AI transforming the way we hunt for jobs
Advocates say it speeds up process
Screening job applicants for key skills and experience has been part of the hiring protocol for years, a process many companies have already streamlined through automation and artificial intelligence. But the advent of publicly available generative AI models, particularly the language chatbot CHATGPT, which hit the mainstream in late 2022, is levelling the playing field for applicants, pitting AI against AI in a battle that experts say is destined to reshape the hiring process for good.
“We have CHATGPT and it’s a great resource,” said Vancouver-based career coach and organizational consultant Elena Giorgetti. “Whether we want it to or not, it’s going to change the way we work, including how we apply for work.”
Giorgetti advises her clients to run cover letters through CHATGPT to make them more readable or attention grabbing. As a non-native English speaker, she herself uses the tool to hone the language of her posts on Linkedin. “I have ideas but the tone isn’t always like someone who speaks the mother tongue," Giorgetti said.
Fellow executive career coach Lauren Malach, who works in Toronto, also suggests her clients use it to “spruce up” their resumés. “It’s almost like an external editor,” she said of CHATGPT. She first works one-on-one with clients to come up with their unique key skills and ways they add value, then brings in AI to establish a particular tone or shorten sentences.
Malach said the people who come to her are not lacking in skills or experience, but rather have lost sight of what makes them stand out or have trouble expressing those qualities in written form. “(AI is) a tool that people can use to help them when they know exactly what they need help with,” she said.
“They really do have to come to it with a pretty high level of self-awareness and direction.”
Early research suggests young job seekers have few qualms about enlisting generative AI tools as sidekicks in the job hunt.
Almost half (47 per cent) of United States college seniors are interested in using CHATGPT or other AI bots to write resumés or cover letters, according to hiring software company ICIMS Inc.'s Class Of 2023 report. A quarter of them are already using AI to do so.
And it’s no wonder. Job seekers who used AI to help them in their writing were hired around eight per cent more often than those who didn’t, according to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. CHATGPT-4 can perform better than almost any candidate on common job aptitude tests, including verbal reasoning and situational judgment tests.
In Canada, there aren’t good figures on how many people use AI in their job searches, but roughly 20 per cent of employees admit to using it to help with work-related tasks, according to KPMG LLP’S 2024 Generative AI Adoption Index.
TIKTOK ADVICE
The social media platform Tiktok has become a hotbed of advice on how job seekers can get the most out of the new technology.
Scrolling through #careertok (a tag with more than two billion views) brings up a multitude of videos featuring young professionals offering their tips on how to integrate AI into a job search. In some, posters narrate instructions directly to the viewer, their faces superimposed over screenshots of prompts jobseekers can plug into CHATGPT to tweak their resumés, or present videos of the AI bot transforming a pages-long job posting into one succinct list of skills for a cover letter. In others, they dance to trending songs while rattling off AI tools prospective employees can use to “ace the interview” or “crush the competition.”
Hanna Goefft is one such influencer — although her official title is career educator — appearing as @hannagetshired on Tiktok. She has roughly 20 videos on using generative AI in job seeking. “I think it’s a great resource. I think it can be really additive and I see use cases at every single stage of the hiring process,” she said.
Goefft currently works as a B2C marketer at U.S. job marketplace company Hired, though she’s shifting to spending more time advising job seekers on social media.
In her videos, she’s often seen speaking directly to viewers from her aesthetically decorated bedroom, with glowing bulb lighting and house plants in the background, dressed in professional yet hip attire. In one video — clocking in at around two minutes long, almost quadruple the average Tiktok video length — she lists off 10 AI use cases for job seekers.
She shows her viewers how they can use her “BFF” CHATGPT to identify key skills and keywords that are consistent across multiple job descriptions. From there, a job seeker could craft a sample resumé to suit one of those jobs or ask another tool bot, such as Ai-powered resumé builder Teal, to make improvements on an existing one. She also instructs users on partnering with internet-enabled AI tools like GPT-4, Bard, You.com or Perplexity to research a specific company ahead of a potential interview — a step she said in her video is “often overlooked but really sets you up for success and sets you up to be able to speak intelligently in interviews.”
When she spoke with the Financial Post, she said all these approaches are designed to reduce the time and effort it takes to apply for jobs.
“The way that hiring has worked, the way the interview process has worked, even the way that job applications have worked, is going to quickly become archaic,” she said. “I don’t see a good reason now that the job search process has to be this manual, time-consuming thing.”
With applicants applying for anywhere between 10 and 80 jobs before getting an offer, any way to speed up or focus this process should be embraced, Goefft said.
“It gives them more time to get into more depth in the way that they prepare for interviews and focus their time and effort on actually getting to the right job opportunities, getting to connect with real people, and making sure they’re fully prepared to go into that interview — rather than having to be so good at the more tactical interview and hiring steps.”
Goefft adds that applicants using AI is a way to level the playing field against companies that have already been integrating it to sift through resumés, seek out potential candidates and even help them decide who to lay off. “For me, where the ethical side of AI use feels more important is on the employer’s side," she said.
WE HAVE CHATGPT AND IT’S A GREAT RESOURCE. WHETHER WE WANT IT TO OR NOT, IT’S GOING TO CHANGE THE WAY WE WORK, INCLUDING HOW WE APPLY FOR WORK.
— ELENA GIORGETTI, CAREER COACH AND ORGANIZATIONAL CONSULTANT