How to Use (and Not Use) AI In Your Job Search
ChatGPT may have captured all the fame, but new AI tools pop up every day. People have asked them to make art, tell them silly jokes, and write Shakespeare-style poetry. Along with more serious requests—like helping them find a job.
No wonder. Many tasks seem to take longer than a snail in the New York City Marathon.
These tools can support you in every phase of your job search. AI can help you optimize your CV, find new opportunities, and analyse trends in your industry.
Even so, AIs can’t replace human help. Your success still depends on your hard work and dedication.
Humans Vs. Robots: What AI is good for and what humans still do better
AI can help you in several types of tasks. Including:
· Generating ideas: for example, ChatGPT can spit out hundreds of ideas for new careers
· Creating outlines, and first drafts: when a blank page holds you back from your winning CV
· Not being afraid of “crazy” out-there ideas: to spur your imagination and problem-solving creativity
· Analysing large amounts of data within seconds: such as industry standards and salary market rates
· Finding keywords: to sprinkle the right ones throughout your CV and cover letter
For many other tasks, humans still win. Including:
· Checking facts and confirming data: ChatGPT admits that it might give incorrect—or even biased and harmful—responses. Other tools are no different
· Answering questions with no right or wrong answer: AIs shouldn’t decide whether you’ll accept a job offer or not
· Evaluating ideas: AIs are equally confident about good ideas and clear nonsense
· Understanding human emotion and empathy
· Coming up with a strategy: to get anything useful from an AI you must give detailed prompts. Intellectual tasks that require insight are still best left to humans
The best job search strategy balances the strengths and weaknesses of AIs and humans.
Using AI to find your new career path
Your favourite robot assistants can help you decide your new career path.
They have equal enthusiasm for strange obscure professions as they have for conventional common ones. You’ll likely get a career option or two you’d otherwise never know about.
I asked ChatGPT to give me some good professions for a person who enjoys diving. Predictably it gave me “scuba diving instructor” and “dive master.” But then it followed up with “aquanaut” and "underwater crime scene investigator.”
An AI can match the keywords in your CV to career choices that fit your skills, experience, and strengths. It can then analyse labour markets, industry trends, and long-term changes. You’ll merge all this data together to make an informed decision.
However. Not even the shiniest robot can decide your career for you. Your professional path is one of those pesky questions with no right or wrong answer.
AIs don't have bodies, so they can't understand human experience. Or human feelings. They are cold and detached. AI tools can only mimic human beings in the most surface, shallow way possible. They are as much a human as a white egret flower is a bird.
In some situations this is good. But choosing a career path can never be 100 percent objective; emotions guide important decisions as much as logic. Trust your gut—it’s a human-only gift that’s usually right.
“AI” might as well stand for “amoral intelligence.” AIs have no idea what personal values are. Let alone which ones are most important for career happiness. They also don't understand the concepts of “boyfriend”, “wife”, or “child.” Which means AIs can’t tell someone how to balance their passions with the needs of their family.
Computer programs are limited to keyword matching. No critical thinking. No intuition. No real creativity. No epiphanies. They can’t take into account complex transitions or less obvious transferable skills. And they can’t give you a map for transitioning to your new industry.
Using AI for networking, social media, and LinkedIn
Job searching is hectic and demanding. You must keep track of your networking, manage your LinkedIn, and send applications. Your time is spread as thin as a New Orleans snowstorm.
But now these cheap or free virtual assistants allow you to save time and energy. Leaving you free to focus on your highest impact activities.
AIs can filter job opportunities based on your background. Which gives you time to build relationships with influential people. Instead trawling through irrelevant postings, wasting hours.
AIs connected to social media track analytics. It can tell you which of your content pieces are doing well. What types of people in which professions engage with you most. Text analysers give you feedback on the readability, inclusiveness, and tone of your content.
However. People like people. They want to get to know you, not ChatGPT. Not Google Bard.
Some people have been using AIs to write comments on social media posts—including LinkedIn. Not a good idea. People go to social media to connect to people. If they wanted pure information, they could ask ChatGPT or Bard themselves. Or do a classic Google search. They could read books or watch videos. To network effectively you need to care about other people. Care about them enough to give them your human attention. Your personal opinions. And care about them enough to not hand off emotional connection to unfeeling machines.
Those tone analyzers can give you a basic idea of your writing tone. But they can’t capture nuances. No AI tools appreciate cultural differences. (Whether between countries, ethnic groups, regions, or norms within specific industries). Only a human can adapt their humour, vocabulary, and general approach.
Even the most complex computer intelligences can’t experience the world. Only you have the ingredients for a personal brand: personality, life events, skill development, learning, unique talents, and hobbies.
Using AI to create your CVs and cover letters
Most internet articles about AI in the job search have discussed CVs and cover letters. Without AIs, you could spend hours tailoring your documents to each job application. (For your absolute dream company, you’re still better off crafting your CV and cover letter without AI). So, I won’t tread old ground.
Less has been said about the limits of AI resume writers.
An AI doesn't have empathy. ChatGPT apologises if you don’t like its answer. But it’s reflexive; no more meaningful than a parrot saying sorry. It can't understand the subtext of a job description. An AI tool can’t critically think about what employers are really looking for. So, it can’t give you non-obvious bullet points. One fact about your history can make the difference between getting an interview or not.
AIs are good at matching skills. But they aren't good at connecting transferable skills. They also can't use your skills to create a compelling narrative. Only some companies rely solely on ATS software, so you still need to appeal to humans. AIs can’t engage people by telling the story of your career change or personal development
Using AI to prepare for interviews
Responsive AI can help you improve your interviews. To some extent.
Large language models fish through their data for the most common interview questions. They’ll also pull out effective ways to structure your answers. Fill in the structure with your own response for instant feedback.
They can simulate different interview scenarios, including technical, behavioural, and situational. You can even prompt large language models to mimic hiring managers in specific industries.
However. We keep coming back to the fundamental problem with AIs: they never were, never are, never will be humans. People have compared human brains to machines since long before artificial intelligence. But those are imperfect metaphors. And again, without a body AIs know nothing about the world.
Which means it can’t adapt. You may not have a standard answer for some common interview questions. This would leave the AI stuck, because it can’t suggest unconventional responses. AIs also can’t adopt the individual personality or skill level of hiring managers very well.
A human mock interviewer can play the role of many types of interviewers. Both experienced and inexperienced, highly skilled and less skilled. People can improvise different personalities, different preferences, and different company cultures.
Your new artificial virtual assistants can help you with pre-interview research. Their training data includes facts about corporations and many larger companies (you’ll still have to check for accuracy). Including information about the founders and influential employees.
For example, ask an AI what it’s like to work at Apple. If you want to learn about Apple's company culture, the AI can reference publicly available employee reviews. It will also base its answer on Apple’s public statements and communication.
However. It’s notoriously difficult to get reviews for anything. Whether you're looking for products, services, or workplaces. Except for extremes, especially negative ones. For a complete picture of a company's workplace culture, ask employees directly.
Another problem: your AI assistants only have data about the past. Even if the data set is regularly updated, the available information lags behind. By the time you’re researching a company, workplace culture and policies could have been revamped. Employees can tell you that. AIs can't.
Studying a company’s current biggest concerns, obstacles, goals, and needs is a key part of pre interview research. Again, past or current employees can give you clues. Sometimes the media can enlighten you. So can annual reports (for public companies). AIs can't.
Using AI to evaluate obstacles and challenges during your job search
An AI can sort through, store, process, and recall data much faster than humans can. Feed your robot tools your cover letters, CVs, notes about your interviews, and results. You’ll get instant data-driven insights.
The AI will correlate your progress and results.
For example, a job seeker trapped in an endless line of CV black holes. Computer programs will identify skill gaps immediately. These programs will recommend tailored strategies based on the job seeker’s background.
Finally, language models like ChatGPT will list common reasons for getting rejected. Most of these reasons are unrelated to an individual candidate. The list assures job seekers that, sometimes, their lack of progress is not their fault. Sometimes you get rejected, even if you did everything right.
However. AIs lack empathy. Despite the all-too-common myth, no one—of any gender—is a “rational,” logical thinker. No one can simply ignore their emotions. Like everything else in life, job searching is an emotional process. A roller coaster of rejection, frustration, confidence, pride, anxiety, and stress. AIs can’t understand the pain of rejection, lack of responses, or a lengthy job search.
Job seekers need emotional support from their friends, families, and, if they’ve hired one, their career consultant. Someone with a human touch, who can understand what the job seeker is going through.
AIs can’t support job seekers with unique goals, personal circumstances, or those who are looking for complicated career shifts. Metrics and data never tell the whole story.
Using AI to choose between job offers
An AI can integrate pieces of data to compare job offers. For example, it can organise your choices. It will rank your options based on location, salary, benefits, and more. The AI can compare key differences of different job offers side-by-side.
Some of these algorithms can predict your success in each job. Along with outlining possible paths each job will open. These algorithms can extrapolate the results to your long-term goals—or at least a few steps ahead.
However. No AI has all the relevant information. Unlike humans, AIs can’t evaluate company or team dynamics. They can't consider other external factors. (Such as wider industry trends, effects on your family, or socio-political changes).
Friends, family, and career consultants provide insight only humans can give. The people close to you can share personal experiences, guide your emotions, and help you weigh practical concerns with your personal values.
As before, there’s no wrong or right answer. AI can’t make the final decision. Only you can.
Why AI isn’t very smart
These AI tools are marketed as intelligent. But they aren’t. These language models and other current AIs are stochastic parrots. The programs don’t understand anything; they just haphazardly sew words together based on probability, according to patterns in the training data. They imitate humans. Often stochastic parrots can generate text that looks okay on first glance. Someone who isn’t an expert on the subject might be fooled even be fooled on the second or third or tenth glance. But look more closely, with more knowledge, and big problems with the text appear.
This is why AI assistants are good at generating ideas, creating outlines, finding keywords, and analysing data. It’s also why it’s not afraid of out-there ideas—it can’t think, let alone feel fear or embarrassment. And this is why AI can’t check facts or confirm data. Or answer questions without a clear correct answer, evaluate ideas, or create a strategy.
These tools might have a place in your job search, but they must be managed with critical thinking and human ingenuity.
Finally, some tasks will be quicker, easier, and better if you do them yourself from scratch. Or with the help of other humans, such as your friends, family, or a career consultant.
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