As artificial intelligence continues infiltrating various facets of business, its role in crafting job application materials has raised several red flags. At Flex HR, we want to shed light on the risks for both employers and job seekers of relying too heavily on AI-powered hiring tools.
“Authenticity is a key concern when it comes to AI-generated resumes and cover letters,” says Jennifer Morehead, CEO of Flex HR. “These automated tools can produce content quickly, but they often lack the human voice and real experience of applicants. This makes it very challenging for employers to truly evaluate candidates.”
AI-crafted resumes may be grammatically flawless and strategically formatted, but upon closer inspection, they can feel hollow, impersonal, and inauthentic. Without that human touch, recruiters lose a sense of the candidate’s writing style, personality, and background. The resume becomes a generic document that fails to bring the person behind it to life.
“You want application materials that capture the uniqueness of each applicant,” Morehead explains. “Otherwise, everyone blends together, and it becomes difficult to identify the right cultural fit.”
This lack of authenticity also raises ethical issues when AI is used to fabricate qualifications or work history details. Some generation tools will even imitate a human author’s tone and writing quirks intended to dupe hiring managers about who actually created the content.
“Misrepresenting credentials to potential employers crosses an ethical line,” says Morehead. “We need to have transparency about AI’s growing role in the hiring process, so expectations are clear on both sides.”
In addition to authenticity, AI poses unintended bias risks when crafting job application materials. These new-generation tools reflect the data they’re trained on, which can lead to biased and problematic outputs.
“Like any technology, AI systems aren’t immune from perpetuating real-world biases,” Morehead says. “If the algorithms are based on flawed or prejudiced data sources, that gets incorporated into the content they create.”
For example, an AI system mainly trained on resumes and profiles of men might inadvertently craft language and details that favor male applicants over females. The machine learning models pick up on patterns in the training data that often reflect societal biases and gaps in representation and diversity.
“You have to be cognizant of these bias risks that could unfairly put some candidates at a disadvantage,” Morehead says. “We recommend extensive testing to catch potential issues before deploying AI tools in your hiring process.”
The generic nature of AI-generated materials also raises concerns about relevance and customization. Software programs like resume builders can certainly help job seekers compile standard sections like work history, skills, and education. However, the machine-produced content often feels impersonal and irrelevant to the specific role or company.
“Lacking customization for the job description or company culture is a common downside of relying too much on technology for application materials,” says Morehead. “You want the content to feel targeted and meaningful for what you’re applying to, not just boilerplate text.”
Instead of making strategic choices based on the job and company, AI systems generate more generic verbose content to meet word count or formatting requirements. Without that human perspective and decision-making, the resume fails to highlight experiences and skills that resonate with that specific role and employer.
Morehead believes striking the right balance is key: “AI tools can help generate content and save time in the initial drafting phase, but the materials need that human refinement and customization to really stand out.”
This lack of personalization and relevance in AI-crafted documents can also detract from their ability to showcase soft skills sought after by employers: creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, communication skills, and emotional intelligence.
Rather than seeing how candidates frame past work experiences in their own voice, companies must rely more heavily on robot screening materials for the right keywords and data points. This undermines human interaction and judgment in the evaluation process.
“Soft skills related to communication, teamwork, innovation, and leadership are in high demand,” Morehead explains. “But those competencies rarely shine through in template-driven, AI-generated content.”
While AI promises to streamline and automate part of the hiring process, Morehead believes it should not entirely replace human input and evaluation.
“At the end of the day, you need people involved,” she says. “Otherwise, you lose the unique human interactions that help assess candidate fit and potential.”
In moderation, AI-powered tools offer recruiting efficiency by automating administrative and data-gathering aspects of hiring. But fully handing over resumes and cover letter writing to robots runs several risks that should give job seekers and employers pause.
Authenticity, relevance, personalization, and soft skills assessment can all become casualties when AI content generators and screeners dominate the applicant materials process. Until bias detection and transparency around AI improve, approach these innovations cautiously and selectively for your hiring needs.
About Jennifer Morehead
Jennifer Morehead is the CEO of Flex HR as well as an entrepreneur, sales, and marketing expert, and an independent board member. Morehead prides herself on building strong teams that exceed expectations for their clients. She is the co-author of Make Your Business Social and the author of CEO From Home.
Before Flex HR, Morehead successfully launched and ran a company that created marketing solutions for local businesses throughout the country. She created a high-growth environment for her business while also running human resources in addition to her duties as CEO. Before her marketing solutions business, she helped run a sales department at a media company that included roles in recruiting, hiring, and putting together new employee training sessions.
Morehead has always been passionate about human resources and finding new ways to improve efficiency in the workplace. This passion led her to create Flex HR, a company that provides custom human resources solutions for businesses of all sizes. Through her years of experience and expertise, Jennifer Morehead has become a leading authority on the management of human resources and the creation of a productive and thriving workplace.
About Flex HRFlex HR is a human resource outsourcing and consulting firm that offers a wide range of services to its clients. The company is located in the Metro Atlanta area and specializes in providing high-level strategic consulting, HR back-office administration, regulatory compliance, organizational development, benefit solutions, recruiting, training, payroll, employee websites, and more. Flex HR is committed to customizing plans for each client and providing the best possible service. Flex HR delivers intelligent HR expertise that allows companies to concentrate on their internal resources that will grow their core business. For more information, visit flexhr.com and follow Flex HR on Facebook,LinkedIn, and Twitter.