Exceptional résumé writers still have a future. Perhaps not so much for those whose principal skill was making ordinary experience sound impressive. AI is becoming remarkably good at that.

The harder thing to replicate is the judgement behind the writing: knowing what matters, recognising what a client has achieved when they can’t recognise it themselves, finding the connections that aren’t immediately obvious, and understanding when a beautifully crafted sentence is actually saying nothing. That’s where experienced writers distinguish themselves.

And I think “Does this cleverness earn its place?” is an excellent place to start. When you select a resume writer, you’re not looking for someone to create the most impressive collection of sentences. Instead, you want someone who can make a compelling, credible case for you as a real human being.

The problem isn’t that AI can make people sound better than they are; résumé writers have been doing exactly that for decades. AI has simply made the temptation available to everyone.

And there’s a fundamental difference between making someone sound better and making someone sound more impressive.

A talented résumé writer should make the client sound like the very best, most compelling version of themselves. Not like someone else entirely.

This can become almost a form of professional vanity. The jobseeker becomes so enamoured with AI’s ability to craft an extraordinary document that they forget that they have to walk into the interview and communicate that same value.

This means the résumé becomes a performance of the AI’s ability to write an interview-getting résumé, rather than a representation of the person.

The interview is where the illusion collapses

For years, people have measured résumé effectiveness by whether it generates interviews.

But an interview isn’t the ultimate measure of résumé success. It’s merely the point at which the claims made on paper are tested against reality.

If the résumé establishes expectations that the candidate cannot reasonably fulfil, AI hasn’t improved the candidate’s prospects. It’s created a credibility problem.

And it needn’t be a question of exaggerating achievements or inventing qualifications.

A candidate might genuinely have achieved everything the résumé claims. Yet if the language, professional persona and implied level of sophistication bear little resemblance to the person sitting across the interview table, the employer may feel that something doesn’t add up.

That’s particularly unfair because the candidate might actually be excellent at the job.

They simply aren’t the person the résumé has led the interviewer to expect.

And this is where AI can make matters worse

Imagine an ordinary middle manager who uploads a perfectly respectable résumé and asks ChatGPT to make it more impressive.

Out comes a document describing a visionary transformational leader who “architects enterprise-wide strategies, catalyses organisational excellence and drives paradigm-shifting outcomes”.

The job seeker is delighted. They’ve never sounded so important!

And perhaps they secure an interview.

But the hiring manager has been primed to expect an exceptionally articulate, strategically sophisticated executive. Instead, they meet a perfectly capable operational manager who communicates plainly and has never described their work in such grandiose terms.

That doesn’t mean the candidate is less talented. It means the document has misrepresented the way their talent presents itself.

And there’s an additional danger: the candidate may come away believing they weren’t good enough, when the real problem was that they were competing against a fictional version of themselves.

That’s a pretty dreadful outcome for something intended to improve their career prospects.

There’s a principle worth preserving

A résumé should elevate the client’s value without elevating the client’s persona beyond recognition.

That’s not an argument for dull writing. Quite the opposite. It takes considerable skill to make someone sound compelling without resorting to inflated language, theatrical claims or borrowed sophistication.

And restraint requires more expertise than embellishment.

The genuinely exceptional writer knows when to stop.

I also think there’s a useful distinction between the client’s language and the client’s voice. A résumé writer should absolutely improve the language. Job seekers don’t necessarily know how to articulate their commercial value, and that’s why professional writers exist.

But the underlying voice, level of authority, professional identity and substance should remain their own.

And that brings us back to my observation about cleverness earning its place, with this thought: could you, as a job seeker, walk into an interview, read your own résumé aloud, and genuinely recognise the person being described?

As a job seeker, you needn’t use every polished phrase yourself. But you should understand, believe and be able to substantiate the professional identity the document establishes.

If you can’t, then no matter how beautiful the writing, something has gone wrong.

And I think this is potentially one of the strongest arguments for the continued existence of good professional résumé writers in an AI-dominated world.

Not that writers can write more impressively than ChatGPT, but that they know when impressive writing stops serving their client.

That judgement is worth considerably more than another beautifully crafted sentence.