February 11, 2026
nicoletaionescu/Depositphotos.com
How Will AI-Embellished Resumes Affect Retail Hiring Practices?
In something of a follow-up to a previous RetailWire discussion surrounding the nature of automated hiring processes in the retail sphere, a related topic — the growing prevalence of AI-embellished resumes coming from applicants.
A new Express Employment Professionals-Harris poll indicates that four-fifths (80%) of hiring managers stated that submitted resumes aren’t matching applicants’ real-world skills when it comes time to perform. More than one-third (34%) indicated that the frequency of this mismatch between stated skills or ability versus concrete outcomes occurs “all the time” or “often.”
And while the poll includes a broad swathe of employment sectors, a few retail and service examples were brought to the fore as representative, including a chef who was unable to cut onions; a new hire proclaiming proficiency with a particular POS system, only to display complete inability to perform basic navigation (this candidate was fired the same day); and a jobseeker who bragged of exceptional negotiation skills, only to fold immediately during role-play around the task, immediately offering a full refund without any attempt to problem-solve.
According to CV Genius survey results reported on by Forbes in October 2024, 80% of hiring managers actively dislike AI-enhanced resumes (whether the contents are accurate or no), with 74% of respondents indicating they can easily spot such resumes, and 57% stating they are significantly less likely to hire applicants with obvious AI fingerprints on their resumes.
AI-Embellished Resumes on the Rise
With a late January report from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic of the Harvard Business Review describing the proliferation of AI-driven hiring, and job application, as a mixed bag, the downfalls are thrust into relief: Trust issues abound, speed has come at the cost of accuracy, and ethical concerns are mounting.
The Express Employment Professionals-Harris poll drew a further bifurcation from the data. A vast majority (86%) of respondents responsible for hiring suggested that AI tools are making it far too easy to embellish resumes, and nearly half (42%) strongly agreed with the premise that this stretching of the truth coming from jobseekers is presenting a substantial hiring risk. On the other hand, only 22% of would-be workers copped to including skills on their resume which they actually didn’t possess.
Bob Funk Jr., CEO, president and chairman of Express Employment International, summed up his position.
“In today’s market, you don’t need a perfect resume; you need a truthful one. When job seekers exaggerate their abilities, they set themselves up for stress, failure and lost opportunities,” he began.
“But when they’re transparent about their skills and what they know, and eager to learn what they don’t, employers take notice. Integrity is still a competitive advantage,” he added.
BrainTrust
Bradley Cooper
Associate VP, Technology, SASR Workforce Solutions
Neil Saunders
Managing Director, GlobalData
Allison McCabe
Director Retail Technology, enVista
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
How might the proliferation of AI-embellished resumes affect the retail hiring process, particularly in tandem with an uptick in AI-curated hiring? What ideal balance needs to be struck, in your opinion?
Do you believe that retail job-seekers are more, or less, likely to embellish their resumes via AI tools than applicants in other sectors? What’s your reasoning?
Poll
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Given that some resumes are already works of fiction – some folks lie and exaggerate – I don’t see AI-enhanced resumes as some kind of existential threat to retail hiring. What I think it is more of a threat to is people’s ability to think and reason. If you outsource your thinking – for resume construction or anything else – to AI, then you’re opting to make yourself dumber. The brain is a ‘muscle.’ It gets flabby if not used.
AI-powered fraud detection in hiring software should become part of the conversation for Retailers looking to ensure the integrity of their candidates and hiring processes. This should not be a replacement for human judgment but an essential defense layer.
The leading HR tech providers are training their AI to:
- Analyze speech patterns and metadata to flag suspicious resumes
- Correlate identity signals
- Detect deepfakes or impersonation attempts during video or phone interviews
In these cases they are using AI not only to screen but to validate authenticity, combing these tools with validation checks and humans in the lead.
So an AI enhanced resume, will be screened by an Agentic AI Resume Reviewer, who will pass the best candidates onto an AI Candidate Job Screener. In the end the candidate selected will likely be a digital twin, or an Agentic AI program. I believe if asked, Chat GPT would call this the new circle of life.
Amen!
You mean pople lie on their resumes??
O
M
G
But a solution may be at at hand: just as homeopathy believes “like cures like”, perhaps a similar effect can be at work here… AI can more readily spot one of their own.
Resume embellishment isn’t new. The real issue is whether hiring practices rely too heavily on self-reported skills.
AI-embellished resumes are going to make the hiring landscape more complex, particularly as more employers deploy AI-driven applicant tracking systems to screen high volumes of candidates. But we should distinguish between fabrication and enhancement. Many applicants are not inventing experience — they’re using AI to better articulate what they’ve actually done in language that aligns with automated screening tools. In that sense, candidates are simply optimizing for the system. And employers, inside and outside of retail, shouldn’t fault applicants for using the same class of tools that companies themselves deploy to filter, rank, and assess talent. If organizations rely on AI to streamline hiring, it’s reasonable to expect applicants to use AI to navigate that environment.
The real risk isn’t that candidates are using AI — it’s when the process devolves into both sides optimizing for keywords rather than capability. When resumes are engineered primarily to pass automated screening, strong candidates with unconventional paths (which retail frequently sees) can still be overlooked, while polished but less capable applicants advance. The right balance is to use automation for efficiency at the top of the funnel while ensuring human validation through structured interviews, scenario-based assessments, and concrete performance examples. Retail, especially, is a sector where execution and judgment quickly reveal themselves on the floor — no algorithm can fully substitute for that.
Ultimately, AI in hiring is not inherently problematic; it’s part of a broader technological shift. Employers are responsible for designing processes that test real-world competence rather than résumé fluency. Candidates will continue to use tools available to them — just as companies do. The future of hiring will depend on creating systems that reward authenticity, measurable outcomes, and behavioral evidence, while recognizing that AI has become a standard part of professional communication on both sides of the equation.
“Embellish”—a very kind word.
So I ran my latest CV through AI. It did a pretty good job. Not much I would change. Here is what it said about us.
“The BrainTrust at RetailWire (2007 to present), New York, NY. Member RetailWire is the retailing industry’s premier online discussion forum. Its “BrainTrust” panel of industry experts participates in a daily virtual roundtable on key dynamics and issues affecting the retailing & CPG industries.
Most of my writing is on International Business and Geopolitics. I usually write a draft and run it through AI. Correct it. Run it through AI again, then edit before publishing. Sometimes, three times. The final product is better than the original. Easier to read. Good choice of words. I’m concerned about the misinformation it includes, which must be edited out, but otherwise it’s a better product.
Embellished resumes have nothing to do with AI. Embellished resumes are as old as resumes. Heck, with a good one, you can become POTUS.
People think and behave and live their lives on a giant bell curve. And AI is going to be available to the most honest of us as well as the most dishonest among us. Hopefully AI is going to help elevate our thinking and research and performance beyond what we would normally do on our own horsepower. Given the fact that liars lie, and AI hallucinates, I guess it’s no shock that AI will be used to enhance and elevate this character trait along with many others. So once again we find that while AI can enhance and elevate so many processes, in the end we are well served by human intervention exercising the insight and judgement that, so far, only humans can provide.
AI abuse is now a giant KNOWN. A glowing, flashing neon KNOWN. And Knowns can be solved for. So it should not be a hiring risk. It might be a filtering and interviewing risk and time waster, but it shouldn’t be a hiring risk. You say you’re a great chef…??? Here, chop an onion for me.
There are many ways to use AI to “enhance” vs using AI to “create” which is important to discern when judging AI influenced output. Creating a prompt that says, “Create a resume for a Chief Merchant in a high end department store” is entirely fictional. Creating a prompt that says “Clean up this resume to emphasize high end skill sets” is using it for editing which can be very helpful for both the submitter and the recipient.
I’ve seen the ‘rubbish’ that comes out when you ask a generic AI service to simply build a CV for you—it often lacks soul and creates a mismatch between the paper and the person. However, using AI as a drafting partner to refine your own authentic thoughts creates a far superior outcome. The goal should be to use AI to frame skills correctly, not to invent them.
In retail, where execution is everything, we have to remember that a CV is just a door-opener, not a contract. Whether a resume is ’embellished’ or not, the responsibility still lies with the retailer to verify skills during the interview. You can’t ‘prompt’ your way through a live POS navigation test or a customer de-escalation role-play. The uptick in AI-assisted resumes isn’t a threat if our interview processes are designed to test real-world outcomes rather than just reading a document.
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Given that some resumes are already works of fiction – some folks lie and exaggerate – I don’t see AI-enhanced resumes as some kind of existential threat to retail hiring. What I think it is more of a threat to is people’s ability to think and reason. If you outsource your thinking – for resume construction or anything else – to AI, then you’re opting to make yourself dumber. The brain is a ‘muscle.’ It gets flabby if not used.
AI-powered fraud detection in hiring software should become part of the conversation for Retailers looking to ensure the integrity of their candidates and hiring processes. This should not be a replacement for human judgment but an essential defense layer.
The leading HR tech providers are training their AI to:
In these cases they are using AI not only to screen but to validate authenticity, combing these tools with validation checks and humans in the lead.
So an AI enhanced resume, will be screened by an Agentic AI Resume Reviewer, who will pass the best candidates onto an AI Candidate Job Screener. In the end the candidate selected will likely be a digital twin, or an Agentic AI program. I believe if asked, Chat GPT would call this the new circle of life.
Amen!
You mean pople lie on their resumes??
O
M
G
But a solution may be at at hand: just as homeopathy believes “like cures like”, perhaps a similar effect can be at work here… AI can more readily spot one of their own.
Resume embellishment isn’t new. The real issue is whether hiring practices rely too heavily on self-reported skills.
AI-embellished resumes are going to make the hiring landscape more complex, particularly as more employers deploy AI-driven applicant tracking systems to screen high volumes of candidates. But we should distinguish between fabrication and enhancement. Many applicants are not inventing experience — they’re using AI to better articulate what they’ve actually done in language that aligns with automated screening tools. In that sense, candidates are simply optimizing for the system. And employers, inside and outside of retail, shouldn’t fault applicants for using the same class of tools that companies themselves deploy to filter, rank, and assess talent. If organizations rely on AI to streamline hiring, it’s reasonable to expect applicants to use AI to navigate that environment.
The real risk isn’t that candidates are using AI — it’s when the process devolves into both sides optimizing for keywords rather than capability. When resumes are engineered primarily to pass automated screening, strong candidates with unconventional paths (which retail frequently sees) can still be overlooked, while polished but less capable applicants advance. The right balance is to use automation for efficiency at the top of the funnel while ensuring human validation through structured interviews, scenario-based assessments, and concrete performance examples. Retail, especially, is a sector where execution and judgment quickly reveal themselves on the floor — no algorithm can fully substitute for that.
Ultimately, AI in hiring is not inherently problematic; it’s part of a broader technological shift. Employers are responsible for designing processes that test real-world competence rather than résumé fluency. Candidates will continue to use tools available to them — just as companies do. The future of hiring will depend on creating systems that reward authenticity, measurable outcomes, and behavioral evidence, while recognizing that AI has become a standard part of professional communication on both sides of the equation.
“Embellish”—a very kind word.
So I ran my latest CV through AI. It did a pretty good job. Not much I would change. Here is what it said about us.
“The BrainTrust at RetailWire (2007 to present), New York, NY. Member RetailWire is the retailing industry’s premier online discussion forum. Its “BrainTrust” panel of industry experts participates in a daily virtual roundtable on key dynamics and issues affecting the retailing & CPG industries.
Most of my writing is on International Business and Geopolitics. I usually write a draft and run it through AI. Correct it. Run it through AI again, then edit before publishing. Sometimes, three times. The final product is better than the original. Easier to read. Good choice of words. I’m concerned about the misinformation it includes, which must be edited out, but otherwise it’s a better product.
Embellished resumes have nothing to do with AI. Embellished resumes are as old as resumes. Heck, with a good one, you can become POTUS.
People think and behave and live their lives on a giant bell curve. And AI is going to be available to the most honest of us as well as the most dishonest among us. Hopefully AI is going to help elevate our thinking and research and performance beyond what we would normally do on our own horsepower. Given the fact that liars lie, and AI hallucinates, I guess it’s no shock that AI will be used to enhance and elevate this character trait along with many others. So once again we find that while AI can enhance and elevate so many processes, in the end we are well served by human intervention exercising the insight and judgement that, so far, only humans can provide.
AI abuse is now a giant KNOWN. A glowing, flashing neon KNOWN. And Knowns can be solved for. So it should not be a hiring risk. It might be a filtering and interviewing risk and time waster, but it shouldn’t be a hiring risk. You say you’re a great chef…??? Here, chop an onion for me.
There are many ways to use AI to “enhance” vs using AI to “create” which is important to discern when judging AI influenced output. Creating a prompt that says, “Create a resume for a Chief Merchant in a high end department store” is entirely fictional. Creating a prompt that says “Clean up this resume to emphasize high end skill sets” is using it for editing which can be very helpful for both the submitter and the recipient.
I’ve seen the ‘rubbish’ that comes out when you ask a generic AI service to simply build a CV for you—it often lacks soul and creates a mismatch between the paper and the person. However, using AI as a drafting partner to refine your own authentic thoughts creates a far superior outcome. The goal should be to use AI to frame skills correctly, not to invent them.
In retail, where execution is everything, we have to remember that a CV is just a door-opener, not a contract. Whether a resume is ’embellished’ or not, the responsibility still lies with the retailer to verify skills during the interview. You can’t ‘prompt’ your way through a live POS navigation test or a customer de-escalation role-play. The uptick in AI-assisted resumes isn’t a threat if our interview processes are designed to test real-world outcomes rather than just reading a document.