Are AI Resume Builders Any Good? Here's My Take

AI has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the past year. It has found its way into every sector you can think of – and AI job search tools are popping up everywhere. 

AI resume-builder tools have been getting a lot of traction so I wanted to see if they were any good. 

Of all the resume builders out there, I’ve seen people on LinkedIn name-drop Kickresume the most so I decided to give it a try. Basically, it's a tool that uses AI (specifically GPT-4) to help you create a resume from scratch. Not just the layout or design, but also the text and phrases to fill the resume with.

I’ll be doing an in-depth review of this tool below.

My goal? To determine if Kickresume, and by extension, AI resume builders as a whole, are really worth all the hype they've been getting. 

Here's what I'm going to cover in this article:

• How I created my resume step-by-step

• Was the final resume any good?

• What are the pros and cons of this tool?

• Final verdict: Are AI resume builders any good? 

How I created my resume with AI (+ screenshots)

Disclaimer: For the purpose of this experiment, I created a fictional character by the name of Allen Schrader, a Senior Data Analyst. Allen has spent five years working in the field of Data Science within a large corporate environment.

From the moment I logged into my Kickresume account, the process was quite straightforward. Here's a step-by-step breakdown:

1. Log in and start the process.

First, sign up or log in to your Kickresume account. You can sign up using LinkedIn, Google, Apple, or Facebook. 

When logged in, I clicked New Resume with AI on the dashboard. This launched the AI Wizard – a chatbot that requested my name, latest job title, and guided me to choose a suitable resume template. So far, I like the simplicity of the UI.

2. Customizing the resume

After I completed the questionnaire, the system used the info and generated a resume. Based on the 2 pieces of information I provided, the first resume draft included:

• My name

• Contact information section

• A resume profile 

• Work experience section

• Skills

• Strengths

• Hobbies

From here, I had a few choices to personalize it.

The profile and work experience sections were really well written and barely required any editing at all. I made minor edits and plugged in my own numbers that were relevant to my past jobs but that’s pretty much it.

The skills and strengths sections were also populated with relevant hard skills, tools, and software.

I did, however, add some of Allen's (made-up) personal details, the name of the last company he worked at, and the dates.

3. Adding extra sections.

As mentioned, the first draft included 6 basic resume sections. I decided to add two extra sections that could be beneficial for a Data Analyst: certifications and awards.

For the first section, I chose a popular data analysis certification. I simply typed in the name and the date, and the AI wrote a fitting description of this certification for me. 

The same applied in the awards section. I chose a random data science award, input the name and date, and the AI wrote a short but relevant description. 

4. Final tweaks and design.

To finalize the resume, I chose to re-order the section so that the more important ones were at the top. I could simply do this by dragging the sections.

I also changed the title of the first section from ‘Profile’ to ‘Summary’ and edited the text to be bullet points to summarize my overall work experience and any notable accomplishments. 

If you're not happy with the bullet points in the resume sections, there's an option to edit or regenerate new ones with AI. So, I let the AI generate one more bullet point for the work experience section. 

While I found the strengths section unique, I opted to remove it to create more space for my work experience and rely on my skills section to do the talking. 

I also prefer a clean text resume without too many distractions or design elements so I removed the star ratings under each skill (which frees up more space for additional skills) and the icons in the hobbies section.

Finally, I resized the text and spacing so the resume would fit into one page.

(Btw...It's totally fine if your resume ends up being more than one page, I just chose to do one page for this article)

Here's the final AI-generated resume

So, how did the final resume turn out? I'd say it's pretty good considering that it only took me about 5-10 minutes to create.

It looks professional. It includes all the necessary sections, all of which are populated with content that's relevant to the position of a data analyst (I tried other roles too and the results were consistent).

The AI-generated bullet points were all strong. They’re full of action verbs I would use on my own resume, such as developed, analyzed, created, or collaborated. It also includes numbers that quantify Allen’s achievements from his previous job which is key. The bullet points Kickresume generates remind me of Google’s XYZ formula that gets recommended to jobseekers when crafting a resume (Google describes this as: "Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y], by doing [Z].")

The skills and strengths that the AI generated, such as data visualization, data modeling, SQL proficiency, and data interpretation, are vital skills in the data science field. 

I was really impressed with how the AI described Allen's award and certification.

The design is clean and professional but still feels modern. 

Pros & cons of Kickresume's AI Resume Builder

The good:

• AI-generated content. You can literally create the whole resume with AI. The first draft included 6 pre-filled resume sections which I barely had to edit. I added the extra two sections, which I also populated using AI. The text is relevant for the position, it's not too short, and you can re-generate or edit it whenever you want. The only section I had to fill in manually was the contact information section. 

• Resume customization. Each design aspect within each resume template, such as certain elements, fonts, spacing, and colors, can be modified to your liking. Personally, I recommend keeping things simple here.

• User-friendly. The AI Wizard tells you what to do right from the start. The steps are intuitive and accompanied by handy tips and guide links throughout the entire process. I would recommend using this to just get a quick template to start working from vs. building one from scratch.

• Section re-ordering. Depending on which section you want to emphasize, the sections can be rearranged simply by dragging. For example, if you feel like your skills or awards are more important than your education, simply slide the two up, and drag the education at the end. 

• Free option. I was testing out their paid version but you can create a full resume utilizing AI without any charge.

The not-so-good: 

• Needs personalization. The only input for the AI is your name and your most recent job title. This is enough for a decent draft, however, if you want a more detailed and complete resume, you do need to add in some of the information yourself. For instance, as this tool only takes your most recent job title into account, it’s unaware of your previous jobs.

• Resume customization. But Reno didn’t you say this was a pro? I did. It can be both a pro/con. While you can choose from their 37 templates, this might be overwhelming and some templates might be too creative for some people. While company ATS systems have gotten pretty good at reading various resume templates once you apply for a job, I personally prefer their conservative resume templates just to be sure. 

Final verdict: Are AI resume builders any good?

Based on my experience with Kickresume’s AI resume builder, I would be lying if I said they weren't. I was left impressed, and feel confident in saying – without a doubt, yes, AI resume builders are good and they’ll only get better from here.

Are they going to replace resume writing services? No, I don’t think so. But if you’re someone working on a budget, it’s hard to beat free or $19/mo (cost of Kickresume’s premium tier) for a quality resume. You can give it a try here.

This tool also streamlined the whole process and made things really simple which is a pretty big deal for me. In the past, it would take me days/weeks to try and create an application-worthy resume with plenty of do-overs. The resume I created with Kickresume took me ~10 minutes.

So, if you're dreading writing a resume or just want to switch up your old one but don't know where to start, AI resume builders are definitely worth a shot.