Written by: Will Gordon
How Companies Detect AI Written Resumes and Cover Letters
How companies detect AI-written resumes and cover letters in 2025—and how PopResume helps you stand out and beat the bots.
Job seekers are using AI. Recruiters are using AI. And now hiring teams are also trying to detect AI.
If that sounds paranoid, it is not. It is a reaction to volume.
CareerPlug’s Recruiting Metrics Report found employers received an average of 180 applicants per hire in 2024, and only about 3% of applicants were invited to interview. This level of competition forces companies to screen faster and trust less.
So if applying for jobs feels more unforgiving in 2026, you are not imagining it. The system has changed. The key is learning how to work with it instead of against it.
This article explains how AI is used in recruiting, how companies are detecting AI-written resumes and cover letters, what those detectors actually look for, and how to use AI without hurting your chances. Along the way, I’ll reference PopResume because it is designed for this exact reality: high volume, high scrutiny, and little margin for error.
Recruiters did not adopt AI because it was trendy. They adopted it because hiring at scale broke the old workflows.
LinkedIn’s Future of Recruiting report found that talent teams using generative AI reported a 20% reduction in repetitive workload, and the number of recruiters building AI skills increased more than 2.3x year over year. AI is no longer experimental in hiring.
SHRM reports that 64% of HR teams now use AI in recruitment, interviewing, or hiring, and 36% say AI has reduced recruiting costs while 24% say it improved candidate quality.
From the employer side, AI is about efficiency. From the candidate side, that efficiency can feel like a wall.
Most hiring teams are not anti-AI. They are anti-noise.
When candidates can generate dozens of resumes and cover letters in minutes, signal quality collapses. Recruiters start seeing the same phrases, the same structure, and the same tone over and over again.
The most common concerns employers cite are practical:
High applicant volume pushes teams to rely more on automated filters and faster rejection criteria.
AI can make many candidates sound equally “qualified” without clearly demonstrating real experience.
For roles involving communication, the resume and cover letter act as a writing sample.
Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that resume writing quality has a strong positive relationship with hiring outcomes in online labor markets. Writing still matters.
There is no perfect AI detector. Detection is probabilistic, not definitive. But companies do use several methods.
Some employers run cover letters through AI detection software. Research from NBER highlights the tradeoff between false negatives and false positives. Human-written text can be flagged as AI, and AI-assisted text can slip through.
This is why detection is best understood as a risk signal, not a verdict.
Many recruiting teams rely on simpler systems that scan for:
This is the approach behind our free AI resume and cover letter detector, which scans text against 500 commonly used AI keywords, 300+ AI phrases, and writing patterns like sentence uniformity and vocabulary repetition.
AI tends to leave fingerprints:
Even when content is technically correct, it can feel unnatural.
Detection is often human, not software:
Pattern recognition matters.
This is where job seekers are right to feel uneasy.
Many candidates use AI to improve grammar, organize thoughts, or overcome writer’s block. Research on AI detection explicitly notes the difficulty of separating acceptable assistance from full AI generation.
False positives happen. That means the goal is not avoiding AI entirely. The goal is using AI in a way that preserves your voice and proof.
This is what works in 2026.
AI should help you clarify, not invent. Exaggeration is easier to detect than people think.
Bad: “Results-driven professional with strong communication skills.”
Better: “Managed weekly client renewals for 28 accounts and improved retention from 83% to 90% in six months.”
Specifics feel human.
Uniform sentence length is a common AI signal. Humans naturally mix short and long sentences.
Most AI cover letters start the same way. Recruiters recognize them immediately.
Open with intent, not filler.
Keyword stuffing hurts credibility. Keywords should live inside bullets that show impact.
This is where PopResume helps. You can tailor language to a job description while keeping bullets grounded in real outcomes instead of generic phrasing.
You do not need to start over.
Instead:
You can test your resume or cover letter with our free AI detector here:
https://howlongshouldacoverletterbe.com/ai-detector/
It checks for:
Think of it as quality control before you submit.
The candidates who succeed in 2026 are not the ones who avoid AI. They are the ones who use it carefully.
A simple, effective workflow:
You can build and tailor efficiently with PopResume, then verify tone and authenticity before applying. PopResume works best as a sharp editor, not a ghostwriter.
PopResume should make your story clearer, not replace it.
Companies are detecting AI because they are overwhelmed by low-effort applications. That reality is frustrating, but it is not personal.
The fix is not avoiding technology. It is using it responsibly.
If you want speed without sounding synthetic:
Efficiency plus credibility is still the winning combination.
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