I worked on a side project that generated the AI resume and cover letter. I did a controlled experiment applying for jobs with the generic vs AI customized resume. The AI customized resume out performed the generic resume by 4x. https://customizedresumes.com/custom-vs-generic-resumes
I don't want to hate on your side project, but the AI is clearly hallucinating things to fit the job description. In the ServiceNow result (first I saw with an interview/reject difference), the custom resume claims Jenkins experience, which is in the job listing but nowhere in either the AI base or generic resumes. Same for NinjaTrader and distributed systems + Scala + Github Actions, Upside and data engineering, BigTime and C#.
What's so bad about a "generic" resume? I assume this means one that just honestly describes your experience rather than tailoring it to the job applied for to make it seem you're a better fit than you really are. It's up to the person (hopefully) reading your resume to decide whether you're enough of a potential fit to take to the next step (technical screening call?).
Sure, but the parent was talking about customized resumes, not cover letters. The cover letter of course needs to be customized, else it serves no purpose.
The AI resume - was it a real human resume which was optimized in some way for the role specification, or was it generated from scratch for the role specification?