiarized which will definitely land you in the waste basket of HR. After all, the AI is simply using data that already exists on the internet and it could end up simply copying someone else which is not going to reflect well on you.
Now, does all this mean you shouldn’t use AI to create a resume that will help you land a job? Of course not. The key here is to use AI collaboratively and don’t rely on it to do all the work for you. It’s a great way to get things laid out and started, but you should not rely on the system to finish it. Instead, make sure to go through the result you get and add your own touches, do some editing, and tie everything together yourself. Remove excess words and phrases, make sure that your resume matches the needs of the job post, and add a human touch to it. This allows your resume to get the best of both worlds and thus be more likely to thrive.
Have you used AI to create your resume before? How has it worked for you?
