Why do we think manual crafting is part of it?

You know the ritual.
You drag a PDF resume into Word, hit Enter, and VOILA — the logo jumps to the next page. 5 minutes of your time evaporates as you watch. Everything is a mess, your entire layout is a disaster, and you get to drag and adjust margins manually once again.

Strangely enough, that feels normal. "Everyone does it this way," you hear colleagues mumble. Yet something is not right. We keep fixing problems instead of solving them.

How did it come to this?

• Parsing tools like Textkernel once promised relief, but produced messy fields.

• The ATS template that comes with your system? Hardly customizable, so your branding gets compromised as soon as you want to do just one action outside the standard workflow.

• AI? "Not reliable yet, it doesn't work," people said a year ago.

And so we keep dragging and pushing. Every. Single. Time.

The facts: AI can do this for a long time

Here are some numbers to make it tangible.

• 99% of large companies use an ATS, but fewer than 20% use AI for resume formatting.

• In a Benelux study (2024), teams that do use AI reported an average time savings of 16%.

• Case study at a medium-sized agency: 50 resumes converted. Manually took 26 hours, AI completed it in 96 minutes.

The bottleneck is not in the technology, but in our habits. We are still stuck in the mud while the asphalt is already laid.

Manual vs. AI: let's get the stopwatch out

Ten resumes a day? That’s over five hours of difference. Five hours! That’s coffee with candidates, not copying and pasting.

“But I don't trust it…” — the three most persistent objections

1. “AI doesn’t understand our niche roles.”
   New models have been trained on millions of European resumes, including industry jargon. Load one file and see how job titles, skills, and qualifications neatly appear.

2. “We lose the personal touch.”
   Ironic, but you actually get MORE room for customization. The tool does the dull task; you can now add that brief context that makes the candidate unique.

3. “We want to maintain control.”
   Understandable. The better tools show a preview. Not good? Click back, adjust, export again. You decide.

What does it really deliver?

• Faster time-to-hire: job live in minutes instead of hours.

• Consistent branding: each resume reflects the same quality.

• Fewer errors: no half tables or missing bullets.

• Peace of mind: no cursing over stubborn margins.

• And, perhaps the biggest gift: time. Time to build relationships, not documents.

A quick sidestep: early adopters versus the masses

Technology guru Geoffrey Moore once depicted that gap between pioneers and the larger group after them. Recruiters are now exactly on that edge. The first are already reaping the benefits: more interviews, less night work. The rest hesitates – often out of habit, not logic.

How to make the leap? Three small moves

1. Take one resume and test it.
   Try for example free the CVTransformer from Spadework. Measure the exact time you are working.

2. Compare the time.
   Note how many minutes you spend manually (yes, including adjusting content) and set that side by side with the AI duration.

3. Scale up in sprints.
   Start with one vacancy, then a whole team. Maintain control via the preview and adjust the template where necessary.

Ready? Then you have proof on the table in an afternoon. And honestly: who’s going to go back after that?

Synthesis: the new reality

AI takes the repetition out, not the human. You choose, click, and finish. The software does the hard work; you get space for the questions that matter:

• Does this candidate really fit into the culture?

• What do they need to start tomorrow?

• How do I keep them engaged?

Those questions you don’t hear coming from Word. But soon you will from the extra half hour you gain each day.

Closing

We ask candidates to innovate. Then we cannot fall behind. Give Word a well-deserved break and let AI do the dirty work. You have better things to do.