Preface

I’m exhausted. I started using AI and machine-learning with the hope of making high-quality career coaching more accessible. I pictured it being fun—turning people’s real experiences into tailored, compelling resumes. 

But the reality is that resumes aren’t fun. And they’re barely about you at all.

Resumes are written in what I’ve come to see as a weird pseudo-language, designed primarily for machine learning systems (ATS, AI resume readers) and for HR professionals who only glance at your words for, on average, 6-8 seconds (after automated filters cull more than 90% of applicants). It’s not really English. It just needs to look enough like English to avoid making a human scoff if they give it any attention. 

Imagine writing a genuine paragraph about yourself, then translating it into a language you don’t speak (say, Swahili) and finally sprinkling in random popup ads for Coca-Cola. Would that feel like a good representation of you? Of course not. That’s what a resume is: a tool aimed at an almost inhuman audience, written in a language that you don’t speak. It’s something you’re supposed to craft yet never feel good about because you, after all, are a human (decidedly not the target audience.) .

There’s nothing enjoyable or authentic about this. Resumes today are akin to the keyword-stuffing of 1990s websites – desperate for search-engine attention. They leave you feeling slimy and misunderstood. Worse, they often don’t reflect the depth or meaning of the work you actually do. 

But they work.  

Until we [Careerspan] are successful enough that we can dismantle this crumbling, hollow system, you have to play the game. 

The Quantification Trap: Why We Need to Rethink Resume Results (But Still Use Them)

We’ve all been there—staring at a blank resume, wondering how to transform “I consistently did my job well” into an impressive percentage. Today’s career advice often tells us to back up every statement with hard numbers: Boosted sales by 20%. Improved customer satisfaction by 15%. Performed daily maintenance on an 18,750-ton Ohio-class nuclear submarine. If your job doesn’t lend itself to obvious stats, you might feel pressured to “create” numbers where none naturally exist.

Here’s the problem: obsessively quantifying everything isn’t just frustrating or tedious, it’s fundamentally flawed. By shoehorning every professional accomplishment into a tidy metric, we risk distorting the reality of how most work actually gets done and, more importantly, how we think about and do our jobs. It also creates an uphill battle at the interview stage, when you might need to support statistics that aren’t truly meaningful to you.

But – and it’s a big “but” – the entire hiring system is set up to reward these very metrics. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) look for them, and many human resume readers (hiring managers, recruiters, etc.) expect them. If you reject metrics outright, you may shoot yourself in the foot. It’s unfair, but it’s how things work. For now.

The Reality of Most Jobs

Think about the daily routines across a wide range of professions – from manufacturing plants to office-based workers. A software engineer might spend much of their time refactoring code or maintaining critical infrastructure, which rarely yields eye-catching before-and-after numbers. Marketing professionals often focus on long-term brand-building or relationship management, neither of which lends itself to a tidy metric. And data analysts can invest weeks exploring potential insights that, in the end, help avoid costly mistakes but don’t necessarily translate into a headline-grabbing percentage.

In these roles, just as on the manufacturing line, success often lies in consistency. A line worker may not boast a 50% boost in productivity, but their steady performance keeps operations running. Similarly, an administrative assistant might not measure their day by the number of schedules perfected; yet their reliability and ability to handle constant interruptions allow an office to function smoothly. Bookkeepers ensure daily numbers are accurate, customer service reps field a stream of concerns without fanfare, and nurses deliver compassionate care even if there’s no single metric capturing the weight of what they do.

For all these professionals – whether physically on the factory floor or in a virtual cubicle  – value isn’t always about dramatic leaps in efficiency. It’s about showing up, doing the job with diligence, and often preventing issues before they ever arise. Much of this invaluable work remains invisible to a typical resume checklist, but it’s crucial to how organizations truly succeed.

When Quantification Goes Wrong

What happens when bottom-line thinking is forced onto roles that resist simple numerical evaluation? The result can be disastrous, both for the people doing the work and for those who rely on them. Consider the U.S. education system, where teachers are increasingly pressured to “teach to the test” under mandates like No Child Left Behind. By focusing on standardized testing metrics above all else, schools often sideline the actual educational needs of students in favor of rote memorization and forcibly graduating a student body to maintain funding. The purpose of education (cultivating well-rounded, intellectually curious citizens) ends up overshadowed by raising test scores.

This same tension arises in the corporate world. Take a software engineer who might have a performance goal tied to the number of bugs they “fix” each month. Suddenly, it’s more strategic (from a metrics standpoint) to pass around challenging, time-consuming problems and rack up a string of trivial fixes instead. The system nudges them to chase quantity over quality, undermining the very heart of good engineering: preventing the most critical issues from reaching end users.

Healthcare workers face a similarly warped incentive structure when they’re evaluated by turnover rates or the speed of patient processing. Nurses (who entered the field to care for people) may feel forced to rush through treatments or reduce bedside conversation to meet efficiency targets. The deeper goal of compassionate care is lost in a flurry of spreadsheets, undermining both patient well-being and the nurses’ own sense of vocational purpose.

Taken together, these examples hint at a deeper problem. Our economic system valorizes what can be measured, pushing us to tally up performance in ways that don’t always capture the actual value of the work. In many roles, the most meaningful contributions – educating the whole child, fixing the bugs that truly matter, or offering comfort to someone in pain – defy quick quantification. When we uncritically adopt metrics that reduce everything to “countable outputs,” we risk betraying the very essence of these professions.

Yet, this is exactly what many job seekers feel compelled to do in their resumes. They churn out percentages and figures to appease a hiring culture that prizes data points over real stories of impact. When you’re forced to package your experience in neat metrics that don’t reflect your true contributions, or, worse, conflict with your core values, it can be deeply demoralizing. In the end, numbers might get a glance, but genuine passion and integrity are what truly resonate with employers who value people over profits.

Not everything should be translated into a tidy chart or incremental percentage. Some jobs, by their very nature, are about the unquantifiable: the human element, the emotional labor, the creative spark, or the sheer reliability that keeps a system from collapsing. Forcing those into numeric boxes can break what’s most beautiful and necessary about them. How often do job seekers look at a resume and feel slimy about it, thinking “this isn’t me”?

The Hidden Value Problem

So much of what matters at work is hard, if not impossible, to capture in a spreadsheet. IT professionals who keep systems humming without a single outage may be the unsung heroes of any organization. Safety coordinators who avoid workplace accidents, maintenance workers who keep equipment running, or HR professionals who resolve issues before they explode into costly legal battles—all represent efforts that prevent problems. By definition, prevention is tricky to measure, because you’re counting “what didn’t happen.”

The same is true for softer skills and intangible contributions, such as mentoring junior colleagues, nurturing client relationships over years, or being that dependable colleague everyone turns to in a crisis. These forms of leadership and teamwork don’t always come with neat statistics attached, but they can be the glue that holds teams (and companies) together.

The Equity Issue

Our fixation on quantifiable accomplishments creates a systemic imbalance. Roles that revolve around clear, measurable,  targets, such as sales or finance, often receive heightened recognition and have greater job mobility because their results translate neatly into numbers. Meanwhile, professionals in education, healthcare, customer service, and other support roles can be overlooked simply because the impact of their work doesn’t fit into a spreadsheet.

This inequity isn’t just about individual career progression. When entire industries consistently prize those who can draw a direct line to revenue or cost savings, we undervalue the people who keep everything else on track. These are often the very jobs that make day-to-day operations possible. The consequence is a workforce environment where talented individuals may struggle to move into roles that hinge on statistics-based hiring criteria, even if they have the creativity, leadership, potential, or adaptability to excel in those fields.

Ultimately, when hiring managers and recruiters rely too heavily on numbers to gauge potential, they can miss out on highly capable candidates. People from non-metric-driven backgrounds, whether they’re nurses, social workers, or IT specialists ensuring systems never fail, often develop invaluable skills like problem-solving, empathy, and crisis management. These capabilities might surpass those in more “quant-friendly” roles, yet they go unrecognized simply because they’re harder to compress into neat, numerical bullet points.

The end result? We shut out individuals whose broader range of skills and experiences could redefine what excellence looks like in a given position. By clinging to a model that equates numbers with merit, we collectively lose out on talent—and perpetuate a cycle where only certain types of incumbent workers are deemed “worthy” of advancement.

A Better Approach…

So does that mean we should banish numbers from our resumes entirely? Not necessarily. If a statistic truly captures what matters to you about your work, then by all means, include it. But ask yourself: Does this figure genuinely reflect my day-to-day responsibilities and priorities? If it doesn’t, I say leave it out. Numbers that don’t align with your actual experiences aren’t just filler; they can become a real distraction—both for you and your potential employer.

Remember, a resume’s main job is to get you in the door. It’s the spark that starts a conversation. If someone challenges you on a claim in the interview, you should feel energized talking about it, not anxious because you fudged a figure. When each point on your resume stems from something you truly value or find meaningful, you’ll speak about it with clarity and conviction.

It’s also okay if you’re not entirely sure what matters most to you. Figuring that out is part of the process. Our AI career coach, for example, can help you reflect on your experiences, understand your priorities, and refine your story so it highlights what you’re truly proud of. But that reflection needs to happen before you rush to submit applications. During the “I need to get this out the door” phase, it’s too late to be grappling with big questions about what you really care about. If you aren’t well prepared to talk about the metrics in the context of your duties and why they mattered, you should leave them out.

Ultimately, the best resumes aren’t ones packed with random percentages; they’re the ones that reflect genuine experience, authentic priorities, and a sense of who you really are as a professional. By focusing on what truly matters to you, you’ll create a document that doesn’t just land you interviews but sets you up to excel once you’re actually in them. 

…But at a Cost

If you can’t afford to be picky with your jobs, lean more towards nonsense statistics. Play the game. 

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the entire hiring system isn’t set up to value qualitative achievements or duties-centric performance. Applicant Tracking Systems and many human recruiters expect to see numbers. Because they’ve been trained to read resumes this way, completely rejecting metrics can be like shooting yourself in the foot. It may feel virtuous, but it can also limit your opportunities.

You will feel like your resume is basically a slimy, marketing-filled pile of nonsense that doesn’t actually reflect who you are. As long as you’re prepared to back up the statistics and at least have an argument about why a given metric mattered, it’ll be okay for now. As long as the number is real, just lie and say it was an important metric to you.  This isn’t your fight to shoulder alone. The problem lies with an entrenched system that equates bigger numbers with better applicants. We (the folks at CareerSpan) are fighting to change that. Our ultimate goal is to help shift the industry’s focus from static bullet points to real, authentic stories about your work and experiences. But that’s a long-term project, and we’re not about to use your resume as a battlefield.

It’s Not Your Fight—But You Still Have to Play the Game

The “quantify everything” approach to resume writing has created a distorted hierarchy of professional worth. A teacher inspiring hundreds of students each year might not have the punchy numbers a sales executive does, but that doesn’t make their work any less impactful. By recognizing that different types of work create different types of impact (and that not all impact fits into tidy metrics) we can move toward a fairer, more accurate way of representing career contributions.

Yet, for now, metrics remain the currency of many hiring processes. Do what you need to do to succeed. Yes, it feels icky cramming your experience into a few shiny statistics that don’t capture the true importance of your duties. As long as those numbers reflect something that genuinely mattered to you, then it’ll be okay. Get in the door so that you can focus on showing who you actually are as a person. 

Meanwhile, our system is here to help you reflect on your experiences, uncover meaningful ways to quantify your work, and handle the “marketing” part so you don’t have to. Think of it as finding a safe middle ground: staying true to your values while still playing by the rules that exist. And hopefully, with enough momentum, we’ll reach a point where resumes are less about inflated figures and more about the true stories of who we are and what we do best.

So again, go ahead! Add those metrics (even if they feel like BS). But never forget: numbers are just one piece of the puzzle, not the whole story of your worth. You deserve to be evaluated for who you actually are and what you truly bring to the table. Until the system catches up, hang in there, and know that you’re not fighting this battle alone.

That’s why Careerspan is launching Resume Tailoring:

to handle the frustrating bullshitty quantification of your job so you don’t have to. It’s our way of insulating you from this weird, dehumanizing song and dance, freeing you to focus on the stories that make you you. In a world where algorithms and keyword-stuffing rule, we believe your humanity and unique strengths should come first. Let the machines do their thing talking to each other in their made-up resume language —while you go on being the best human you can be.