Why do we think that manual crafting 'belongs'?

You know the ritual.
You drag a PDF resume into Word, hit Enter, and VOILA — the logo flies 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 have to drag and adjust margins manually again.

Strangely, that feels normal. "Everyone does it this way," you hear colleagues mumble. Yet something doesn’t feel right. We keep fixing problems instead of solving them.

How did we get here?

• Parsing tools like Textkernel once promised relief but resulted in messy fields.

• The ATS template that comes with your system? Hardly tweakable, so your corporate identity fails as soon as you want to do even one action outside the standard workflow.

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

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

The facts: AI can already do this

Here are some numbers to make it tangible.

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

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

• Case study at a medium-sized agency: 50 resumes converted. Manually it 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: time to get the stopwatch

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

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

1. “AI doesn't understand our niche functions.”
   New models are trained on millions of European resumes, including industry jargon. Load one file and see how job titles, skills, and education neatly appear.

2. “We lose the personal touch.”
   Ironically, you actually get more room for customization. The tool handles the boring tasks; you can now add that short piece of 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 yield?

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

• Stable corporate identity: every resume radiates the same quality.

• Fewer errors: no half tables or disappeared bullets.

• Peace of mind: no cursing over stubborn margins.

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

A brief digression: early adopters vs. the masses

Technology guru Geoffrey Moore once illustrated that gap between pioneers and the large group that follows. Recruiters are now right 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 do you make the switch? Three small moves

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

2. Compare the time.
   Note how many minutes you spend manually (yes, including adjusting content) and put that next to the AI duration.

3. Scale up in sprints.
   Start with one job opening, then an entire team. Maintain control through 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 removes the repetition, not the human. You choose, click, and finish. The software does the heavy lifting; you get space for the questions that matter:

• Does this candidate really fit the culture?

• What do they need to start tomorrow?

• How do I keep them engaged?

You won’t hear those questions coming out of Word. But soon you will from the extra half hour you gain every day.

Conclusion

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