• Companies are cracking down on job applicants trying to use AI to boost their prospects.
• 72% of leaders said they were raising their standards for hiring a candidate, a Workday report found.
• Recruiters say standards will tighten further as firms themselves use AI to weed out candidates.

AI was supposed to make the job hunt easier, but job seekers should expect landing a new gig harder in the coming years, thanks to companies growing increasingly suspicious of candidates using bots to get their foot in the door.

Hiring managers, keen to sniff out picture-perfect candidates that have used AI to augment their applications, are beginning to tighten their standards to interview and ultimately hire new employees, labor market sources told Business Insider.

Recruiters said that has already made the job market more competitive — and the selection will get even tighter as more companies adopt their own AI tools to sift through applicants.

In the first half of the year, 72% of business leaders said they were raising their standards for hiring applicants, according to a report from Workday. Meanwhile, 77% of companies said they intended to scale their use of AI in the recruiting process over the next year.

63% of recruiters and hiring decision makers said they already used AI as part of the recruiting process, up from 58% last year, a separate survey by Employ found.

Jeff Hyman, a veteran recruiter and the CEO of Recruit Rockstars, says AI software is growing more popular among hiring managers to weed through stacks of seemingly ideal candidates.

"Ironically, big companies are using AI to go through that stack, that AI has brought first place, and it's becoming this ridiculous tit-for-tat battle," Hyman told BI in an interview. "I would say human judgment … is what rules the day, but certainly, we use a lot of software to reduce a stack from 500 to 50, because you got to start somewhere," he later added.

Tim Sackett, the president of the tech staffing firm HRU Technical Resources, says some firms are beta-testing AI software that can allow companies to detect fraud on résumés — a development he thinks will make the job market significantly more competitive. That technology could become mainstream as soon as mid-2025, he speculated, given how fast AI tech is accelerating.

"It's just going to get worse," Sackett said of companies being more selective of new hires. "I mean, if more candidates become really used to utilizing AI to help them match a job better, to network better, it's just going to happen."

The interview-to-offer ratio at enterprise companies declined to 64% in July of this year, according to Employ's survey, which indicates companies are interviewing fewer candidates before making a hiring decision.

"Recruiters are scrutinizing candidates more closely," Hyman adds. "My candidate interviews have become longer and more in-depth, designed to truly test a candidate's abilities beyond a polished résumé."

Inundated by AI

Employers aren't big fans of AI as a tool for candidates to get a leg up. That's partly because it's led to hiring systems being flooded with applications sent using AI, Sackett and Hyman said, which has made hiring decisions way harder.

Workday found that job applications grew at four times the pace of job openings in the first half of this year, with recruiters processing 173 million applications, while there were just 19 million job requisitions.

Having too many candidates for a position was the third most common problem recruiters faced in 2024, Employ added.

Hyman estimates the number of applications he reviews has doubled over the last year. Some of the more lucrative job postings are seeing close to 1,000 applications, he said, whereas they would have attracted 100-200 applications before the pandemic.

"I mean, a stack so big, that you can't even go through it, it's just not even possible to spend that kind of time," he said.

Candidates sending in applications spruced up with AI has also made it harder to determine who can actually do the job.

Sackett says he's seen an increase in "false positive" hiring, where a worker is hired and is quickly let go of their position when it becomes clear they're unable to do the job.

"I think what hiring managers are concerned about: Is this CV real when I'm talking to this person? Am I talking to the real person or are they using AI in the background?" Sackett said. He recalled one client he worked with who realized multiple candidates responded to interview questions in the same way, likely because they were using AI to write their responses. "So I think people just want to know that I'm getting what I think I'm getting."

• Job seekers are bulking up their résumés with extra details to stand out in a competitive market.
• Experts warn that overly detailed résumés can be hard to navigate and may hinder job prospects.
• AI tools and keyword stuffing contribute to longer CVs, but concise formats are still best.

It might be time to put your résumé on a diet.

In recent years, a competitive job market has ramped up the temptation to trick out résumés with added details about our skills and professional accomplishments, several career experts told Business Insider.

Yet a swole document can also be harder to navigate.

"You want to make your résumé a sales page, not a Wikipedia page," Madeline Mann, a career coach and CEO of Self Made Millennial, told BI.

Many job seekers believe that including extra detail will help show off their qualifications to employers. But, Mann said, employers have specifics they're seeking on a résumé — often what's outlined in the job description.

"You do not want it to be a treasure hunt for them to find those things," she said.

A year-end résumé cleanup

With the end of the year approaching, it might be a good time to take a fresh look at what's on your résumé as many employers tend to advertise new roles in January. Plus, an uptick in job postings for recruiters in some industries indicates that stepped-up hiring might soon follow.

Doing some trimming for the new year can help because as word counts on CVs creep higher, more employers might have to search for what they need.

A review by LiveCareer of some 50,000 résumés in its database found that, on average, they had nearly doubled in length from 2018 to 2023 as more job seekers did things like adding a section highlighting their skills.

LiveCareer also found that the number of people devoting résumé real estate to certificates, languages, and other accomplishments had about doubled.

James Neave, the head of data science at the job site Adzuna, told BI that he'd also seen CVs balloon. On average, the word count of the US résumés in its database has increased by about 40% since August 2021, he said.

Stay relevant

Neave said one culprit behind résumé creep could be the inclination to inject our professional calling cards with all of the keywords from a job description.

So-called keyword stuffing, where you add the operative words or phrases that appear in a job posting to your résumé, is nothing new. Yet more people hunting down jobs might be focusing on that in an attempt to shoulder their way past the applicant-tracking systems that most large employers use to sort résumés.

Jasmine Escalera, a career expert with LiveCareer, told BI that many job seekers feel the need to include more keywords, skills, and components like accomplishments in their résumés simply to stay afloat in a competitive job market.

But it's easy to overdo it, she said. Adding too much risks having a recruiter overlook what's most important.

Escalera recommends job seekers use distinct sections to help make their résumé easy to read. She suggests working from the top down by starting with a professional summary. Unlike the "objective" that once took the top spot, the professional summary should focus on how the candidate can contribute to what the employer is seeking, Escalera said.

But, unlike an objective that once might have been a sentence or two, professional summaries often get loaded up with how long we've worked, various skills, and the value we'd bring to a job, she said.

"There's much more going into this thing to be able to stand out," Escalera said.

Next up is a skills section. For people applying for roles with quantifiable results — like sales or marketing — it can be wise to then include a section on career accomplishments. Following that would be experience and, last, education.

AI doesn't always help

While using AI to write or revamp résumés hasn't been a thing for very long, Mann said that the technology could explain at least some CVs' newfound heft. That's because while the tech can help draft and proof résumés, AI can also bring its own risks, she said.

"It's the average of all the resources that are out there, so it creates these incredibly generic résumés," Mann said.

The reason, she said, is because many people have been writing résumés in rather generic ways for a long time so that's the bulk of what AI has been trained on.

Stick to two pages — maximum

For years, the advice has broadly been that newbie workers should keep their résumé to about a page. More seasoned workers, the thinking often goes, should cap their CVs around two pages and not go beyond three.

That advice still holds, Adzuna's Neave said.

"If I get a CV and it's like four or five pages, I'm inwardly groaning already," he said. That's because it's just harder to work with, Neave said.

He recommends people with five years or less of work experience cap a résumé at a page. For longer-tenure workers, two pages should suffice in most cases.

Focus on your most recent experience

Mann, from Self Made Millennial, said that because employers tend to care about your most recent work, it's best to focus the experience section on the past decade or about the last four roles.

For most experience beyond that, she said, it's often sufficient to drop in a bullet for that role or just name the jobs. It's still important that the résumé be an accurate portrayal of your career path, Mann said, but going into detail on the old stuff often isn't useful for employers.

"If a company is interviewing you and you're constantly going back 10-plus years to answer their questions, that is going to probably hurt you," she said. "They are more interested in what have you been up to lately."

Do you have something to share about what you're seeing in your job search or in the workplace? Business Insider would like to hear from you. Email our workplace team from a nonwork device at [email protected] with your story, or ask for one of our reporter's Signal numbers.

An earlier version of this story appeared on September 8, 2024.

• Andrew Yeung landed roles at Google and Meta by perfecting his résumé.
• Yeung submitted a one-page, black and white résumé with clean formatting and bullet points.
• He said job candidates can stand out if they customize, simplify, and quantify their résumé.

I was able to land a six-figure role at Google as a global product lead and Meta as a business planning and operations lead. I also made it to the final rounds at highly competitive tech companies like Amazon, Uber, and Spotify — not because of an Ivy League education or a stellar background, but because I perfected the craft of creating an impactful résumé to sell myself.

While there may come a day when your LinkedIn profile, personal website, or X account is all you need to land a job, your résumé is still the standard document required for the majority of jobs today.

A résumé is often the first point of contact between a job candidate and a company — they'll usually review it (for an average of six to seven seconds) before speaking with you, so it's crucial to have everything in order and avoid common mistakes that most people don't realize they're making.

Here's the résumé template I used.

Master the fundamentals

Remember to nail the essentials: Make your résumé a one-page, black-and-white PDF with a clear name (e.g., "Andrew Yeung's Resume"). Use well-formatted bullet points, proofread for typos, and include your contact info, LinkedIn profile, and personal website (if you have one), and make sure the layout is clean and visually appealing.

Nothing else matters if you don't have the fundamentals in place.

Customize your résumé to the role

During my job search, I created three distinct résumés tailored to the roles I was pursuing: strategy and analytics, product management, and sales. Each résumé included specific verbs, phrases, and concepts that were relevant to the role I was applying for, often pulled directly from job postings.

Most job seekers send out the same résumé everywhere, but recruiters and managers can easily spot the "spray and pray" approach. Even worse, applicant tracking systems may even flag your profile and auto-reject you if your résumé isn't relevant enough.

Lead with impact

Don't just do what everyone else does on their résumé: list their responsibilities. Instead, emphasize the impact of your work by using the following format:

"Achieved [insert impact] by [quantitative metric] by doing [insert activity]."

Example:

• OK: Responsible for reaching out to new distributors for the men's apparel category.
• Good: Increased sales for the men's apparel category by reaching out to closing distributors and onboarding them.
• Great: Increased sales for the men's apparel category by $10M annually by reaching out to 15 new distributors and onboarding them to the platform with a closing rate of 85%.

Generalize and simplify

The hiring manager and recruiter will often have much less context than you do on your previous experiences. They will know far less about your specific projects and initiatives, meaning you will have to simplify concepts, explain technical jargon, and elaborate on acronyms.

When in doubt, start by generalizing a concept to make it widely applicable, then narrow it down as necessary.

Example:

• Too specific: Launched Company X's GBM FY24 CX initiative to 5,000 EG customers and increased our NPS by 15, ICSAT by 15% while reducing regrettable churn by 20%.
• Simplified: Launched Company X's customer experience initiative for our global business marketing function to 5,000 enterprise customers to increase our NPS by 15, internal customer satisfaction metrics by 15%, and reduce our customer churn by 20%

Quantify as much as you can

The easiest way to spot a rookie résumé from an experienced one is by evaluating how many numbers are included.

Rookies leave numbers out. Pros try to quantify the impact of everything because they recognize the value of a P&L and know that is how business decisions are made.

Quantifying your impact not only proves you made a difference but also demonstrates good judgment and critical thinking. For every line item in your résumé, ask yourself: "How does this impact the bottom line of the company?"

Ask yourself: What attributes do you want to demonstrate?

If you're great at working with clients, prove it by including line items on your client management and customer service skills, and your coachability.

If you're a data wizard, include line items about your analytical abilities, excel prowess, and technical coding competence.

If you're a rigorous operator, include line items about your project management, leadership, and communication skills.

Recruiters and hiring managers will form an impression of you based on your résumé. It's your job to shape that impression.

Finally, remember to be creative — think outside your résumé

Though your résumé is an important piece to the puzzle, you can't solely rely on it for a successful job application. You need to build your network, often before you need it (see: career cushioning). Learn to pitch yourself effectively, master the interview process, and find sponsors within the target company.

Take the time to polish your résumé, and you will see a significantly higher response rate from hiring managers and recruiters at your target companies.

Good news: Once you've perfected your résumé, you likely don't have to do it again for a while.

Andrew Yeung is a former Meta and Google employee who now throws tech parties through Andrew's Mixers, runs a tech events company at Fibe, and invests at Next Wave NYC.