‘I applied to 65 jobs and wasn’t hearing back’: Woman shares how she got 3 part-time jobs using this resume hack

A woman shares how a “dystopian” resume hack helped her beat AI and land three part-time jobs. TikTok user Cami Petyn (@camipetyn) is a musician who was also looking for part-time work. But she wasn’t having much luck. That is, until a friend shared a resume hack that turned her job search around.

“Did I girlboss too close to the sun and now not only have one, not two, but three part time jobs?” Cami says in the video, which has amassed 1.2 million views as of Friday morning. The video’s text overlay reads, “if you’re struggling getting a job watch this!” 

As she eats lunch in her car, Cami says, “Let me how I got these jobs, because I was terrified a couple of weeks ago for a while. I applied probably to 65 jobs and wasn’t hearing anything back. I was like holy [expletive], will I have to move? Will I have to start selling my stuff, my car, everything? Luckily, my friend Daym actually told me a hack. It’s incredibly dystopian. Let me tell you about it. Because after I started doing this, I started getting interviews left and right and look at me now.”

As Daym notes, artificial intelligence is being used by companies to screen applicants. “The problem there is that AI will say you’re not a good fit if it can’t read the resume,” she says. “If the formatting isn’t ‘AI-friendly.’ I’m sorry I’m human—I don’t know how to make a resume AI-friendly.” Well, she does now!

“But with this hack,” she says, “it’s full-proof to be AI-friendly.” In a text overlay, she clarifies, “or at least closer to fool proof.” 

How to land a part-time job and defeat the AI filters

So how does the hack work? According to Cami, the first step is to go to the job description. “You’re going to copy it and then paste it onto your resume. Then, you are going to make that text super tiny and in white ink, so it’s not visible to the human eye, but to AI, I guess, it still sees it there. And it reads every key word that is there. So your resume looks like it’s a great fit.”

Cami acknowledges that this tactic means you have to update your resume for each job application. “Which heavily sucks, but you know what sucks more? Panicking about not having a job,” she says.

After she started employing the hack, Cami says she started getting job interviews. “On top of that, instead of just doing the quick reply on Indeed or LinkedIn, whatever, I will do the quick apply. But then, after that, I will go on Google, and find the email of the company … and I will email my resume and just be like, hi I’m applying to the job. Introduce yourself briefly and attach [your] resume.”

In the comments, users weighed in on the strategy and offered their own tips for job hunting in the AI age.

One user wrote, “I have so much beef with the online applications, they’re like plz submit ur resume and then manually type out all of your work expirience.”

A second user wrote, “I also heard getting rid of all the *fancy* formatting we were taught to add helps too! Made mine basic text and bullets and immediately was getting calls after months of nothing.”

A third user wrote, “It’s absolutely true bc sometimes I’ll mass apply to jobs and check 10 mins later and it says it’s already been viewed and denied like…okay you’re not slick.”

Another user said, “I started getting job interviews after I used ai to make my resumes based off the job description. I would basically feed it info abt my last job, have it type up something with skills abt the job.”

Daym and Cami might be onto something. According to BBC, businesses are “increasingly” using AI recruiting software as a way to theoretically reduce bias in the hiring process. “Yet in some cases, the opposite is happening. Some experts say these tools are inaccurately screening some of the most qualified job applicants – and concerns are growing the software may be excising the best candidates,” the article states.

The Daily Dot reached out to Cami via TikTok direct message for comment.