Well, technically ChatGPT can write a resume, but it’s not likely to be a good one.

ChatGPT is getting a lot of press lately, and there are boosters and detractors for this latest form of AI; each side has good points, but I’m not going into them here. Instead, I’ll explain why, for now, the answer to can ChatGPT write a resume, is that it shouldn’t.

If your employment and educational history is out there in cyberspace, then ChatGPT can pull together the data and present it in a resume format, although I’ve never tried it and I’m not certain what the formatting options are. So if all you’re looking for in a resume is your employment history and where you went to school, then ChatGPT may do the trick.

But while leading a recent resume writing workshop, a participant asked me why he should “waste” his time crafting a resume when ChatGPT could do it for him. So I asked him who the end user is for resumes, and he replied, “ATS software.”

“Fine,” I responded, “but assuming the ATS sends your resume to the company, who is going to read it? It will be an internal recruiter or the hiring manager, both of whom are HUMAN. And a human audience is looking for more than just the facts; they are looking for the candidate’s value proposition – in other words – a reason to invite the candidate in for an interview.”

Resumes are marketing tools, not mere histories of a candidate’s career. Their primary purpose is to sell the candidate to the employer, and the best way to do that is to showcase specific career highlights, achievements, accomplishments that will differentiate the candidate from the competition and most importantly, demonstrate to the recruiter or hiring manager what that candidate is capable of.

Resumes allow candidates to tell their story in a brief format with enough intriguing details that will motivate the human reading it to say, “let’s interview him/her/they and learn more. ChatGPT can’t do that. Not yet.