BOSTON -- With the unemployment rate at a 26-year high, some jobseekers are turning to artificial intelligence to help them land a job.

For eight months, Heather Cosgrove has been pounding the pavement desperately seeking a job. A Boston University graduate, she's been a corporate events planner and an ad salesperson for a radio station.

"It has become such a struggle and overwhelming and such a day-to-day process of looking for a job. It is kind of breaking me down at this point," she said.

She's part of the growing unemployment ranks. The rate surpassed 10 percent for the first time since 1983 in October.

"When I started on unemployment, I heard about the extensions, and thought I'll never need an extension, and now I am on my first extension," Cosgrove said.

On Friday, the 27-year-old jobseeker tried something new. Burning Glass is a new company in Boston that is using artificial intelligence to match jobseekers with job openings.

"What the software is doing is essentially reading your resume in a way that a recruiter would read it," said Burning Glass CEO Matt Sigelman.

Cosgrove entered her resume and three seconds later, 20 job openings popped up. The program weeds out the inappropriate ones, or the ones she's likely not to get.

"It is looking at the whole person, instead of just looking at their job title or some specific keyword they have mentioned," Sigelman said.

The program runs a complicated algorithm that mimics the human activity of reading and digesting information.

The system comes up with some potential leads form Cosgrove.

"Special events manager, marketing director, sale marketing specialist," Cosgrove said.