Where cosmetic Botox softens wrinkles, so-called “résumé Botox” does the same for job seekers’ applications, making them appear younger to prospective employers. That might mean removing or editing graduation years, early jobs, senior titles, and profile photos, all in the service of obscuring an applicant’s real age.
The practice is more common than you might think. A new survey suggests that nearly half of job seekers are manipulating their résumés to seem younger—and many of them are using AI to do it.
The survey, which was conducted by Use.AI, polled 4,263 users of the AI platform who had applied for a job in the past 12 months. More than four in 10 (42%) said they’d removed or changed details on their résumés or LinkedIn profiles to appear younger or less senior.
Attempts to appear younger were more common among women than men, with 53% of women aged 45 and older having made these changes to their résumé, compared to 35% of men in the same age range.
These job seekers said they’re making these changes due to fear of ageism in the hiring process, citing both human hiring managers and AI agents as possible culprits of age discrimination. Of those who had changed their résumés to appear younger, 56% said they believed human recruiters would filter out their applications, while 38% said they thought AI screeners would do the same.
Amid those AI-fueled anxieties, nearly three-quarters (72%) of those making changes to their résumés were using AI to do so.
Source link







