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Job applications, cover letters and AI

kiwichris

kiwichris

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Has anyone used AI to generate a cover letter?

Anyone in a hiring role against an applicant who uses AI and submits a cover letter written using AI?

I hate cover letters, I struggle to talk about myself, writing resumes is hard enough at the best of times and having to add a job specific cover letter as well makes me struggle more.

AI is a tool, I'm considering using it to help me but am curious as to how it would be received.

I know companies are using AI in screening and postings as well so curious what the consensus would be.
 
I don’t think I’d care if an applicant used AI to draft a cover letter, I’d be happy just to see one included as it seems to be a rarity. I’d weed out any chaff during the interview process.
 
I would be interested to see a comparison of how AI could take my own cover letter/resume, and how it would end up afterwards.

I struggle selling myself
 
I don’t see an issue with it. Honestly most don’t even include one so it sticks out when others do one. I don’t think they’ll be looking hard at it being AI.
 
I use it to post jobs to candidates. In most cases, it writes it very well and in seconds, pretty amazing.
 
How would they even know it was AI if you didn't disclose it?
 
Whatever works at this point honestly
 
BigMac said:
How would they even know it was AI if you didn't disclose it?
Click to expand...
It's hard to tell at first, but the more you use it the more obvious it becomes. You definitely should tweak it to sound more human.

I've been going through this for the last 6 months. It's almost a requirement to get through the AI ATS scanning that employers use. Resume AND cover letter. Use something like Jobscan to see how well your resume fits with a job description. It's kind of messed up and I don't think most employers are actually getting the best employees for the job.
 
If it is well written I wouldn’t care how it came to me.
 
In my line of work I'm not even going to look at it so I guess it doesn't matter
 
It’s probably gonna get scanned by some sort of HR-Bot anyway because the hiring manager is too busy on Tik-Tok.
 
kiwichris said:
Has anyone used AI to generate a cover letter?

Anyone in a hiring role against an applicant who uses AI and submits a cover letter written using AI?

I hate cover letters, I struggle to talk about myself, writing resumes is hard enough at the best of times and having to add a job specific cover letter as well makes me struggle more.

AI is a tool, I'm considering using it to help me but am curious as to how it would be received.

I know companies are using AI in screening and postings as well so curious what the consensus would be.
Click to expand...

The reality is most cover letters and CV's are pretty already written by AI

I interview a ton and most cover letter are exactly the same. And most CVs are formatted exactly the same.

I tend to look at experience and then just what it's like talking to the person. Generally i put very little stock into the format of the CV or the cover letter. Im hopeful that one day someone will just write it on a napkin and send me a pic of it. I would actually really like that
 
AI is a tool… and will only be as good as the information put in.

I’ve always viewed cover letters as a chance to use my voice. The resume is just a glorified list of experience.
 
kiwichris said:
AI tends to spit it out the same, comes down to how well you can doctor the output to make it read less AI than it was.
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I mentioned this but i look at hundreds of CVs and they already all look the same LOL.

If it's not AI it's some web tutorial on how to make a CV

And all of this is fine. A CV is kind of a silly thing. People look at your experience.....it could be the nicest CV in the world it doesn't matter. People hiring know what experience they want to see. You will either match that or not.

And most companies want hiring managers to interview many people. You need to have the experience to get the interview, and then do well in the interview.
 
AI wasn't around much when I was hiring people. That said I never, I never relied on resumes that much.

My operations manager pre screen all the paperwork, and scheduled interviews.

My interviews were verbal one on one with the perspective employee. I never saw their resumes.

If our in house interview showed promis, we then went to a few job sites, where I would ask the prospect for their opinions on what was going on. I might even have them operate a piece of equipment if we progressed that far.

If the prospect(s) advance past the job site visit, my OM would do back ground checks. From there it might come down to a flip of a coin.

Also, on more than one occasion, although looking for only one new hire, I would hire two if the two could help.

Sounds like a lot, but during my 30 years in business, I had very few employees quit, and even fewer I needed to let go.

Basically all I was looking for was intelligence, absolute honesty, and no trying to baffle me with bull fecal matter. Some of those new hires are still working for my daughter 17 years later.
 
WLG1952 said:
AI wasn't around much when I was hiring people. That said I never, I never relied on resumes that much.

My operations manager pre screen all the paperwork, and scheduled interviews.

My interviews were verbal one on one with the perspective employee. I never saw their resumes.

If our in house interview showed promis, we then went to a few job sites, where I would ask the prospect for their opinions on what was going on. I might even have them operate a piece of equipment if we progressed that far.

If the prospect(s) advance past the job site visit, my OM would do back ground checks. From there it might come down to a flip of a coin.

Also, on more than one occasion, although looking for only one new hire, I would hire two if the two could help.

Sounds like a lot, but during my 30 years in business, I had very few employees quit, and even fewer I needed to let go.

Basically all I was looking for was intelligence, absolute honesty, and no trying to baffle me with bull fecal matter. Some of those new hires are still working for my daughter 17 years later.
Click to expand...
All fine and well. The real issue is getting an interview. And the recruiters don't know the job that well so they run it through a scanner to weed people out and pick people to pass along. It takes keyword matches from your cover letter and resume, and it is way too much work to fine tune every resume and cover letter to appropriately match the job description. That's where AI comes in.
 
Using AI shouldn't be the end all and be all. Use it to generate an outline, then edit to fit your personality. Especially when you know that 20% of AI generated material is false/wrong. And there ARE AI programs that can be used to find if something is AI generated (a vicious circle, right?) that companies, schools, etc... will use to weed those out.

Cover letters shouldn't be an autobiography anyway. A simple paragraph outlining your career so far. Any awards, accolades, commendations, should be in the resume where appropriate. And for criminy's sake leave out the golf thing...
 
MtlJeff said:
The reality is most cover letters and CV's are pretty already written by AI

I interview a ton and most cover letter are exactly the same. And most CVs are formatted exactly the same.

I tend to look at experience and then just what it's like talking to the person. Generally i put very little stock into the format of the CV or the cover letter. Im hopeful that one day someone will just write it on a napkin and send me a pic of it. I would actually really like that
Click to expand...
@Deebo76 Not only did the "Old Guy" have to Google "EDM" he also had to Google "CV's"

Off track a little bit however I was just reminiscing the other day that I got my first job, knocking on doors on Saturday morning asking if they were taking on an "Appetences".
Got hired that afternoon.
 
Iceman! said:
@Deebo76 Not only did the "Old Guy" have to Google "EDM" he also had to Google "CV's"

Off track a little bit however I was just reminiscing the other day that I got my first job, knocking on doors on Saturday morning asking if they were taking on an "Appetences".
Got hired that afternoon.
Click to expand...

Was that at a dictionary printing shop?
 
Depends on the industry, mine doesn’t even read cover letters. But you should definitely use AI to write your resume. Feed it the job description and have it rewrite your resume to include keywords since a lot of recruiters use software to scan resumes and give it a score based on how many keywords it finds.
 
When we screen candidates we look at the cover letter (required) and the resume. A lot of cover letters are just...what's needed. And that's fine as it's effective.
A few stand out as great.
And a few stand out as written by AI as there are certain awkward phrases repeated or that you see across letters. I down grade those.

I think the best use is as a starting point that you then edit to add humanity back into it.
 
yoose said:
Depends on the industry, mine doesn’t even read cover letters. But you should definitely use AI to write your resume. Feed it the job description and have it rewrite your resume to include keywords since a lot of recruiters use software to scan resumes and give it a score based on how many keywords it finds.
Click to expand...
Exactly what I've been saying.
 
Hoo boy. I’m getting old.

The best advice I ever got on cover letters came from the series Knock ‘Em Dead!” by Martin Yate. He lays out a simple, devastatingly effective format he calls the Qualifications Brief. Two bulleted columns in the body of the letter. Left column is titled “Your Requirements” and the right column is headed “My Qualifications.” It gets attention. Lots of it.

A Fortune 1000 CEO once told me an effective resume helps to answer the three questions he needs to answer to make a hiring decision:

Who/what did you manage?

What tangible business results did you deliver?

How’d you do under fire?

To that end, an effective resume combines elements of a job description and the self-appraisal portion of a performance review, but 90% of it should read like the self-appraisal. Most resumes read like 90% job description.

When writing your resume, remember that numbers are the universal language and percentages are universal numbers (that can sometimes help you present confidential data safely.)

I probably read a few thousand applications during my career, so I was looking for reasons to reject them, including typos and egregious grammatical errors. The cover letter had one job: to get me to read the resume. The resume had one job: to make me want to interview the applicant.
 
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