You Can Use AI To Write Your Resume and LinkedIn – Is It A Good Idea?

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Welcome to the brave new world of the upsides of artificial intelligence (AI) – the robots are on the way and they’re going to help you with your resume and LinkedIn profile! 

Is it true? Partially. It’s easy to imagine a day when AI will provide fully “ready-for-primetime” career materials. And that’s great! It’s going to help democratize the job hunt and potentially remove barriers to those who have difficulty in this area.

First, it’s important to remember that artificial intelligence is powered by human intelligence; let’s dispel the notion that you’re going to push a button and your new best friend AI is going to crank out a resume or LinkedIn profile that’s ready for prime time. AI can help you accomplish what you want but it can’t do it alone – but you must be AI’s partner and collaborator.

The trick is to remember that AI can do a lot of great things. It really can. But it is incapable of inherently knowing you. AI can’t know who you are and what you’re made of, so must take AI by the hand, so to speak, and lead it to where you want to go.

If you decide you want to use AI tools to help you with your resume and LinkedIn profile, to be successful you’ll need to consider the following:

1.     AI is a starting point and not an endpoint. As previously mentioned, AI isn’t going to spit out any document that’s ready to go. Have realistic expectations. What AI will do is give you a solid template on which you can build. In this way, it’s an accelerator. For many, the first step is the most difficult. Let AI take that step for you but know that it’s going to pass the baton to you and you must finish the race.

2.     AI is only as good as its data. The “G” in ChatGPT stands for “generative,” which means it generates an answer based on research it conducts in the blink of an eye. That means the answer is only as good as the source of its research, and AI isn’t always accurate. You have no idea what data source the AI is mining, so be sure to incorporate having to revise the ChatGPT product into your workflow.

3.     AI doesn’t have a voice. AI has a language all its own and it is distinctly not human. Yes, you can ask AI tools to crank out a paragraph in some well-known author’s style that when first read seems amazing, but after the first impression you realize it is, for lack of a better word, robotic. AI tools will even let you feed in your own writing so it can mimic “your voice.” To an extent, that works. In the end, however, it’s distinctly not human. AI may spit out the sheet music, but you’re the person who’ll be on stage singing.

4.     AI doesn’t understand keywords. AI can generate an article just like this one giving you all sorts of tips about how to use AI, but it doesn’t necessarily understand the reasoning why. For example, you can specify AI to include certain keywords in your resume that will catch the reader’s attention, but it doesn’t really know why so it can’t effectively apply them. It may or may not guess well. It requires a human touch.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

Resume Fundamentals For Senior Executives

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Executives require a bit of a different approach to building an effective resume than other job seekers. It’s lonely at the top because, in comparison to other jobs, there are far fewer C-suite job opportunities in what could be accurately described as a hyper-competitive environment for those positions.

Like every other job, however, when a company, or board of directors, launches a search for a CEO or some other top executive the first thing they ask for is a resume. Even if you plan to hire a professional to write your resume, an understanding of the essential elements will help you communicate your expectations and enable you to properly evaluate the final draft.

Bear in mind – other candidates for the jobs you’re seeking are often just as impressive as you, also career senior executives with laundry lists of achievements. How you communicate your achievements may be the difference in your job search, so the first thing to understand is an effective executive’s resume tells a story about who you are and what you can contribute to a company.

• What is your superpower? There are many types of executives with many types of specialties, but they all set a vision for an organization and move it toward that vision. Are you an expert in launching new companies? Increasing the value of an existing firm? Can you turn around troubled companies around? Or in guiding stable ones into new areas. It’s important to know what kind of executive are you, and where in the lifecycle of a company you deliver the biggest bang for the buck – this is your through line and should run from the header on down.

• Where do you come from? There are many types of organizations. Privately held. Publicly traded. Venture capital. Private equity. Government. Education. Research. Non-profit. Each is a distinctly different environment with its own relevant ownership structure, investor relations, and compliance requirements, and being able to thrive in one setting doesn’t necessarily mean you will be talented at the other. Setting a strategic vision for a tech start-up is different than taking your successful family business public. Who you are is intertwined with the world where you learned your chops.

• What is the essence of your leadership style? There are many types of leaders. Servant-leaders. Thought leaders. Strategic. Transactional. Transformational. Solution-based. Autocratic. Are you giving TED talks or quietly working behind the scenes? According to Robert Smith, your leadership style is, “your approach to leading and interacting with others,” and “is composed of four key elements: theory, attitude, guiding principles, and behavior.” Just like your identity, your leadership style should be embedded in your work history.

• Can you sell and deliver against your vision? Regardless of your specialty, your type of organization, or your leadership style, when you’re in the C-suite you should be engaged in high-level long-term strategic thinking. That’s what a vision is - but anybody can have a vision. The ability to turn a vision into reality is what separates a manager from a senior executive. For example, let’s say you were hired to be the CEO of a small regional business that wants to move into new markets. Your vision is to create a national footprint through a series of mergers and acquisitions. Your resume should focus on how you set this vision, and then worked through your organization to guide it from concept to reality. Details matter, of course, but an effective C-level leader motivates his crew to achieve, without getting too stuck in the weeds.

• Do you have other credentials that can put you over the top? Just like any other resume, you will list your school(s) and related degrees. In addition, include any type of executive or leadership training, certifications, and relevant professional organizations. Yes, leaning on prestigious school names and program rankings helps.

• Be mindful of your tone. It’s the management team YOU put into place and countless employees that YOU are responsible for guiding to a successful outcome. There is a fine line between what you did and what you were able to get your company to do. Take credit for what you were able to get your company to do, but absolutely share that credit as appropriate. 

•  Use power language and metrics. Active verbs (i.e., orchestrate, direct, vision, pioneer, innovate, etc…) in your resume illustrate the difference between a photo of a bivouacked army and one charging into battle. Use language to affirm your level and experience and back it up with hard numbers of top-line and bottom-line business results you were able to deliver, in addition to the culture and “softer” initiatives you’ve effected.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

When Your Resume Just Isn't Enough – Other Important Tools Of The Job Search

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When it comes to looking for a job, a lot of emphasis is given to the big three – your resume, cover letter, and LinkedIn profile are some of the most essential pieces of your search. But job seekers have many other tools at their disposal. Each job process has its own challenges but are united by one thing, when you’re in the room you’re a salesman and the product you’re selling is you. Elevating yourself over other candidates is the ultimate upsell.

Other than your dazzling personality and confidence, when you want to leverage more than the big three, you may consider adding the following arrows to your quiver:

• References Lists – References matter. If references aren’t requested during the application process, they are optional. It is to your advantage to have a list of references ready and waiting to go. Your references are professionals you’ve worked with or for and will attest you’re a find.  Having people advocate on your behalf means something and the fact you’ve volunteered to provide references does too. Be assured, recruiters and hiring authorities often call your references so be sure you’ve had a conversation with them in advance so you know what they’re going to say – don’t assume a former boss or co-worker will give you a gushing review. Make sure.

• Reference Letters – Not to be confused with a list of references as described above, this a hard copy letter you have on your person that you can hand over in a job interview. That means you have to ask a potential reference to sing your praises in writing. That’s a big ask but if you can get it, that says a great deal about your character and reduces the recruiter or hiring manager’s task list (which is appreciated, remembered, and factored in). In the US, reference letters aren’t prevalent among professionals, but in Europe, for example, there are places a written reference letter is common, even expected, so if you want to work overseas you may want to consider going this route.

• Portfolios – Portfolios are a must for creatives, such as graphic designers. It’s essential to show your best work in the best ways. You should consider creating a traditional portfolio you take into the interview room and a digital version. This is another opportunity to expose recruiters and hiring managers to your work and skill sets. It’s also to your advantage to exploit the best aspects of both formats – traditional and digital. Naturally each version should include a mix of your best and most recent work, but the formats are different so use their unique strengths to your advantage. If you want to take a deeper dive on portfolios check out this past article, “The Portfolio.”

• Presentations – During the course of your professional career, you may have worked on a special project, executive presentation, or some act of gravity that had a direct positive impact on achieving whatever goals had been set out. If you have metrics to support that narrative, any related documentation can be an asset. If, for example, you have professional proposal (e.g., business proposal for funding), a power point (e.g., marketing strategy), audio/video recordings, lectures, etc., that may advance your candidacy nobody will fault you for using them to demonstrate the value you will add to whatever role you pursue.

• Work Samples – If you’re in a field that makes stuff, like product design and development, you may have played an integral in producing goods that amount to three dimensional portfolios. Maybe you’re an architect with a model of one of your designs that was built, a product developer who created or worked on a best-selling product, or are in specialty industry like robotics (yes, robotics) or 3-D printing (most recently projected to be a $67 billion year industry by 2028) and have impressive toys to share with the class. Use it all.

• Day One Plan: This is the casino special. A high risk, high reward special assignment you undertake just for this employer to present at your interview.  You create, for example, a plan specific to the role you’re trying to get that details what you would do on Day One and beyond. Think 30-day, 60-day, 90-plans. Whatever you can legitimately represent as a realistic pathway given the limited information you may have. You can’t know the inner workings or strategic plans of a potential employer and to assume that position would be overplaying your hand. What you can offer is the methodology you will employ in the role, the tools you will you use to measure your progress, and the benchmarks (e.g., KPIs) you hope to achieve.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.