Wasted $120 on that AI resume builder that promised interviews

I signed up for this tool called SmartApply that claimed it would optimize my resume for ATS systems and get me callbacks in 2 weeks. After a month and zero responses, I dug into the settings and realized it was just swapping synonyms without actually fixing the formatting that gets flagged by recruiters. Has anyone found a legit AI resume tool that doesn't just take your money and deliver nothing?

2 comments

2 Comments

wendy_wilson27d ago

Oh man, that's rough. $120 is a lot to drop on basically a thesaurus with a fancy interface. Here's something I haven't seen anyone mention yet - those AI tools are usually built by developers who don't actually work in HR or recruiting. They don't understand that ATS systems get tripped up by things like columns, tables, or even weird font characters that the AI might accidentally stick in there. I'd bet your optimized resume ended up looking messy on the recruiter's end. Next time try running the output through a plain text test first by saving it as .txt and checking for garbled characters, that saved me from wasting money on the next shiny tool.

laura_white9927d ago

Oh I don't know @wendy_wilson, are people really overthinking this? lol. I've used one of those tools before and just copy pasted it into a Word doc and got interviews fine. Maybe it's more about the content than worrying about gremlins in the text file.