Growth & Jobs | Optimising your résumé with AI

IN TODAY’S competitive job market, standing out among hundreds of applicants can be challenging. Many job seekers are turning to AI-powered résumé optimisation tools to tailor their résumé for specific roles and increase their chances of passing applicant tracking systems (ATS). While agreeing that these tools can be highly effective, one HR expert is advising applicants not to rely solely on AI to structure their résumé, so that it maintains a human touch.

Tiffany Lee Beckmann, talent acquisition manager at The Jamaica National Group, provided some tips on how applicants can use AI to strengthen their résumé, while maintaining their personality and showcasing their qualifications.

PERSONALISE AI GENERATED RÉSUMÉ

Lee Beckmann advised that based on the wording used, artificial intelligence will not ensure that an applicant’s brand and personality are displayed throughout the résumé. Therefore, it is important that they personalise their résumé after it is generated by AI.

“An applicant will send in a résumé, for example, and based on the language and structure, you can tell that it is AI-generated because humans don’t typically speak like that. If there is no personalisation and personal branding coming out, we can tell,” she assured. “If it is that you choose to use artificial intelligence to optimise your résumé, you have to ensure that you are asking it specific things; and when the information is provided, you are putting it into your own voice, paraphrasing and changing certain things to ensure that it meets whatever the job description is requesting of you.”

LIST YOUR ACTUAL EXPERIENCE

Furthermore, she added that by using AI alone to edit résumé, sometimes the responsibilities listed under each job experience are very generic, unrelatable, and show that it’s not the applicant’s real experience.

“Usually, we don’t shortlist those applicants. But let’s say you make it through the short-listing process and get an interview, it will show, when we are probing and asking certain questions, that you really did not put the résumé together yourself,” she noted.

She advised that a good way to list responsibilities on a résumé while using AI tools, is to include the keywords highlighted but tailor each point to reflect the actual work and achievements accomplished, as applicants must be able to qualify whatever they are putting on their résumé with tangible experiences that they have had.

No matter how well-structured the point generated by AI sounds, Lee Beckmann is urging applicants to not include responsibilities that they have never executed, so as not to misrepresent their experience.

RÉSUMÉ STRUCTURE

She added that résumés should be no more than one to two pages long, job experience should be summarised if it is too extensive, and applicants do not have to list everywhere that they have worked if they have an expansive work history.

She also noted that photos and graphics should generally not be included in a résumé.

“Most of the ATS tools work based on language, so if you have pictures, lines or other types of formatting that is captured as images rather than text, the AI may not pick up on it,” she finalised.

Some popular AI tools used for résumé optimisation are ChatGPT, Jobscan and Résumé Worded.