You've probably spruced up your resume for a job search before, maybe even added a few skills you didn't really have to seem like a stronger fit.
In today's job market, some workers are "time traveling" on their LinkedIn profiles to add AI skills to jobs they left years ago, according to a working paper titled "Time Travel on Professional Profiles," published in July in the National Bureau of Economic Research. The researchers analyzed monthly captures of LinkedIn with help from workforce data company Revelio Labs.
"It gives you a snapshot of what people think employers want," Nicholas Bloom, one of the paper's authors and the William D. Eberle Professor in Economics at Stanford University, tells CNBC Make It.
The prevalence of AI-related terms, like LLM, GPT and artificial intelligence, spiked after late 2022 when OpenAI released ChatGPT, kicking off a wave of other generative AI chatbot launches.
Nearly three-quarters of employers say AI skills are a strong advantage or even a requirement, according to a ZipRecruiter survey published in July. The number of occupational categories where job posts mention "AI" in the title has more than tripled in the U.S. since 2022, according to a report from Indeed also published that month.
Job seekers might be thinking, "I know what employers are looking for, I know I need to hit on these buzzwords, so I go back and add them into my profile, even if they're not strictly true," Bloom says.
Clarifying? Or lying?
The research found that from 2020 to 2026, nearly 1 in 5 established U.S. LinkedIn users retroactively edited the title or description of a job they were no longer in.
While the researchers can't definitively say why people made the changes, some of the edits are likely legitimate.
If you weren't active on LinkedIn during your earliest jobs, for example, any modifications you make to those roles now amount to time traveling by default. The research picked up any difference of adding or subtracting at least one word in a job title or description, so changes like removing a duplicate word or adding an article like "the" also counted as time travel.
Other changes might be less honest. The researchers noticed people adding AI skills to roles dating as far back as 2012, but it's "hard to believe" people might've used those skills in roles so far predating the AI boom, Bloom says. There's a chance they're exaggerating or outright fabricating information to get a leg up in the job search.
The top offender by role was the self-professed AI product manager, with roughly 70% of these people making changes after leaving positions.
"They claim to have been an AI product manager," Bloom says, but "it's hard to tell whether they really ever were." Some could've actually been product managers who discreetly slipped in "AI" a few years later to better their odds in the job market today, for example.
The median time a person made a retroactive change was 4.5 years after they left the job, the researchers found.
"It's kind of like the fashion cycle for job titles, job descriptions," Bloom says. Machine learning might've been the hot skill du jour a few years ago and cloud a few years before that. Today, as so many LinkedIn profile changes seem to reflect, it's AI.
'It's an arms race'
The rate of this so-called time traveling on LinkedIn doubles shortly before people change jobs, the researchers found.
Making these changes could be one way applicants are trying to cut through the noise in a tough market. The U.S. unexpectedly lost 23,000 jobs in July, and May and June's job numbers were revised downward by a cumulative 103,000.
As AI makes it easier for candidates to quickly generate application materials, it also means they're up against more competition from other job seekers doing the same when vying for limited roles.
On the other side of the table, many employers are hit with an influx of applications. To try to break through, job seekers may stuff keywords into their LinkedIn "just to get to the first round," Bloom says. "It's an arms race on both sides."
Experts say whether you're actively looking for work or not, you should periodically update your professional work history, both on resumes and LinkedIn profiles. Aim to update once every three months and after every performance review, Jeff Hyman, CEO of Recruit Rockstars, told CNBC Make It in 2022. Add accomplishments, recognition or new responsibilities you might've received since your last update, with specific metrics to quantify — and make sure your resume and profile match.
Having a full, detailed profile listing specific skills could help better surface you in recruiters' searches for candidates with certain qualifications.
So when it comes to your LinkedIn profile, "more is almost always better than less," Bloom says, "as long as it's truthful."
