Job seekers are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to fill out forms, prepare cover letters and answer initial questions. However, an experiment conducted by careers website Kickresume for sales and marketing positions found that resumes prepared entirely by artificial intelligence were less successful. Human-written resumes received positive responses in 31% of 200 applications. The rate was just 10% for resumes prepared solely by artificial intelligence, rising to 18% for AI-generated text personalized by humans according to the job description.
Kickresume CEO Peter Duris said tailoring AI-generated resumes to the wording in a job posting could significantly increase the likelihood of receiving a response. This adaptation can help demonstrate the candidate’s suitability for the position and make the resume readable by the applicant tracking system. The study did not examine cover letters separately, and it is also unclear whether the results in one particular field can be replicated in other industries. The study indicates that employers want to see differentiated applications that reflect candidates’ strengths and personalities.
Why it matters
The results suggest that, for job seekers, AI is more useful as a drafting tool under human supervision than as a way to take over the resume-writing process entirely. Aligning a resume with the language of the job posting puts personalization at the heart of the application, as it can both highlight the candidate’s suitability for the position and help applicant tracking systems read the text. For employers, meanwhile, standardized texts appear to make it more difficult to distinguish candidates’ strengths and personalities. However, because the experiment covered only sales and marketing positions and did not assess cover letters separately, a key question remains as to how far the findings can be applied to other industries and other parts of the application.