AI can help you tailor a resume. Here is what the research does and does not show.
Recruiters have used software to sort applications for years, and now job seekers use AI to write and tailor resumes. Does it work? Here is what we can support.
What one field experiment found
van Inwegen, Munyikwa and Horton ran a field experiment with nearly half a million jobseekers on one online labor platform. Those given algorithmic writing assistance were hired about 8% more often. That result is specific to that platform and that kind of assistance. It did not test ATS optimization or callbacks from a particular tool.
A hiring simulation
Xu, Li and Jiang ran a 2025 to 2026 simulation of hiring pipelines across 24 occupations in which the same LLM both wrote and screened resumes. Resumes written by the screening model were favored over human-written ones. This was a simulation, not a measurement of real employers, and it does not show that any deployed ATS behaves this way.
Tailoring wording to the job
Employers describe the skills they want in their own words, and you may describe the same experience differently. Where your experience genuinely matches, using the job description's terms can make that match easier for a reader to see. Do not claim skills you do not have.
Try it on your own resume
FilteredIn's free resume check lets you paste or upload a resume (PDF or TXT) and, optionally, a job description. It returns feedback on content and keywords. The score is feedback on your document, not a prediction of any employer's ATS or hiring decision.
Sources
- van Inwegen, Munyikwa and Horton, "Algorithmic Writing Assistance on Jobseekers' Resumes Increases Hires," arXiv:2301.08083. arxiv.org/abs/2301.08083
- Xu, Li and Jiang, "AI Self-preferencing in Algorithmic Hiring," arXiv:2509.00462 (v4 revised June 6, 2026). arxiv.org/abs/2509.00462