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Is the Resume Dead?
I recently posed a question on LinkedIn - is the resume dead? Over ⅓ of respondents to the poll believe that it is. And they aren’t alone. For years now, people have been forecasting the death of resumes. And with the broad-based use of AI, the chorus proclaiming the end of resumes has grown louder, particularly over the last few years.
So are they dead? One way to evaluate this is to look not at what employers say, but what they do. From a random sample of jobs on EarnBetter’s platform we pulled, the vast majority ask for a resume as part of the application process. For most companies, resumes continue to be a mainstay in their recruiting workflows. First impressions matter and, for job seekers, their first impression to an employer often happens in the handful of seconds a recruiter takes to review a resume.
And while we do think the calls on the end of the resume are overdone, we certainly believe that the resume will and should evolve into something more useful. Here’s how.
There was a 2023 MIT Study that evaluated the impact that algorithmic-writing (e.g., AI) assistance can have on employer and job seeker outcomes. The study found that job seekers in the test group (those that received AI writing assistance with their resumes) were hired 8% more often within the first month of their search with earnings 10% higher than job seekers in the control group. Of note, there were no significant differences in employer satisfaction regarding hires they made from the test and control groups.
So how do we reconcile the job seeker and employer outcomes? There are two different levels of the resume - the substance and the style. The substance includes the relevant skills, certifications, employment history, educational background, accomplishments, impact, etc. The style includes how it is formatted, how it is organized, the style of the writing and more. The challenge with the status quo is that the style can often get in the way of substance - for example, a poorly formatted resume might make it difficult for employers to understand what skills and experiences a candidate has that are relevant to the open position.
AI resume assistance can help candidates improve the style of their resume to enable employers to more easily get a feel for their relevant skills and experiences. Beyond reviewing the substance of a candidate’s resume, employers might also look at the style to infer certain skills about the candidate, such as their attention-to-detail, communication skills and more based on the style of the resume. For candidates using AI, it will be harder for employers to infer these types of skills based solely on the style of the resume. But we think that’s a good thing - candidates should be evaluated based on the relevance of their skills and experiences, not their ability to format a resume. We hope and believe this trend will continue in the future.
Traditionally, resumes have been static documents. A job seeker’s skills and experiences are so much larger and varied than what can fit onto one or two pieces of paper. At the same time, people are switching job and careers more frequently. With increased AI adoption across the economy, we expect job switching and career transitions to happen at an even faster rate going forward.
The problem is that a static, one-size-fits-all resume isn’t effective in highlighting the skills and experiences that might be most relevant to a specific opportunity. The same job seeker might be open to roles in different industries, job categories, size companies, etc. We believe resumes will and should evolve into dynamic profiles that highlight aspects of job seekers’ backgrounds that are relevant to specific roles that they are applying for. Imagine AI that knows all of your work history - your responsibilities, achievements, promotions, projects you’re most proud of, performance reviews, etc. Now imagine that AI trimming, tailoring, and positioning that experience into a precise pitch for a specific job. That’s what we believe the dynamic resume will look like.
With both job seekers and employers increasingly using AI as a part of the job search and recruiting process, there will be more of an emphasis placed on trust and verified information. As a result, we see resumes as evolving to be dynamic profiles that include verifications of skills and experiences. We expect that employers will increasingly be using skills assessments to better vet a candidate’s suitability to do the job they’re being evaluated for. As this happens, it will be cumbersome and time-consuming for candidates to repeat similar assessments for the same skills across companies. We expect that these verifications will be housed in dynamic profiles, which will help bolster trust while minimizing job seeker friction. This isn’t and won’t be easy, particularly with the lack of standardization of skills across companies. But, we believe the industry will and should inevitably move in this direction.
So is the resume dead? We don’t think so - but we do think it is in desperate need of a revamp, and we believe it will be much more useful as a result.
Tuck is the Founder and CEO EarnBetter, a technology company that uses AI to provide free support to job seekers. EarnBetter's 100% free service helps job seekers reformat and rewrite their resumes in minutes, find relevant job matches, tailor resumes and cover letters to specific job opportunities, prepare for interviews and more.