You Can Use AI To Write Your Resume and LinkedIn – Is It A Good Idea?

iStock | Suchat longthara

Welcome to the brave new world of the upsides of artificial intelligence (AI) – the robots are on the way and they’re going to help you with your resume and LinkedIn profile! 

Is it true? Partially. It’s easy to imagine a day when AI will provide fully “ready-for-primetime” career materials. And that’s great! It’s going to help democratize the job hunt and potentially remove barriers to those who have difficulty in this area.

First, it’s important to remember that artificial intelligence is powered by human intelligence; let’s dispel the notion that you’re going to push a button and your new best friend AI is going to crank out a resume or LinkedIn profile that’s ready for prime time. AI can help you accomplish what you want but it can’t do it alone – but you must be AI’s partner and collaborator.

The trick is to remember that AI can do a lot of great things. It really can. But it is incapable of inherently knowing you. AI can’t know who you are and what you’re made of, so must take AI by the hand, so to speak, and lead it to where you want to go.

If you decide you want to use AI tools to help you with your resume and LinkedIn profile, to be successful you’ll need to consider the following:

1.     AI is a starting point and not an endpoint. As previously mentioned, AI isn’t going to spit out any document that’s ready to go. Have realistic expectations. What AI will do is give you a solid template on which you can build. In this way, it’s an accelerator. For many, the first step is the most difficult. Let AI take that step for you but know that it’s going to pass the baton to you and you must finish the race.

2.     AI is only as good as its data. The “G” in ChatGPT stands for “generative,” which means it generates an answer based on research it conducts in the blink of an eye. That means the answer is only as good as the source of its research, and AI isn’t always accurate. You have no idea what data source the AI is mining, so be sure to incorporate having to revise the ChatGPT product into your workflow.

3.     AI doesn’t have a voice. AI has a language all its own and it is distinctly not human. Yes, you can ask AI tools to crank out a paragraph in some well-known author’s style that when first read seems amazing, but after the first impression you realize it is, for lack of a better word, robotic. AI tools will even let you feed in your own writing so it can mimic “your voice.” To an extent, that works. In the end, however, it’s distinctly not human. AI may spit out the sheet music, but you’re the person who’ll be on stage singing.

4.     AI doesn’t understand keywords. AI can generate an article just like this one giving you all sorts of tips about how to use AI, but it doesn’t necessarily understand the reasoning why. For example, you can specify AI to include certain keywords in your resume that will catch the reader’s attention, but it doesn’t really know why so it can’t effectively apply them. It may or may not guess well. It requires a human touch.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

Is AI Killing Your Job-Hunting Mojo? Don't Forget The Human Connection

iStockphoto.com | Tippapatt

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its potential impact on the job market, and humanity, continue to be front pages news. The prognosis oscillates between a semi-utopian world in which AI is a technological collaborator helping people produce their best work and a dystopian view in which the rise of machines dooms us all.

The reality is more nuanced, and when you’re searching for a job, you probably don’t care whether it’s AI or not preventing your resume from getting from point A, you, to point B, a recruiter or hiring manager. Applicant Tracking Systems (or ATS, the software recruiters use to collect resumes) have been around for many years and are already a universal scapegoat for job seekers frustrated by the impersonal labor-intensive process of applying for a job. It’s easy to imagine that you click “send” and your cover letter, resume, hopes, and dreams vanish into a digital abyss.

However, AI’s impact on job hunters is not as extreme as people may believe. Is AI making job recruitment more efficient for the employer at the expense of the candidate? Ask yourself why AI is being used to improve job recruitment.

The way that people find jobs today differs from yesteryear just as dramatically as cars differ from planes. The digital no man’s land is the product of a one-click-to-apply environment. You can access job openings across the world. You can post your resume on many job boards at once. Platforms like LinkedIn give you unprecedented access to company information that would once be impossible to obtain (e.g., employees and their titles). These are just a fraction of the ways the job search has changed.

The result is that employers are forced to manage a deluge of applicants for every job. The sheer volume of people sending in their resumes for jobs – often numbering in the thousands of applicants per position – is too great for overworked recruiters and hiring authorities to manage effectively. Enter ATS and AI. If you apply for a job online it will be filtered and ranked by an ATS, powered by AI or not. In the name of efficiency (and keeping their bosses off their collective backs), recruiters will usually do a quick sort of applicants, pick the five to ten top-ranked resumes, and advance them to the hiring manager, leaving hundreds, if not thousands, of applications unreviewed.

So how do you rise to the top? It's to your advantage to maximize the human aspects of your job search. Before everybody started staring at screens all day every day, everything was person to person. Let’s call it “Job Search Classic.” You can’t game the digital system, but you can own the human elements and put as much, if not more, energy into those areas as you do filling out endless online job applications.

Some quick tips to consider:

• Make sure your resume contains the essential keywords pertaining to your career path. But this, alone, isn’t enough. To get a leg up, you need to also:

• Leverage your human network in person. Spending an hour with someone face-to-face is worth more than 20 emails or texts.

• Send hand-written thank you notes to recruiters and hiring managers by snail mail after an interview.

• Network! Cultivating professional relationships increases your visibility and potential opportunities. 

• If you’re a student, take advantage of your school’s career center. It’s full of people who know lots of other people, and where employers post jobs looking specifically for individuals with a similar profile.

• Be mindful of your professional reputation. You have one whether you realize it or not, so nurture it.

• When you can help somebody else with their job search (e.g., somebody asks you for a referral), do it. What goes around comes around.

• Plan for the short-term, like meeting with professional contacts to advance your job search, and the long-term, like remembering to send “Happy Birthday” greetings to people in your network.

• Join professional organizations and volunteer.

• Go to job fairs, those booths aren’t powered by AI. People are in them and they want to talk to you. Give them a resume. Trust me, the recruiters and hiring managers wouldn’t be there unless they had a job to fill.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

Should I Use AI To Apply For Jobs For Me?

iStock | hirun

Given the choice between filling out seemingly endless job applications and an invasive root canal, many people would have their dentist on the phone within minutes. Contemporary job applications are laborious, repetitive, frustrating, and, once finally complete, are sent into a digital void reminiscent of the 1979 film, “The Black Hole,” which is described as “the vast empty nothingness where time and space end.”

If you believe that describes the fate of your job applications you’re not alone. If you have the resources, the temptation to outsource job applications is strong. You can pay people all over the world to fill them out for you. However, that is so 2022. The new hip and happening way to punt the grunt work to a third party is Artificial Intelligence. AI bot services like LazyApply and Sonara specialize in filling out a ridiculous number of job applications on your behalf “while you sleep.”

AI-powered job applications sound like the answer to all your hopes and dreams, doesn’t it? AI does the heavy lifting and you swoop in for the interviews and dazzle your future employer with your mad skills and effervescent personality. Everybody wins. Right? Unfortunately, using AI to apply for jobs is more nuanced. Not everybody is on board and the pitfalls may outweigh the benefits.

1.     AI is not ready for primetime. AI, whether it’s Chat GPT or LazyApply, is in the beta testing phase. Think of self-driving cars. The technology exists and at some future point, it may actually work without killing someone. Meanwhile, your average person isn’t comfortable letting the car drive itself. Similar caution should be applied to AI-powered job applications. For example, AI likes to make stuff up. A typo on your resume can sink your chances. Content that goes off the rails on your job application not only dooms your prospects but may be so obviously AI-generated that you permanently lose the confidence of recruiters and hiring managers. Sloppy work isn’t in demand.

2.     Recruiters don’t like it. AI-powered applications are like a black snake slithering across a white floor – they’re easy to spot and the general reaction isn’t positive. If you can’t be bothered to fill out your own application, why would a recruiter believe you’re serious about the company they represent? If you’re using an AI bot with the term “lazy” in it, it’s not a stretch to associate that trait with the applicant. If you’re literally not doing the work, that’s the first and maybe the last impression you’re making. While there are recruiters who may not mind, for most AI-powered applications are a turn-off. You should ask yourself if the benefits of AI are worth the risk of compromising your professional reputation.

3.    You’re not in control of your fate. If you’re asleep and an AI bot is charged with the most important task in your life – finding gainful employment and advancing your professional goals – you have no idea what’s being done on your behalf. You may not know all the places “you” to which you have applied or if your applications are being sent to companies you want to target. That can make for some awkward conversations if a recruiter or hiring manager actually reaches out to you. Yes, you will save time. Yes, you may score some interviews. However, you’re flying blind and that isn’t the best way to travel. For example, AI bots will apply to the same job twice with different content. That raises multiple red flags you don’t want.

4.     Quality over quantity. It is true that searching for a job can be a numbers game. Getting through all the digital gates (e.g., applicant tracking systems) is important and can be difficult. AI bots can apply to so many jobs that the sheer number will most likely result in more applications slipping through (in a click). At some point, however, the numbers game can turn into saturation that degrades the process and, by extension, you. You’re selling yourself. Are you an AI-powered bot? You’re not. So, who are you? That’s what potential employers want to know. If your goal is to send as many applications as possible as quickly as possible regardless of the final product, which, once again, is you, then AI-powered applications may be the perfect solution. If you want to find the job of your dreams, fewer, high-quality applications may be more work and take more time, but the end result will be better.

5.     Job applications are legal documents. During the job search process, both the employer and job seeker have legal obligations. Employers must follow laws about what information they can request and job seekers are obligated to tell the truth. If an AI bot provides inaccurate information and you didn’t know about it because you were asleep then the consequences are somewhat deserved. Ignorance is not an excuse.

6.     People like people. Sure, R2D2 and C3PO are great and who doesn’t want a protocol droid who can speak five billion languages? But, like Will Rogers said, “It’s great to be great, but it’s greater to be human.” There really is no substitute for person-to-person communication and face-to-face encounters. There’s a reason a machine-made wine glass is $10 and a mouth-blown one is $50. The machine-made one is an impersonal object identical to all others and the mouth-blown one is an artisanal extension of human talent. When you’re targeting a company, a customized application that makes an emotional connection with whoever reads it is ideal. AI can’t do that. Not yet.

7.     Artificial Intelligence can still be remarkable. Artificial intelligence is an exciting and mind-blowing technology, and, when used in the right way, can accelerate what we want to achieve. In our current moment, AI is a fantastic tool to supplement whatever it is you want to do. Explore how AI can help you write cover letters, resumes, and LinkedIn/job board profiles. AI can reduce your upfront work and associated stress. The many benefits of AI really can make things easier for you. However, ceding complete authority to AI in important aspects of your life, like job applications, may still be too risky. Take the time to weigh AI’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Don’t let AI eclipse the number one thing needed to find a new job – you.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.