Let’s start with the obvious: writing a resume sucks. It’s performative, weirdly formal, and forces you to pretend your most soul-crushing job was a “dynamic opportunity to cross-functionally liaise with key stakeholders.” Enter ChatGPT—a bot with zero employment history and unlimited confidence, promising to turn your scattered LinkedIn and vague self-esteem into a pristine, ATS-friendly masterpiece.
So… can it?
It Gets the Basics Right
Ask ChatGPT for a resume, and it’ll spit out something that looks great. Clean structure, buzzwords, a logical flow from “Professional Summary” to “Skills” to “Experience.” It even knows the industry lingo—“strategic alignment,” “impact-driven,” “stakeholder engagement.” It’s like a recruiter wrote it while sleepwalking.
If your current resume is a Word doc from 2016 written in Times New Roman with more job trauma than action verbs, ChatGPT can absolutely give you a glow-up. It’ll standardize your formatting, punch up your language, and yes—help you dodge the “submitted but never seen” black hole of AI resume scanners.
But Here’s the Catch: It Doesn’t Know You
ChatGPT doesn’t know the version of you who managed a team without being a manager. Or the time you juggled three job roles because your department was understaffed. Or how you saved a campaign through sheer chaos-mastery. It’s not going to fight for your story unless you teach it how.
Out of the box, it writes like a well-trained intern with a thesaurus. Meaning: your resume might not suck anymore, but it won’t stand out either.
You Still Need to Think
The real work is in the prompt. Feed ChatGPT specific, detailed wins—not “Managed email campaigns,” but “Launched a segmented email campaign that increased open rates by 27%.” Don’t just say you were a cashier; say you handled $10,000 daily and trained six new hires while defusing customer rage with Jedi-level calm.
The bot can’t mine your experience for gold, but it’s great at polishing the nuggets you hand it.
What It’s Actually Good For:
What It’s Not Good For:
Final Thought—It’s Still Your Story
ChatGPT is a great assistant, but it can’t give your resume heart. If you feed it fluff, it’ll give you corporate nonsense. If you give it real wins, it’ll help you show up polished. So yes—it can help your resume suck less. But the person who’s lived the story still needs to write the first draft.
