Thought Leadership
How to Read a Resume When AI Wrote It
Resumes look better than ever — but the signal is weaker than ever. Tim Smith of The The Imagine Group shares how hiring managers and recruiters can cut through AI polish and focus on what really matters.
In today's hiring landscape, resumes are evolving alongside the tools candidates use to create them. Tim Smith of The The Imagine Group shares his perspective on how hiring managers and recruiters can look beyond the polish and focus on what really matters when evaluating candidates.
Reviewing resumes has always been the stage where qualified candidates get inappropriately disqualified and time gets wasted on unqualified ones. It is harder now, because a growing share of the resumes in your pipeline were written or heavily polished by AI. The paper looks better than ever. The signal is weaker than ever. Here is how I recommend hiring managers and recruiters adjust.
Read from the bottom up.
Read the work history in chronological order so you understand the story of the career, how the person progressed, and where the gaps are. A polished summary section tells you what a tool thinks you want to hear. The trajectory tells you what actually happened.
Look hard at the content, not the polish.
A well-written resume no longer implies a well-qualified candidate, because well-written is now the default. Dig into the specific responsibilities and outcomes. Do the experiences reflect what you need, or is it a wall of confident keywords? AI tools tend to list every skill that is relevant to the posting, whether or not the candidate has used it. A candidate listing twenty platforms may have touched five.
Verify in conversation, quickly.
The interview is now the real filter. Skills inflation gets caught almost immediately once someone is in front of a person asking real questions. Get borderline candidates to a short conversation faster rather than trying to resolve doubt from the document.
Don't over-filter on keywords.
Not every candidate lists a skill, title, or school the same way, and automated screens miss the variations. Be careful not to disqualify someone because the exact phrase you searched is not under every position.
Give extra credit for genuine customization.
When someone has clearly engaged with your specific role and company, and the details prove it was them and not a template, it still tells you something about interest and professionalism. It is just a signal you now have to verify rather than take at face value.
Say thank you.
When you find candidates you want to stay in front of but can't place today, send a brief, personal note. In a pipeline full of automation, a personalized message goes further than it ever has.
The resume has become a weaker signal, but it is still the front door of your process. What has your team changed about how they read one?
At The The Imagine Group, we understand that finding the right talent takes more than reviewing a resume. Our team combines recruiting expertise with a deeper understanding of what makes a candidate the right fit for an organization.