A few years ago, I suggested to a PRSSA group that they should wad up and throw away their resumes. I reiterated the same point last year as I urged Culpwrit readers to focus on social media – particularly LinkedIn – rather than their resumes.
Little did I realize at the time that a nascent online tool called Artificial Intelligence would become one of the final nails in the coffin of the traditional resume.
Over the weekend, I was intrigued to read the most recent update on AI’s role in job searches from Ars Technica. “Computer tools have been assisting with creating résumés for decades, and everything from the typewriter to word processors to spellcheck and résumé templates have increased the ease of making a competent résumé. But AI has pushed the trend into overdrive.”
According to the New York Times, employers are drowning in AI-generated job applications, with LinkedIn now processing 11,000 submissions per minute—a 45 percent surge from last year.
“Due to AI, the traditional hiring process has become overwhelmed with automated noise,” says Benj Edwards, senior AI reporter at Ars Technica. “It’s the résumé equivalent of AI slop—call it “hiring slop,” perhaps—that currently haunts social media and the web with sensational pictures and misleading information. The flood of ChatGPT-crafted résumés and bot-submitted applications has created an arms race between job seekers and employers, with both sides deploying increasingly sophisticated AI tools in a bot-versus-bot standoff that is quickly spiraling out of control.”
While employers and job seekers work through the deluge of résumés – both valid and “slop,” this development underscores the all-important need to create and maintain your own network. LinkedIn is invaluable in that regard.
As I remind my grad students each year, your networks create the best chance of landing a job and separating yourself from the thousands of AI-generated applicants swamping employers. And LinkedIn remains the best and easiest organizational tool for your network.