Writing a resume is one of the most important tasks one must complete in order to secure a job. A resume is an essential document that summarizes your education, skills, background and accomplishments in order to demonstrate your qualifications for a job. Work experience, volunteer work and awards can serve as a way to show your potential employers that you are certified, prepared and knowledgeable to be able to handle a job interview, leading to the job itself.
But is someone truly representing themselves when their resume was not written by that person? What happens when an employer is impressed and convinced of this person’s false identity, then requires them to come into an in-person interview unprepared? When using AI to write a resume, is it simply just a tool to best express yourself or is it truly “scamming” your employer into believing you are an entirely different person?
AI negatively impacts a person’s credibility and character when applying for a job by showing the employer that they are incapable of expressing themselves and their qualifications. Sure, people have lied and made up information for resumes all of the time, but using AI has grown to be a trend. A person can ask AI to write a beautifully written resume and put it through another AI that “humanizes” the resume. Additionally, AI can easily make up volunteer work, awards and other achievements in order to exemplify an image of a worthy employee, which now sets unrealistic expectations to live up to and falsely presents who that person is.
But what if one was not lying about their qualifications and simply using AI as a tool? Ironically, there are companies that use AI to not only make sure an applicant’s resume is human written, but just use it in general to qualify the person. For example, ATS (Applicant Tracking System) filters are used by companies to sort resumes by scanning them for key details like relevant keywords, experience, and formatting to find the most qualified people. Still, even if that person passes these checks with whatever methods a company uses, someone who is either the complete opposite of what AI described them to be or the exact match will have to now prove themselves in person without any help. The lack of assistance and the pressure of using your own brain to formulate responses in seconds will inefficiently prepare one for a real interview. Full reliance on AI as a tool is risky and cannot be beneficial to one’s growth in the real world as it is the easy way out of difficult critical thinking, which is a trait necessary for success.
Denise Leatherman, a business teacher at North, shares her opinion on how to properly use AI effectively in resumes.
“It’s a great learning tool because it’s a different way of communication where you have to present yourself. So, to learn using AI, how to organize, how to format, help highlight action verbs and key ways to describe yourself…that’s the positive,” said Leatherman.
Leatherman adds that a student still has to be honest in their resumes by avoiding false information.
“You need to still be authentic as a person by projecting your own true experiences. The key thing is making sure it’s just a tool to assist and that you are truly being honest because you are treading on an area that can lead to some ethical issues and potential problems.”
Additionally, Leatherman admits that corporations do use AI to check resumes.
“I’m aware of my brother’s management of a big corporation and I know AI detection tools are being used. I don’t know how the AI detectors work and how they distinguish between a resume that is or isn’t,” said Leatherman.
Leatherman talks about potential consequences for students who heavily use AI, saying that finding a balance between AI assisting and helping students learn should be the main goal.
“If you have made up information or truly misrepresented yourself, and it’s a parent in the interview, you may not move forward from that point. It’s possible that it can lead to the termination of your job, if you just blatantly lied about skills, experience, or who you are as an individual,” said Leatherman. “We don’t want it to replace our own thinking and our own creativity.”
As AI increasingly becomes more and more part of everyday life, it is important to understand when it can be useful. Asking for tips on writing a resume or asking what a specific job looks for in a resume are productive questions to ask AI instead of having it do everything for you. AI does not have to be an extreme, off limit thing, but rather can be helpful in the right ways. AI is constantly changing, so maybe the ways we use it can too.
