07/07/2026
Last week, I was on a client call with someone who was on a time crunch to find a new job. When I asked her if she’s been getting many interviews, she sheepishly said no. She had a wealth of experience, a master’s degree, and a slew of high-value knowledge of tech for her industry. She had sent me her resume prior to the call for me to take a look at and my first thought was, this was wholly created by AI and never changed!
I asked her if she used AI to create her resume and she admitted that she did.
Now, if it is obvious to me that she used AI to generate her resume, then it is for a recruiter.
So, how did I know that AI created it? I’ll share a few key points.
1. The spacing. AI spaces things out in a very specific way and it doesn’t read that a human actually added those spaces in because a human wouldn’t do that.
2. The bold words. AI loves to bold specific phrases or key words. If you leave these bolded, you are either signaling that you want them to know AI created it or that you don’t care if they know AI produced it.
3. Hyper-inflated words. Humans tend to not use repetitive high-level words on their resumes—in every single bullet. These words indicate that AI created the resume based on pulling keywords from either a job description or the ether of interwebs to make you look like a robotic candidate.
I gave her this feedback and told her, “You need to humanize your resume.”
Listen, it’s ok to use AI to create your resume. I’m not trying to dissuade you from doing that. However, you need to edit it, to humanize it.
Here’s a couple ways to humanize your resume:
1. Make sure the bullets don’t read as a long-winded, hyper-inflated description of your skills or experience. As you read it, ask yourself, does this sound like a person wrote this or a robot? If it sounds like a robot, think of a way YOU would paraphrase the bullet or how YOU would describe the bullet to someone in a networking situation.
2. Remove the bolded words from within the bullets. And furthermore, don’t just leave the spacing, horizontal bars, or odd-sized fonts in your resume. Go back through and make these elements look like you actually created the resume yourself.
3. Ask a friend! Ask someone you know to check out your resume and ask their first opinion if they think AI wrote it or you. People are fairly good at telling if AI created text, so make sure to double check with someone else.
If you are struggling with your resume, let me know. I offer resume services and also offer 20% discounts for University of Denver (DU) and Colorado (UCD) alumni. Got a question, message me!