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So AI resumes and AI cover letters are now being auto-submitted to AI generated automated job postings then parsed by hiring AI. What an absolute circus this is becoming.
I wonder what I would think of a candidate who submits a computer-generated text for me to read, especially when the input is not even human bullet points but just the job post and the resume.<p>We don't have any formal process for hiring (we're <10 FTE) so whether you add a cover letter is up to you, but if you submit one and I spend my time evaluating your message, and it turns out you had an unrelated third party bullshitting me from the first to the last word, I <i>expect</i> this is not going to go over well.<p>As an IT person, I do have to commend the automation, though. There are pros and cons to weigh as you use this.
This is so funny, I was just doing this with ChatGPT to apply for jobs. If you make me fill out a bullshit form where I fake being passionate about your company, I’m going to get a chatbot to write it for me. End of story. I just need a job, why do you care if I’m passionate about building CRUD apps for you?
We don’t require cover letters, but a lot of people send them anyway. Many of them are useless boilerplate. Even before ChatGPT, you could tell that a lot of people looked up generic cover letter boilerplate and treated it like a mad libs where they filled in the company name and job position.<p>I wish more people knew just how low the bar was for writing a decent cover letter. You don’t need to spend hours researching the company or choosing the perfect prose. Just a few short sentences that add some context to your application that might not be fully captured in a resume format can make a huge difference.<p>The weirdest part is that when you get people into a conversation, like on the initial phone call, they can usually come up with a quick elevator pitch for themselves on the spot that would have been <i>great</i> cover letter material. Yet there’s something about the cover letter format that makes some people clam up and get writer’s block. Or they just hate the idea of writing something for someone else to read, so they don’t put any effort in.<p>Regardless, I don’t think ChatGPT generated cover letters are going to push this ahead. The samples look like it’s yet another ChatGPT style generically safe output. I also feel like I’m rapidly getting good at sensing ChatGPT style writing.
1. Alice turns a concise summary into corporate bullshit using AI and sends it to Bob.<p>2. Bob uses AI to convert Alice's corporate bullshit into concise summary.
This just devalues cover letters. As a hiring manager I am strongly motivated to avoid channels which would cause me to wade through a bunch of fake crap. If there turns out to be no way to filter out AI generated text, we will end up that you have to attend an in person interview at some intermediary whose job is just to verify that you are a human being and you have some idea what the job ad said.
Ask your HR Director what share of non-mass hiring hires were made in the last year from responses to job postings. I guarantee it will be less than 20%.<p>This is why the cold job search process is so awful. No one cares about the least efficient channel. It should be the last resort in your job search, and it’s absolutely fair to try and game this broken system with a cover letter generator.
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In 5 years time everyone is just going to be hurling pages and pages of ai generated babble at each other. Either party not bothering to read any of it.
um dup? <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35113802" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35113802</a>
I used to live in a country where I was screening hiring applicants and the resumes there were freaking GIANT. like huge, multi page things which i never could go through completely attached with copies of diplomas and certifications and all this superfluous stuff that flew in the face of everything I've been told about keeping resumes concise and to the point.<p>I kind of just felt the same about their cover letters, they always feel a bit just contrived enough to filter out people too lazy to do them or something. I really just cared if they could pass a fizzbuzz and answer some hard questions with "i would have to google that" instead of trying to technobabble me
This should just be a feature of LinkedIn. They have all the info about the candidate, the job, the employer, and the domain. And it’s probably already structured nicely. When you click on a job, LinkedIn should just populate the draft cover letter for you from ChatGPT.<p>Hell, LinkedIn <i>should</i> be able to have a chatbot answer recruiter emails on my behalf with me out of the loop. When I’m looking for a job they have all the information needed to accurately answer solicitations from recruiters. Just do it for me and leave me out of it until an on-site is scheduled.
Being able to communicate clearly with high signal-to-noise is essential. When hiring, I’ve learned it’s often better to take a great communicator with less experience over a poor communicator with great experience.<p>Cover letters can be a helpful filter for this. In my experience a pithy cover letter is better than no cover letter. But no cover letter is better than a bull shit one.<p>You can bet that if I smell diarrhea of the chatgpt in a cover letter, it’ll get a fast pass to the bottom of the heap if not a direct route to the reject pile.
A buddy of mine made the exact same thing a couple of weeks ago <a href="https://coverlettergpt.xyz" rel="nofollow">https://coverlettergpt.xyz</a><p>It's funny how people come up with similar ideas and are able to make them into products quickly with ChatGPT<p>His is open source if you are interested in how it's done: <a href="https://github.com/vincanger/coverlettergpt">https://github.com/vincanger/coverlettergpt</a>
That’s not how you do a proper cover letter. In a proper cover letter, you get an opportunity to talk about what’s not in the resume. The cover letter is supposed to prove you’re a good fit for the job, but more in terms of soft skills. You CAN generate a cover letter if you telle ChatGPT what to put in it. You CAN’T generate one from just the resume and job post, or don’t expect to be recruited if it’s a company that cares about cover letters.
I was prototyping a similar project before as well but ended up abandoning it because the the resulting cover letter just seemed too generic, non-authentic and business sounding. Plus, it would make stuff up sometimes (i.e saying I know X tech stack just to match the job description even though I dont)
I just created a prompt to do this yesterday. The cover letters it was outputting were just as good as the ones I usually write, and a lot less effort. Unfortunately, with this taking off, I don't think a good cover letter is going to be much of a competitive advantage anymore.
This is neat! The typing animation in the title a nice touch.<p>My first question for these "Use GPT to X" projects is, what does it bring to the table beyond ChatGPT capabilities? Couldn't I use chat.openai.com to accomplish the same thing?
Technicallly, this is great. The UI is nice as well.<p>But... if it were my dream job, I'd definitely put more effort into the cover letter. I'd use it to say why this is my dream job, rather than simply re-stating what's on my CV.
I did this with chatGPT a few weeks back. It made up a really great cover letter that highlighted all of my skills matching them with each requirement. The problem was it made up a few skills that I don't have.
Just paste the job post and your resume or LinkedIn, and get a tailored cover letter in minutes. Excited to hear your feedback and suggestions to improve it—try it out and land your dream job!