With AI-backed hiring on the rise, tips for “hacking” your resume are all over social media. As job search companies increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to sort through applications, job seekers wonder how to best position themselves with those filters in mind.
We decided to speak directly with job search leaders about how a resume should look when you’re thinking about AI optimization, and what works in a job applicant’s favor. The Verge senior AI reporter Hayden Field spoke to representatives from Indeed, Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and Greenhouse, as well as Hilke Schellmann, author of The Algorithm. Their answers had a clear theme: Resume hacks won’t get you far with these AI systems.
For instance, a common technique is to take keywords from job postings and include them throughout the resume, also known as “keyword stuffing.” Often, the words may even be hidden in white font. Glassdoor’s chief economist, Daniel Zhao, says this might get you past an initial screen, but once it reaches a human review it may not get far.
“I’ve actually seen myself as a hiring manager, an application came in from a candidate who had put a bunch of text in all white at the bottom of the resume, but the system actually highlighted it. And so it was very clear that this was not actually relevant to their skills or experience. I would say that if you’re using that to put information that is not actually applicable to your skills and experience, that’s gonna be really hard to explain to an employer.”
Virtually everyone we spoke to echoed a similar sentiment: that adding a human touch to your job application is now more important than ever.
“ Think about the fact that you are creating your resume for two different audiences, right? You’re creating it for an algorithm and you’re also creating it for a human,” says Priya Rathod, workplace trends editor at Indeed.
Watch our video to learn more about how the current hiring landscape looks in the age of AI and what else the experts say about standing out.