AI-Generated Resume Blurb

Resumes are an infinite source of comedy gold for a recruiter. Take formatting, for example. Most resumes are pretty dull, with minor variations on work history straight after the name and contact information. Maybe there is a little blurb at the top discussing the type of position he/she is looking for and how it relates to work experience. Eg: "Motivated production worker with seven years of medical device-specific experience looking for career growth." Or something along those lines. You get the idea. Not interesting, and certainly not worthy of a blog posting.

However, some people make it look like a dating profile with their duck-lipped selfie plastered across the top.

Some people put a brief life-history at the top, including name, address, country of origin, age, marital status, etc.

Some people skip the “brief” part and lean hard into the full life-history.

(If you take nothing at all away from this post, internalize that a duck-lipped selfie and/or a life-history are not formats your resume should take.)

But, that aside, I kind of get the comedy that boils out of resume generation. I mean, writing a resume is HARD. You have to craft the random nature of your work experience into a cohesive story, make it look pretty, and still have that je ne sais quoi that convinces a potential recruiter or employer to pick up the phone and call you.

And…thus we get to AI. Oh, AI. Artificial Intelligence – everyone’s best friend, personal assistant, and copy writer all rolled into one.

The resume I'd like to discuss today started out perfectly normal AND had the little blurb stating that the candidate had 10+ years of warehouse experience. Great. I was looking for a warehouse worker, so that all hung together nicely.

Brief scan of the work history, however, did not indicate any warehouse experience. So, I looked through it again with a more critical eye. Alas, still no warehouse experience jumped out at me. I called the guy to go over his work history in a bit more detail to see if I was just missing something:

Me: Your resume indicates you have 10+ years of warehouse experience, but I didn't see anything listed on your work history indicating warehouse experience.

Blurb Inconsistency (BI): Yeah. I have warehouse experience.

Me: Please give me an overview of your warehouse experience. For what companies did you work and how long?

BI: Uh, I did some sorting for Target, like, 15 years ago.

Me: Alright, how long did that position last? Did you work with the forklift? RF scanners? Cycle counts and inventory management?

BI: I was there for, like, two years but didn't do anything with the forklift or scanners or anything.

Me: 'K, what about the other 8+ years of warehouse experience?

BI: It was a while ago.

He wasn't able to give me any details about his 10+ years of warehouse-specific experience besides the questionable two years he had sorting boxes at Target. Word of advice, people: If you're going to use AI to generate a wish-list summary of your work experience, maybe give it a read through when done and make sure it actually has some passing resemblance to reality.