Using AI on Resumes and Cover Letters 3AW 693AM Radio Melbourne with Tony Moclair

By Sue Ellson

Topic: Using AI on Resumes and Cover Letters

Date: 23 September 2025

Media Outlet: 3AW 693AM Melbourne https://www.3aw.com.au

Broadcaster / Interviewer: Tony Moclair

Producer: Joseph Campbell

Duration: 01:23:50 – 01:32:40 Total 00:08:50

Time of show: 2:08pm

Audio Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6ovTFf-9sM

YouTube Video:

Using AI on Resumes and Cover Letters on 3AW 693 AM Radio Melbourne with Tony Moclair and Sue Ellson

Transcript

Now you may not know this word, it could end up being word of the year, but it’s a it’s a pretty remarkable word.

What is it Workslop, Workslop.

What is it?

It’s AI generated documents that look sharp but are filled with low quality information.

Now the reason I mention AI is because new research from people 2 people recruitment has revealed that one in four Australians have used AI to help write their CV or cover letter.

For some, it’s become a frequent habit with 14% admitting they use it a lot and generationally it breaks down like this when it comes to AI use.

Gen Xers 33%, Millennials and Gen Zs 24% and Baby Boomers 22%. So AI promises a lot.

It could be one of those things that that was going to revolutionise the world, but, it’s the old saying that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.

It may have been slightly overhyped anyway, time will tell.

It did have us thinking though, however, about the exaggerations that we’ve all made on our CV 133693 I applied for a job.
I still don’t understand what the job was. I know it was for Shell at their uh, headquarters when it used to be on Spring Street.

My sister who worked there at the time said just apply for the job saying you know how to do and she dictated it to me.
I applied. I never got the job, which is a good thing because like I said, I have no idea what the job was. I just know it paid well. So that was a case of CV exaggeration not working in my favour.

It may have worked for you 133693.

Have you put down a porky or a slight exaggeration on a CV?

Did it work for you? 133693 Joining me on the line now, Sue Ellson, Career Expert.

Good afternoon Sue.

Hi Tony.

Now it is, I mean, one of those things that we all find a little bit difficult to do. Is it.

Mmm.

Does it surprise you or not that people are letting the digital brain do it if you want to put it in those terms?

Oh, it definitely does not surprise me because obviously if you’re looking for work, there’s a lot of filling in forms to do and there’s a lot of us who don’t like doing it. So anything that can make that process quicker and easier I’m, I’m pretty certain most people would say yes, I’ll give it a go.
Doesn’t always work though. Mmm.

The incentive is there though to exaggerate or be economical with the truth.

Mmm.

Is that, is the process part of the problem?

Well, it can be, because what we’ve got to realise is that AI is based on data that’s been scraped off of the Internet and it ends up in a data set and it produces results based more or less on probability. So if the only data that it’s had is a whole bunch of templated resumes off long forgotten websites.

Mmm.

Then obviously it’s going to produce something that sounds terribly similar to that.

Now obviously if the recruiter or the decision maker receives a whole bunch of these that sound like everybody else’s then they can tell very easily that’s been AI generated and they have little obvious signs like a lot of similar phrasing or very vague accomplishments or things that sound tremendously generic.

And I heard one recruiter say I get excited when I see a spelling mistake now.

Ha ha.

Because I realise that that was actually created by a human, not by AI.

But the the person who let that spelling mistake go would be thinking Oh my God, if I’m applying for a job as an English teacher, I’m not going to get the job.

Mmm. But they they could have actually got it because they did have a spelling mistake. So yeah, that’s the absolute irony of it. And look, as a career development practitioner, I’ve been telling people for years to massage the message and put things in a favourable light. I have no issue with that.

So long as you’re not lying, perfectly fine.

But AI does random stupid things that I would never recommend. And one of those is Sue has 24 years experience in X.
Well, nobody cares how many years of experience I’ve got.

Mmm.

What they want to know is can Sue do the job or not?

Mmm.

And so that’s what’s important. So there’s a lot of things because it’s based off that data set probability model, it’s not going to have the nuances and so whether somebody is going into the health industry or the construction industry, you know it’s going to produce the same kind of format.

And obviously we know there are lots of different nuances in each of those industries that if you are aware of that and you’ve worked in the industry and you can talk to those things and obviously you’re gonna stand out as a much better quality candidate than somebody who just has some generic statements in there. Mmm.

Well, speaking of that process, as you said, all these CVs are submitted, AI goes through them and culls them and collates them and all the rest of it, then how does a good candidate emerge from that almost standardised process?

Well I think that the best thing that you need to remember is up to 90% of jobs are never advertised and don’t go there in the first place. Right. But if you are going down that path, then I would suggest you’ve got to try and make sure that whatever you submit is aligned with the role.

So the more specific that you can make it to match the job description or the job advertisement, the better that’s going to be for you.

But what you also need to bear in mind is those savvy recruiters have technology that assesses your application. Whether that’s within their applicant tracking system or whether they’re using an AI tool.

But that they’re also going to look at your digital presence online.

So if you have a LinkedIn profile that doesn’t have any details on it, but this fantastic resume that has everything.

Yep.

Well, then there’s obviously a mismatch.

Yep.

So most decision makers are going to check you out online as well, whether that be LinkedIn or something else.
And so you’ve got to make sure that all the dots match up really. Mmm..

Yeah. That’s how it was discovered that I wasn’t, in fact, one of the first men who landed on the moon.

Ha ha.

You’ve always.
You’ve just.
In order to say the lie, you’ve got to believe the lie.
George Costanza.

You do.

So alright, the the fine line between lying and exaggerating.

Mmm.

Because do you know if somebody who’s been put on the spot in a job interview where they may have said, okay, you said here that you did in fact scale Mount Everest in 1922. Can you care to back that up? What what happens then?

Well, really interesting. Back in my early days of recruitment, we had a candidate who’d applied for a grad position at the bank 12 months previously and I didn’t look up their previous application, I just looked at their current one.

Yep.

And then when I checked the application, they’d provided a forged academic transcript.

So they said that they had much better grades than what they should have.

Now I went to the corporate manager who was going to be hiring this person and they wanted to go through the whole interview process and, you know, put them through the middle.

I said no, just get rid of the guy immediately.

Why waste your time on this particular candidate?

But the story didn’t end there because I was part of a group of other bankers and I spoke to the the guy at a different bank and he turned around and said Oh yes, we’ve hired such and such oh so hang on a minute so you ended up hiring the guy that we rejected?

Did you know that this guy has actually forged his academic transcript and so he got the sack from that and then would you believe he got another job which included a mobile phone at Kodak.

We all know where that went.

Exactly.

Yes, he did get his comeuppance eventually, but look, it’s not worth doing.

And the irony of that particular situation is his previous academic results from the year before that were true and correct were fine.

Oh no.

He would have actually got the job based on those, because we look at the whole person. We don’t just look at that, but because he lied, he stood no chance whatsoever.

So if you’re going to be found out, it’s not good.

But also, why lie?

I mean, you know, I remember from many years ago when you’re told as a child, don’t lie.

It’s like a stone in a pond and the ripples blah, blah, blah.

Yeah.

You have to keep lying.

Yeah.

You know, like it just it just never ends.

So it’s much better to tell the truth, miss out.

Mmm.

And you use better techniques to get a job and work your way up than it is to to lie and try and get in and, you know, be found out later.

It just doesn’t work.

No, you’re right.

And as soon as I get home, I’m adjusting my CV and deleting the line that says I invented the iPhone, so thank you for that.

Ha ha.

Sue Ellson, it’s always productive to chat to you.

I appreciate it.

Sue Ellson, career expert there 133693 133693.

Social Share

USING AI FOR RESUMES AND COVER LETTERS // Have you been tempted to use AI to help you with your resume and cover letter when applying for jobs? 🤔 Did you allow it to ‘exaggerate’ on your behalf? I discussed this topic with Tony Moclair on 3AW 693AM Radio Melbourne including:

✅ the term ‘Workslop’ for content produced by generative AI
✅ statistics from people2people recruitment
✅ percentages by generation of people who use AI in the job search process
✅ how generative AI prepares resumes and cover letters from a dataset and probability
✅ proving you are human with a spelling mistake
✅ massaging your application message
✅ aligning your application to the job description or advertisement
✅ recruiter Applicant Tracking Systems and AI Tools
✅ your digital presence including your LinkedIn Profile
✅ case study of a lying job applicant with a forged academic transcript

Enjoy the show online at https://sueellson.com/blog/using-ai-on-resumes-and-cover-letters-3aw-693am-radio-melbourne-with-tony-moclair

This link also includes further information you may find helpful.

Thanks to Producer Joseph Campbell for reaching out!

➡️ Are you using AI for cover letters and resumes in your job search and is it working for you?

I would love to continue this discussion and hear your perspectives.

#3awmelbourne #airesume #aicoverletter #careers #tonymoclair #sueellson