This week, a company made a request to job seekers who may be considering using artificial intelligence to spruce up their résumés or applications: Please don’t.
“While we encourage people to use AI systems during their role to help them work faster and more effectively, please do not use AI assistants during the application process,” the notice read.
Ironically, the warning came from Anthropic, an artificial intelligence software company based in San Francisco. “We want to understand your personal interest in Anthropic without mediation through an AI system, and we also want to evaluate your non-AI-assisted communication skills,” the company continued in its newly released policy on applicants using the technology.
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The maker of the Claude AI chatbot, Anthropic is not the only company that has voiced concern about the use of AI to polish a résumé or a cover letter. A 2024 survey conducted by CV Genius found that 80% of hiring managers viewed AI-generated job application content negatively, with 57% saying they were “less likely to hire” a person when they spot it.
Is using AI for a job application cheating?
Apple CEO Tim Cook, whose company has gone all in on its integration of artificial intelligence in its phones and computers, was asked by Wired magazine in December about a recent demo that features a young, fictional job applicant using Apple Intelligence to improve a cover letter. Should a job recruiter who hires the applicant based on the improved cover letter feel tricked if the applicant is hired and turns out not to be as literate as the cover letter implied?
“I don’t think so,” Cook replied. “By using the tool, it comes across as more polished. It’s still your decision to use the tool. It’s like you and I collaborating on something — one plus one can equal more than two, right?”
But J.T. O’Donnell, CEO of the job recruiting company Work It Daily, said in an Instagram post on Thursday that Anthropic’s new policy asking prospective employees to refrain from using AI tools when applying for a job is “going to open the flood gates for many companies to do the same.”
“They want to hire a human being,” O’Donnell said, adding, “AI tools are flooding” companies with “too bogus résumés and too many applicants.”
“They’re hiring you to do a job. They want to make sure that you’re the real deal,” she continued, adding, “Don’t use AI [for job applications]. These AI tools people are offering you are only hurting you.”
Tipping point?
With AI tools now offered on job sites like LinkedIn and Indeed to help applicants tailor résumés and cover letters for prospective employers, the use of the technology shows no signs of slowing among job seekers.
An August survey by Capterra, a business software company, found that 58% of job seekers use AI to help them apply for jobs and that 83% admitted using the technology to “exaggerate or lie about their skills on a resume, cover letter, job application, or skills assessment.”
But with applicants flooding employers with AI-enhanced applications and companies turning to AI to screen out and even interview their next hires, it can begin to feel like there’s no escape from the technology.
“What AI is doing is actually just creating more noise. … Normal people who are not using AI are hurting in the job market, and then they have to go start using AI to apply to jobs to be competitive,” Maddie Macho, a job recruiter, said in a TikTok video.
But the bottom line, according to O’Donnell, is that “the résumé is dead” because too many people are using AI to pad, if not falsify, them. That is going to leave companies in the position of either rolling out anti-AI policies for job applicants or developing better AI tools to weed out the fakes.
“If they want you to be authentic so they can choose the right person, they’re entitled to it,” O’Donnell said.
