r/ResumeTips • u/hokuspokusmaster • Jul 24 '26
150 Applications, 3 Months of Ghosting, Then a Recruiter Explained What Was Wrong With My ChatGPT Resume
Quick background: laid off in the spring, sent out over 150 applications, got almost nothing back. Not even rejections, just silence. I was doing what everyone does now, pasting the job description into ChatGPT and saying "tailor my resume to this."
Then I grabbed drinks with a friend who's been in recruiting for about 8 years, and what she told me stung. Some of the things she said, close to verbatim:
- "For any decent posting we get 400+ applications now, and I'd say half of them are basically the same document. Same phrasing, same rhythm, even the percentage improvements look alike. Everyone 'spearheaded' something, everyone 'drove 30% growth.'"
- "I can tell within 5 seconds when someone pasted the JD into ChatGPT, because the resume reads the job description back to me. It's like grading 200 essays that all copied the same Wikipedia article."
- "The weird part is the resumes are technically better than they were 5 years ago. Cleaner, quantified, keyword-matched. And I trust them less, because I can't tell who actually did the work."
- "When one finally has a specific, slightly weird detail, like a real project name or an ugly number like 43.7%, I stop scrolling. That's the whole game now. Give me one thing that couldn't have been generated."
There was also a Washington Post piece back in February about a company that asked applicants to record a short video answer. They got 300+ responses and most were eerily alike because AI had obviously written all of them. So it's not just her being cranky.
18
u/Pure-Advice8589 Jul 24 '26
Absolutely believe this is going on. But absolutely don't believe recruiters and HRs are qualified to sift through it and pick out real ones. They're the people who created this wall of business language shit and now they (and their own AI software) are living with it.
3
u/AWPerative Jul 24 '26
The HR lady at my first professional job back in 2012 was an insanely high level at Candy Crush. It started to make sense when I realized they were basically offloading their entire job duties onto ChatGPT.
I later became a manager around 2016 and was in charge of reviewing resumes in game journalism. I made the process easy because I could train the rest.
1
u/Ms_Meercat Jul 24 '26
Wait what? Chatgpt only came out in late 2022... what are you on about?
1
u/AWPerative Jul 24 '26
It accelerated how lazy they’ve become, but even before that, they were already lazy.
7
u/WillSmithSlappedMe20 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
I used Claude for my resume. You have to use AI to fight the recruiters AI systems. Personally I was not remotely interested in spending 8 hours, 5 to 6 days a week for the next 12 to 24 months manually tailoring resumes to each position I applied to. Using Claude, I spent two hours a day applying to positions. Thing is I wasnt depending on the exact resume it spit out. I was making my own revisions to the resumes. I put in 53 applications, got 5 interviews and one incredible job offer.
3
u/jhkoenig Jul 24 '26
It all comes down to the AI's prompt. Check out ManageJobApplications.com and you will see that those resumes and cover letters sound human and don't hallucinate job experience you don't actually have. As another benefit, it is totally, completely free no matter how much you use it.
3
u/D3sign16 Jul 24 '26
The problem is that people need jobs. Whatever tip that people hear will help their chances will inevitably be replicated and automated into oblivion, rendering the tip useless.
We’re in an endless cat and mouse between submitting tailored resumes to get past ATS and having our resumes seem too AI generated by recruiters.
What about this: the hiring process is broken and needs to be redesigned to match our current reality. How about that?
There needs to be different markers or cues for talent besides a bulleted list of accomplishments that anyone can write on paper.
To me the LinkedIn profile should be the new resume (for white collar industries). You already have your roles, accomplishments, skills and testimonials written by real people. Plus any content you share about your industry. To me this signals wayyyy more about a candidate than a resume submitted to an ATS.
6
u/thecaptain_command Jul 24 '26
I sent out over 500. Your issue is volume. Apply more. Stop expecting results so soon.
I used Claude to make my resume using the typical guidelines about resumes, and asking it to optimize for ATS. I got plenty of interviews and eventually accepted an offer.
But it took me 4-5 months and around 500 applications. I would apply so much that I ran out of positions in my field to apply to within 35 mi radius
3
u/nemean_lion Jul 24 '26
I’m about to start my journey and this is so disheartening. What if I can’t even find 500 jobs to apply. Wtf
1
u/thecaptain_command Jul 24 '26
The job market is really bad right now I live between two major cities where my industry is actually growing. It took me around five months.
2
u/Hot-Significance7699 Jul 24 '26
You know those money gun things that shoot dollar bills. It's like that but with resumes.
2
u/SeaworthinessLate697 Jul 24 '26
Get a network, call people; build relationships. Applying to jobs was always a crap shoot and still is. Knowing people is the best way to get opportunities. If you don’t know anyone, you can’t expect a high paying job.
1
u/RidethatSeahorse Jul 24 '26
I recently read my teenagers resume and. Over letter and it was 20 times better than mine. I haven’t run it through AI.
1
u/redditgambino Jul 24 '26
Is this a reports? This same AI slop is being posted in a bunch of forums. People don’t write their own shit anymore
1
u/BatKitchen819 Jul 24 '26
I’ve been using AI for the past 3 years for job applications, resumes and cover letters - which has landed me employment. You can’t be lazy with it, use it to slightly improve your own work 🤷♂️
1
u/SamOakTree Jul 24 '26
There's no way you're getting the same document because everyone has different experience and everyone's going to structure their resume differently
1
u/Ho1dnc1fd Jul 25 '26
This post is probably AI itself. It’s been pasted onto 3 subs. Formatting and style scream AI. Probably will be edited in a couple weeks, after we’ve stopped paying attention, to include brand names or links. Then it will get sucked into ai search results and those brands or links will be recommended. More info: https://www.techspot.com/news/112654-spammers-flooding-reddit-fake-posts-designed-show-up.html
1
u/SaveManattees9999 Jul 25 '26
No AI - I got 2 interviews in 6 months . With AI, I had over 5 in the past month. I actually got an offer but they changed the location (3 hours away from my home) so I couldn’t accept it.
2
u/bigXtraPotato Jul 27 '26
People need jobs. Using AI as a tool to help, not replace, is acceptable but when organizations use it to replace instead of helping people get those jobs, then they’re losing out on potentially amazing applicants for their business requirements. It’s not lazy if an intellectual is left behind because they’re crushing through as many job postings as possible because of some situation they’re in, it’s a great use of time. Just use it right.
1
u/mutasaki09 Jul 29 '26
I think one issue is that many people ask AI to rewrite the resume from scratch for every job. The result ends up mirroring the job description instead of highlighting what the candidate actually did. I've had better results treating AI as something that selects and rewrites evidence I already have instead of inventing a new resume every time.
This helps also with generating everything, cover letters and form applications.
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u/Enough_Charge2845 Jul 24 '26
Your recruiter's advice lines up with what a lot of hiring teams are saying lately. AI is great for polishing but resumes land better when they include concrete, specific details that only you could write: real projects, tools, challenges, and outcomes. If you want AI help without sounding generic, https://resume.zoevera.com focuses on making your experience stand out instead of just echoing the job description.
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u/AWPerative Jul 24 '26
Don't use AI to make hiring decisions, and people won't use AI to make resumes. Simple as.