Resumes, Are They Old School or New School? Who Cares? Make Them Work for You While You Sleep

There's a small part of the candidate market that thinks resumes are old school. A very small group will actually dig their heels in about it, and a much bigger group just quietly believes it and keeps putting off the half day it would take to stop, quiet the noise and put a proper one together. I get it, because not that many years ago I was one of those people. I thought resumes were old school and that a great recruiter would do all of the heavy lifting for you. That is absolutely not the case, and I probably only thought it because I wasn't recruiting at the time. I am now, every day, and I see it first hand.

Yes, I know that sounds unbelievable with all of the AI we have at our disposal right now, but here we are.

What I've learned, especially over the last 12 to 18 months, is that it doesn't matter whether resumes are old school, new school or anything in between. What matters is the arena you're competing in.

Say your business isn't going great, or you're sick of what you're doing, or you just want a new job. You go for a role, and sitting in that same pile are people who have spent real time putting together a killer resume. Some used AI, some used their own brain, some paid someone to do it, and some had a recruiter with the time to sit down and help them build it, which I do with certain people.

That's who you're up against, whether you like it or not.

The market doesn't care for your opinion on it. It's just nature - you're competing in the jungle with people who have put the work in, and whoever's hiring is putting your resume side by side with theirs.

So get your shit together and make a really good resume.

So what does a really good resume look like?

First up, the one page rule is neither here nor there. If your resume fits on one page, great, but it should cover at least the last 10 years of your experience, and if that takes two, three or four pages, then so be it.

Right now a resume has to strike a really nice balance between telling a great story and being an AEO/GEO project. ATS platforms are loaded with AI that scans and ranks resumes before a human gets anywhere near them, which isn't new news, it's been happening for a couple of years now. So yours needs to read well to a person and be easy for the machine to understand at the same time. That's the bit that works for you while you sleep - getting ranked and found when you're not even looking.

The story has to make sense. Every place you've worked, with dates, listed newest first and oldest last. It needs to be crystal clear where you worked, what you did and what you were part of, so nobody reading it has to guess.

Put numbers in it. This is where sales and marketing people get found out. Literally 99.99% of them don't put numbers, budgets, dollars or percentages in their resumes, and by and large people in these industries have the worst resumes I see. Here's what I mean.

Same person and same job, and the second version is the one that gets the phone ringing.

And it has to be tailored to the role you're applying for. Sending the same resume to 50 roles is dumb, plain and simple. Take the time to line it up with what each role is actually asking for.

Here's a prompt you can copy and paste straight into Claude, ChatGPT or whatever AI tool you use. Job ad, job description, position description, whatever you call it where you're from, it works the same.

Here is the job ad / position description for a role I'm applying for:

[paste it here]

And here is my current resume:

[paste it here]

Before you change anything, design 5 to 10 questions for me that will draw out factual evidence (real numbers, results, projects, tools, team sizes and outcomes) that lines up with what this role is asking for. Ask them one at a time.

Only use what I tell you and don't invent anything. Once I've answered, use my answers to tailor my resume to this role so it stands in the top 0.1% of applicants, keeps my experience listed newest to oldest with clear dates, and is easy for an ATS to read.

Answer the questions properly, with real numbers and real outcomes. The AI can only make you look as good as the facts you give it.

In October 2026 it's honestly not that hard. There's an endless amount of help at your fingertips, from AI tools that'll structure it with you in minutes to people who write them for a living, and we've built resources on the BLACKROC website for exactly this. Our Career Resource Hub is the place to start.

So copy the prompt, put the work in and go get the job. You've got this :D