By Emily Troutman, MPP and Kathryn Troutman
Resume Place, Inc., Sept. 30, 2026, Baltimore, MD.
Here at Resume Place, Inc., we have been writing and editing federal resumes for more than 30 years. But there is a sea change happening with AI and resume writing. More applicants are bringing us resumes written almost entirely by AI.
AI is a very useful analysis and drafting tool. But to be most competitive, we do not recommend using AI to write your entire resume. We are seeing applicants make avoidable errors.
AI Word Choice is Often Approximate
The AI tools most people use are large language models. When an LLM “writes,” it predicts what should come next based on patterns it learned from enormous amounts of text.
That means the word it chooses is not necessarily the most accurate word for your experience. It is the word the model calculates is likely to fit the sentence.
As a result, we are seeing more resumes with imprecise and, often, overstated qualifications and skills.
LLMs represent words and concepts partly through their relationships to other words and concepts. This is known as semantic proximity.
- For example, “spreadsheet” is close to ideas like data, analysis, tracking, and Excel. It can also be close to business analytics, dashboards, Tableau, and predictive modeling.
But closely related words are not equivalent. And when it comes to your qualifications, the distinction matters.
AI Wants to Make You Happy
The first problem can be compounded by a second: AI tries to do what you ask it to do.
If you give ChatGPT your resume and a job announcement and say, “Make my resume match this job,” it will try to make the match.
That can quickly become a problem.
Consider a Contract Specialist at an Army depot who is targeting a Program Analyst position.
- One of his best accomplishments is that he built a spreadsheet to track purchase requests because the organization was missing deadlines. The spreadsheet tracked requests, flagged approaching deadlines, and helped him identify delays.
- The new announcement asks for experience with “data analytics and business intelligence dashboards.”
An AI rewrite might turn his accomplishment into:
- Business Intelligence and Analytics: Designed an enterprise procurement dashboard delivering real-time insights to leadership.
His original spreadsheet was useful. It solved a real problem. But it was not a business intelligence dashboard. The AI tool was asked to make the original resume fit the announcement, and it did that by finding the nearest related language and elevating it.
Now imagine he gets the interview and the first question is: “Which BI platform did you build it in?”
Some of our clients are coming to us with a “successful” resume, but very poor interview results. We suspect the resume is the problem.
Good Resumes Need Human Writers
In federal hiring, many terms in announcements describe specialized bodies of experience. You may have worked near that experience, supported it, or done something related without actually possessing the qualification the term represents.
Our Contract Specialist from the example above, might not understand the difference between his spreadsheet and a business intelligence dashboard.
A professional resume writer can help applicants understand when the language in an announcement accurately describes your experience and when it crosses the line into a different skill, tool, method, or level of responsibility.
How to Use AI in Your Resume
AI is very useful for analyzing a USAJOBS announcement. It can help curate language to include in your resume and evaluate what you’ve written.
To do this safely, give it the sections that matter most: the duties, specialized experience, qualifications, and competencies or KSAs.
- Then ask, “Give me the eight most important keywords and competencies for this position.”
Now compare that list with your resume.
If the announcement uses an accurate term for work you really performed, consider using that terminology in your resume.
If you have never done the work, do not add the term simply because AI identified it as important.
Keep in mind that in federal hiring, listing a qualification is not the same as proving it. Specialized experience needs to be demonstrated through the duties and accomplishments associated with an identifiable period of employment.
Use AI to Improve Accomplishments
This is where AI can be especially helpful. Start by drafting a story about what actually happened.
What did you do? Why did you do it? What problem were you trying to solve? How did you do the work? How large was the program, budget, team, workload, or customer population? What changed?
Then use AI to help make the accomplishment more concise and readable.
- For example, “Edit this accomplishment to approximately 60 words. Keep all facts and metrics. Do not add skills, tools, outcomes, or responsibilities that I did not provide.”
AI is a Great Partner
AI can help you understand an announcement. It can surface terminology you missed and tighten accomplishments.
But a good resume, one that serves you well throughout the entire hiring process, should be reflective of your actual work.
A resume written entirely by AI often looks polished but can end up generic, embellished, or missing the very details that make you qualified.
Need professional help?
Good luck with your next application. We are here to help you create a resume that gives you the strongest possible chance of being found Best Qualified.
Resume Place can help you analyze the announcement, identify the most important keywords, determine which duties and accomplishments belong in the resume, and edit the final version to two pages.
Federal Resume Reviews/Consultation/Writing
Get professional help with your 2-page federal resume for the Program Analyst or any job series. Expert writing and coaching for project and accomplishment details; editing for 2 pages; analyzing the most important information for page one of the resume. Consultation is $210 or $260 (target GS 14 and up positions). Your career might depend on professional writing and targeting your federal resume.
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Emily Troutman, MPP is the future President of Resume Place, Inc., and a Federal Career and Resume Consultant, Senior Writer and Training Director with The Resume Place, Inc. Offering more than twenty years of experience consulting and writng for the Federal and SES resumes. Emily is a highly sought after career counselor and writer who comes to this work as a former journalist in international affairs. She teaches across government and most recently at the National Institutes of Health, FEMA, NASA and ICE.
Emily holds a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the University of Minnesota, Hubert H.Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs. In 2009, Emily was named Citizen Ambassador to the United Nations
