Be careful when crafting your resume or cover letter with the help of AI. It might embellish your history as it did with mine.

DALLAS — If you used a little artificial help to craft your work history and/or cover letter, beware of the rejected resume. 

A few months ago, a resume-building platform surveyed thousands of hiring managers across the country and found that in Texas–much more so than in most other states–bosses indicated they “AIn’t” accepting your AI-generated resume. The site reports that 55% of managers in Texas said those digitally created descriptions of our work history would end up in the rejected resume stack.

Ironically, employers may be using AI programs these days to read and reject many of those resumes. But in some cases, managers may be able to spot an AI-created cover letter or resume just by reading it. So, you should be reading (and editing) them too if you create them this way, experts say.

Wait. Is that my resume?

I built a resume on the same site that polled all those hiring managers. It used my LinkedIn profile. I went through the process several times. Much more quickly than I could, it created document versions of me as a worker. Or did it? For starters, it kept including older iterations of my LinkedIn, instead of the updated one I had just completed. Also, there were some odd capitalizations here and there and some awkward wording in a few of the test runs.

And there were bigger problems with my AI-created resume. One of the versions it generated said I had taught a graduate-level course on A&E reporting. I have been an adjunct professor before, but this suggested I had done a lot more than that. AI also fudged my history by asserting that I have a Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature and a Master’s Degree in “Specialized Journalism.” Neither of those is accurate.

The virtual resume writer also proclaimed I am proficient in various programming languages such as HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. It also said have experience in entertainment reporting with a focus on the Los Angeles cultural scene and that I have contributed to the Los Angeles Times. As good as all that sounds, none of it is correct!

If you use AI, you still need to customize!

Importantly, another finding from that survey of hiring managers: A substantial number of them reportedly said if you use AI when applying for jobs, “heavy customization is crucial”. You have to go in and make sure it is correct and change it up. Make it more your wording, because some of you clearly aren’t doing that.

Case in point: This article revealed that some, “Employers are getting hundreds of the exact same cover letters word for word!” Even someone who doesn’t have a master’s degree…and who doesn’t contribute to the Los Angeles Times…and certainly doesn’t know how to write computer code knows that is not a good first impression.

If you need some help writing a resume in this age of AI, here are some suggestions.

After the resume: Are remote/hybrid jobs a possibility for you?

Anyway, let’s say your resume gets you in the door. Do you have a shot at a remote or hybrid position? Or are we all back in the office?

A ‘work from anywhere’ technology firm called Owl Labs updated the State of Hybrid Work and they found the percentage of home and office “hybrid” workers is up 1% from last year and that there’s a 4% increase in the number of fully remote workers.

And even though one case study published in Nature showed a hybrid work model made employee turnover 33% less likely without damaging employee performance, these flexible options don’t work everywhere.

Healthcare was the least likely to offer those flex arrangements (10% remote/10% hybrid); Marketing/creative (27% hybrid, 15% remote) and tech jobs (26% hybrid, 17% remote) were the most likely to have remote and hybrid options in the first half of the year according to human resource consulting firm Robert Half. They also found that in the first part of this year, Dallas and Austin made the list of American cities with the most growth in hybrid positions.



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