A former Big Tech hiring manager shares how to avoid the AI 'sameness epidemic' and stand out in your job application

Business Insider

5 days ago

Keith Anderson started his Big Tech career at Google as a web developer in 2015.
He added positions at Uber, YouTube, Meta, Calibrate, and DoorDash to his résumé before launching his own career coaching company, Career Alchemy, in 2022, where he helps people navigate career transitions.
In his most recent Big Tech roles — at Calibrate and DoorDash, which he left in 2024 — Anderson was a hiring manager.
Beginning in 2022, he noticed a change in applicants' cover letters and résumés. "Everyone started to sound the same," Anderson said.
Job seekers had started using AI to craft their job-search materials
He said that ChatGPT and résumé templates started a "sameness epidemic" that resulted in "predictable, polished, and forgettable" applications.
"At the end of 2022, ChatGPT had just launched and was still a novelty. Only early adopters were experimenting with it, and given that both companies had tech-driven products, they naturally attracted digitally fluent candidates," Anderson said.
Anderson found irony in the situation. "In trying to stand out, candidates started sounding identical," he said.
The applications had a few specific things in common
Common signs that tipped Anderson off to an AI-generated résumé included overuse of robotic phrasing, descriptions that were suspiciously vague or too generic, and copy-paste energy where résumé bullets matched the job ad word for word or used the same language at the start of each entry.
"The lack of story or specificity becomes obvious — there's no unique insight, numbers, or context," he said. "There's no mention of how the solution was delivered or what context made it impressive." He also quickly recognized certain overused structures that contained a verb plus a buzzword and a measurable result.
Anderson noticed AI was flattening the pool of applicants and changing the job-search playing field, so he needed to evolve his hiring practices both as a Big Tech hiring manager and a career coach.
"As a coach, I began helping people adapt their applications to avoid sounding like they were written by an AI bot," he said.
Here are the strategies Anderson leveraged to adjust his approach to screening, interviewing, and hiring Big Tech candidates.
1. Moved away from scanning for keywords and focused on proof of thinking
Anderson dropped conventional screening and started putting less stake in polish.
"I stopped looking for the perfect résumé and experience," he said. "I started looking for signs they actually solved messy problems, not just listed buzzwords."
Anderson was no longer satisfied with a generic statement like "Led a cross-functional team to optimize workflows." He instead began looking for statements that showed analytical thinking, not just task execution.
2. Rewrote interview questions to uncover adaptive thinking
" If a candidate has the job description memorized, that tells me nothing," Anderson said. "I want to see how they think when the script disappears."
He added curveball interview questions that required interviewees to think on their feet, like:
What's a decision you made that seemed right at the time but didn't age well? How would you approach it now?
Imagine we just launched a product that's flopping. What's your first step?
"Instead of rehearsed stories, these questions push candidates to think in real time, especially when things get messy," Anderson said. "That's how you uncover adaptability, self-awareness, and problem-solving ability. This is about how they think through imperfection."
3. Prioritized signals of long-term learning habits
Anderson homed in to find candidates who could prove their substance, particularly through their approach to learning and development.
"I adjusted to focus on candidates with continuous learning habits — for example, side projects, cohort-based courses, even failures — over polished degrees or 'unicorn' experience," he said.
Anderson said that while AI can mimic experience, it can't fake curiosity. He began looking for people who clearly cared about evolving and adapting, like a boot camp grad who rebuilt their job search process based on feedback, launched a small internal tool at their last job, or wrote publicly about what they were learning.
"These were stronger indicators of success than someone who simply matched the job title," he said.
Anderson advocates that candidates add personal touches to their résumé to make it clear AI didn't write it, like an 'interests' section with personal likes and hobbies. He added that these details need to be specific and unmistakably human.
"It's not enough to say 'I like travel and cooking' — that's too generic," Anderson said. "Instead, share something only you could say." On his résumé, he used to share that he came in third place in a county fair pie-baking competition.
"AI has made being human the most valuable asset — original thought, vulnerability, and practical insight win attention," he said. "Don't over-polish. Be real. That's how you get hired now."