The resume is now a cat-and-mouse game
the resume is now a cat-and-mouse game: an nber trial of 480,948 job seekers found ai-edited resumes raise hires by 7.8 percent, while 77 percent of hiring managers can detect ai content and 49 percent auto-dismiss resumes they suspect were fully generated.
the same tool is both the cheat and the test.
Context
An NBER working paper by Wiles, Munyikwa and Horton ran a field experiment in an online labor market with 480,948 jobseekers. Jobseekers who got algorithmic writing help on their resumes formed 7.8 percent more contracts and had 7.8 percent more job offers than the control group.
The paper was published in Management Science in 2025.
The 480,948 sample and the 7.8 percent figures match the paper. The treatment was algorithmic, non-generative writing assistance in an online labor market, not AI-edited resumes in general, and the paper dates from 2023. The 77 percent of hiring managers who can detect AI content and the 49 percent who auto-dismiss suspected resumes were not seen in the sources read, so unsupported here, not refuted.
Related work
- NBER: Algorithmic Writing Assistance on Jobseekers' Resumes Increases Hires ↗Working paper.
- Management Science version ↗Published version.
- arXiv: 2301.08083 ↗Open copy.
Watch next
- Find the hiring manager survey behind the 77 and 49 percent figures.
Sources
- NBER, Feb 2023, revised Oct 2023nber.org
- Management Science, Apr 18, 2025pubsonline.informs.org
- arXiv 2301.08083ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 2 October 2026 at 23:16 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
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