Job-Applicants Are Desperately 'AI-Washing" Their Resumes

This is a new variant on an old and familiar theme. First it was dotcom, then it was cell phones, now AI. 

With every generation of technology, those hoping to take advantage - or merely to keep their jobs - adapt by updating their resumes to reflect the latest trend. It is a cynical exercise, but in an economy without much sympathy, staying current is the equivalent of staying employed or of breaking in at all. JL

Te-Ping Chen  reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Millions of of job seekers to give their work history an AI makeover. In some cases, they are seeking to add new skills, obtaining certifications to demonstrate their fluency in the technology. In others, they are dressing up their résumés with AI buzzwords in hopes of gaining employer attention. “Everybody’s keyword dumping.”  The percentage of LinkedIn users in the U.S. who have added AI-related terms to their profiles rose 70% last year. Users have been retroactively adding AI terms to job titles where it hadn’t previously been mentioned. Compared with historic versions of such job descriptions, there are 30% more references to AI on user profiles today. “A lot of it looks like AI washing.”

Artificial intelligence is suddenly everywhere. Including on résumés.

The technology that is transforming the economy and prompting billions in spending on data centers is also pushing millions of job seekers to give their work history an AI makeover. In some cases, they are seeking to add new skills, obtaining certifications to demonstrate their fluency in the technology. In others, they are dressing up their résumés with AI buzzwords in hopes of gaining employer attention.

“Everybody’s keyword dumping,” said Denise Bitler, an executive career coach in Tampa, Fla. The percentage of LinkedIn users in the U.S. who have added AI-related terms to their profiles rose 70% last year, according to LinkedIn data. With more companies eager to hire workers with related skills, she says, they aren’t alone: “Employers are doing the same thing.”

Among all titles employers are hiring for on the jobs site Indeed in the U.S., 8% mentioned AI in the first quarter of 2026. That is up from 3% in 2022. Many of them are jobs that wouldn’t traditionally have involved many technological skills, such as “AI Autonomous Truck Test Driver” or “Physical Therapist (AI Documentation).”

The impact of AI on the workforce is a critical, and so far, unresolved question. Some economists predict the technology will wipe out jobs, while others say it will make employees more productive and eliminate grunt work. That leaves job seekers trying to find their place in an uncertain market.

Earlier this year, after a year and a half of challenges finding work, self-employed management consultant Grace Gravestock decided to both seek and promote some AI bona fides.

Grace Gravestock Kaylee Green

She has had misgivings about using the technology, but decided it was finally time to embrace it. She began experimenting intensively with AI and added “AI adoption leader” to her LinkedIn profile. She is currently pursuing a certification to demonstrate her AI fluency. Such certifications can take anywhere from hours to months to obtain, ranging in price from free to thousands of dollars in tuition. 

“There’s a lot of big change happening now, there’s no way to fight it,” Gravestock said, adding that she empathizes with fears AI will ultimately replace many workers. 

A new analysis by Stanford University economists Nick Bloom and Gideon Moore compared current LinkedIn profiles to archived versions of such profiles that existed before 2023. They found that users have been going back to retroactively add AI terms to job titles where the technology hadn’t previously been mentioned. Overall, compared with historic versions of such job descriptions, there are 30% more references to AI on user profiles today.

AI has been around for a while, and in some cases, people might be choosing to correct the record, said Bloom, who also co-authored the study alongside Lisa Simon and Caelan Wilkie-Rogers at workforce analytics company Revelio Labs. Given the prevalence of such changes, though, others are likely exaggerating their experience, he said: “A lot of it looks like AI washing.”

Job seekers are also taking steps to edit terms out of their profiles that might be less enticing to employers today than just a few years ago. For example, Bloom’s study found that references to remote work and diversity, equity and inclusion have dropped in recent years.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty in the labor market,” said Balaji Padmanabhan, who directs the Center for Artificial Intelligence in Business at the University of Maryland. “People recognize what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow.”

Last May, Padmanabhan and his peers launched a free AI-training course, expecting it to reach perhaps 500 people. Instead, to date, some 62,000 have signed up, ranging from laid-off tech workers to former civil servants trying to make a career pivot. 

Among them is Elizabeth Meek, who worked for the federal government for two decades, helping oversee biomedical research and track global infectious-disease spread in animal populations. But after President Trump returned to office last year and ordered workers back to their offices, she was forced to commute more than four hours a day to the nation’s capital from her Frederick, Md., home, and felt demoralized. She took early retirement.

Elizabeth Meek

“It was a devastating career moment,” Meek recalled. “I thought, well, what am I gonna do?” Then a colleague sent her a link to the University of Maryland’s training course, and she decided to go for it. 

Since then, the 53-year-old has found a new job at West Virginia University that includes using AI to analyze data and vibe-code apps. “It’s changed my life trajectory,” she said.

People touting their AI skills remain a minority: To date, 1.2% of LinkedIn’s 1.5 billion global users have added such skills to their profiles, according to the company. But in some areas, it has become more of a norm. Among product managers, 13% say they have such skills, 10% of researchers do, and 7% of consultants do as well.

“It’s the new buzzword,” said Art Davis, who recently added the term “AI-powered automation” to his LinkedIn profile. An AI system he has been using to help craft résumés and cover letters suggested the move. Davis said he started using AI last year in his work as a systems analyst, but hadn’t previously thought to single it out.

Art Davis Susan Simpson

So far, it hasn’t yielded dividends. Davis, who was laid off from his job this spring, has applied for 100 jobs and has yet to receive an interview. “It’s grim out there,” Davis said. 

Given the technology’s newness and rapid evolution, job seekers don’t always know how to show aptitude, said Dina Taylor, who works for the AI hiring platform HireVue and has the title chief evangelist. Still, Taylor said she encourages people to add AI skills to their résumés to demonstrate their potential, even if they are still in the process of developing them. 

Even if someone is just using ChatGPT to spin up recipes, it is “perfectly acceptable to say you leverage AI to support your daily projects or find ongoing areas of opportunity to add efficiencies into your life,” Taylor said.

“I believe in the mentality of say ‘yes’ and figure it out later,” she said.