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We get A LOT of AI "enhanced" job applications.
Often they read as generic buzzword nonsense. Occasionally we get candidates who mention the wrong company. Many include items we definitely don't want or need.
A cover letter this morning had this new gem: "With a strong foundation in programming, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, along with experience in my past career as a teenager, I am confident that I would bring value to your organization."
That said, we are a video game company, so the teenager thing is probably more accidentally on-point than all the AI/cybersecurity nonsense lol
@hoserama99
That sounds like a linkedin generated summary. They are pre-AI slop, but slop none the less.
@hoserama99 An LLM would never use the words "career as a teenager".
To me, this very much feels generated, but by a good old traditional computer program, not any fancy modern AI.
@hoserama99 Everyone's gotta start somewhere. That being said, as an English major I 100% refuse to use AI to write my stuff for me or edit my writing. I can do that myself well enough. I'm a bit older than a teenager though; I'm about to be a college graduate.
@hoserama99 hey! I had a seven year career as a teenager, and never thought to put it on my resume. Doh!
@Gmatom @hoserama99 You too?! I’m surprised we didn’t cross paths. What a small world this is.
@Gmatom @hoserama99 it’s serious work!
@hoserama99
About 20 years ago, companies stopped looking at resumes and used online keyword filters on job search websites. And headhunters used them too and also stopped meeting and getting to really know and place candidates. So candidates learned to optimize their resume for keywords.
This is just a continuation of that same lack of interest in really finding a good fit, because employers don’t really care & largely treat people as expendable, replaceable, & grist for the mill.
@hoserama99 oh trust me. It'll get worse now that we have some job recruiters using AI and sometimes bots.
@hoserama99 kicking myself that I didn’t think to position my prior teen career so effectively
@hoserama99 Ask for a bullshit, get a bullshit. Cover letters are such a performative moot. Never had to write one. Never applied to a company that insisted on this nonsense. Happy for the candidates having the tools now to skip this time waster.
@MichalBryxi @hoserama99 if it just lands their application immediately in the trash, is the tool actually useful? I'm certainly not going to interview a candidate that submits something like the example above.
@adrake My point was that you should re-think your interviewing practices.
@MichalBryxi I understand the point that cover letters are a waste of time, but I don't see how this anecdote supports eliminating them?
Now that we live in a world where there are widely-used automated tools to mass apply to every single job on LinkedIn, things that filter out the non-targeted applications seem *more* valuable, not less. And a cover letter like this one is a pretty good signal for low effort!
@adrake I understand what you're facing and that it's hard in the new reality.
But to me you're just saying "the bots have broken captcha, so we need to put in more captcha to make sure the captchas are working".
Captchas were never a "working solution" to begin with, but just a crutch so that *we* don't have to find a proper solution.
Back in the days at the uni one professor had infamous "open book" exams. You can take literally anything (including laptops) source with you to the exam. The catch? Unless you were extremely versed in the topic, even having access to the internet could not help you finish the exam in time.
I'm not saying do that, I'm just saying the solutions do exist. And being lazy just now slaps people over the fingers.
@MichalBryxi you're making a lot of assumptions about where I'm coming from. I'm not involved in front-line resume screening and as far as I'm aware my employer doesn't require cover letters (I've never seen one). Our recruiting team does a great job filtering out the spam *long* before it gets to me.
The point I'm trying to make is that there is no upside to the applicant in using a tool that just gets their application thrown out immediately. They could save even more time with the same result by just not applying at all. An employer could choose to eliminate their cover letter requirement, but in this example that would have just allowed a bozo into a later stage of the pipeline.
@hoserama99 I would be tempted to interview this person … “Tell me more about how your experience as a teenager prepared you for this role.” Would love to hear this response, how they handle it. They would have no clue how relevant the question is to their application.