If your HR team is among the many purchasing new software applications this year, you may be introducing artificial intelligence (AI) into your organization. Today’s tools, such as Generative AI, provide time savers across many aspects of HR, from initial candidate experiences through the entire employee life cycle.
Resume development is a critical area that affects both the recruiter and the candidate. Clearly, a candidate seeks to create a resume that best addresses the company to which he or she is applying. Recruiters appreciate resumes that are as specific as possible in relation to the position they are seeking to fill.
Do Recruiters Care How a Resume is Developed? Should They?
Given that a crisp, precise resume addressing the position to be filled is a clear advantage for any applicant and likely a source of delight for both a recruiter and hiring manager, does it matter if the resume was created by a Generative AI tool? One possible ramification is that all resumes could look very much alike, differing mainly by educational background and previous positions. Will this make the recruiter’s task easier—or more complicated?
Let’s look at some examples. I am going to ask Microsoft’s Copilot some questions that a candidate might go to an AI tool to ask when polishing up a resume for a specific company. And because I am using Copilot, I will use Microsoft as my sample company.
Here is my hypothetical applicant’s first question:
“What are the keywords on a successful Microsoft new hire’s resume?”
Copilot’s response is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Copilot’s Initial Resume Advice for an Applicant to Microsoft
Source: Copilot (microsoft.com)
This information would no doubt be useful for our Microsoft applicant. Now let’s go a bit deeper with question two:
“What are the keywords on a successful Microsoft new hire’s resume in the marketing department?”
Figure 2: Copilot’s Key Words for a Marketing Position at Microsoft
Source: Copilot (microsoft.com)2024
Microsoft is currently seeking a Senior Product Marketing Manager in Redmond. We will use this as an example to see how Copilot can accomplish the tailoring mentioned above.
Our Question 3:
“What are the keywords on a successful Microsoft new hire’s resume for a senior product marketing manager in Redmond?”
Copilot offers some more specific details at this point (see Figure 3):
Figure 3: Key Words for a Senior Product Marketing Manager
Source: Copilot (microsoft.com) 2024
To be on the safe side, our hypothetical applicant wants to know what NOT to say as well as what to say in applying for this position (See Figure 4.):
Question 4:
“What keywords should be avoided when creating a resume for a senior product marketing position?”
Figure 4: Copilot’s Words to Avoid for a Marketing Manager Resume
Source: Copilot (microsoft.com) 2024.
Our applicant is well on their way to the job-specific AI-generated resume.
What happens if our job candidate takes the job position description and asks to have a resume created? Let’s find out. I copied the position description and requested a sample resume from Copilot. Figure 5 shows the result.
Figure 5. Copilot-Generated Resume for a Sr. Product Marketing Manager Posting
Source: Copilot (microsoft.com). 2024
To ensure that Copilot can address companies other than Microsoft (which is responsible for the Copilot tool), let’s ask the same initial keyword question for an applicant at Workday (Figure 6). Indeed, company-specific knowledge is readily available.
Figure 6: What are the Key Words on a Successful New Hire’s Resume at Workday?
Source: Copilot (microsoft.com) 2024
Recruiters can safely assume that AI tools can help candidates apply to almost any company and for any position.
AI’s Impact on the Job Applicant
AI tools can make the job applicant’s job significantly faster and easier. A Generative AI tool can create a resume from a job description in seconds. The ramifications are several:
- A newcomer to the job market can get instant online help to create a reasonably competitive resume. (Noting that assistance in resume help has been available online for years – just not as thorough and specific).
- An applicant can easily and better tailor a resume for the specific position.
- Applicants can quickly apply to many more jobs, potentially flooding ATS systems with multiple applications for open jobs, and equally quickly apply to various organizations with carefully tailored resumes.
What GenAI can mean for Recruiters
Recruiters will appreciate the use of GenAI in creating job descriptions for posting more expeditiously and vibrant and developing personalized correspondence with applicants and candidates much more easily. Planning for the impact of GenAI on the recruiter is another issue. Consider:
- Recruiters may see better, clearer resumes that are more tailored to the positions to which the applicant is applying.
- Because applicants can create resumes more easily, recruiters can be flooded with resumes as never before, likely in part from job seekers who are not interested in the position at hand.
- Recruiters may see such similarity in AI-created resumes based on job descriptions that actual distinctions between candidates lie buried.
- In theory, an applicant can easily apply to every job opening in an organization, potentially having multiple recruiters present the same candidate to various hiring managers across the company.
It is fortuitous that GenAI can also aid the recruiter in responding to an onslaught of resumes.
Heaven or Hell?
As we see, as we will, smarter applicants using GenAI tools to ensure position relevancy, how might this affect the recruiting process in general? Timeliness will be one clear outcome: applicants can respond to an opening immediately after it is posted without having to mull over what resume revisions might be necessary for response. Thus, positions may be able to be filled more quickly as a pool of applicants may be available within hours rather than days. On the other hand, an overabundance of resumes that look very similar may make rating or weeding out much more difficult.
Will GenAI thus make the recruiter’s job in application review easier or more difficult? It remains to be determined, but at the very least, recruiters need to be aware of the tools applicants now have access to.
