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Tell HN: Please stop sending AI-generated job applications (whoishiring threads)
Via yesterday's whoishiring thread, I received more than 70 emails. A good percentage of them (nearly half of them) came with unedited AI-generated cover letters.
Please don't do this. I spend time going through the resume, the various links in it, and then responding to everyone who applied. But this time, with so much AI-generated verbiage I simply don't want to.
I understand non-native speakers of English wanting to use AI. But frankly, just saying "here's my resume (and github/blog/publications etc)" is better than ChatGPT content. Writing longer emails creates an obligation for us (at the hiring end), and when it's AI-generated you're just wasting our time. If there's a distinct AI-generated tone to the email, I'm inclined to not consider the application.
- tonyedgecombe 3y agoPut something in the job description. Like "cover letters should be no more than one paragraph". This will also filter out people who don't bother to read the description fully.
- jokethrowaway 3y agoFine by me, stop requiring useless cover letters and other idiotic jump in the hoops (not you, everybody). Heck, made a form with what you want and people can apply only via the form. You can't fix people, fix your process.
- Cyberdog 3y agoHow did you know the cover letters were AI-generated?
- jeswin 3y ago1. AI-generated emails try to include parent context, and more often than not they sound very artificial. 2. They can be lengthy.
- Balgair 3y agoTime out. You're dinging people for being too long? I mean, what are your metrics for a cover letter then?
- rahimnathwani 3y agoOP never asked for a cover letter. Just a CV.
- ohadron 3y agoIt's quite evident after you read a few. Typically convoluted and fancy English. In other words: Upon perusal of a mere handful, the prevailing characteristic becomes abundantly clear. The prose predominantly revels in a labyrinthine complexity, intertwined with a flourish of ornate lexicon.
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- tayo42 3y ago> Typically convoluted and fancy English this is how im told to write for a corporate setting... this is insanity lol, be perfect, but not to perfect.
- notahacker 3y agoThat looks more like someone who writes cover letters with a thesaurus. (I'm sure they exist). With ChatGPT some of its stock phrases are quite easily recognisable and I'm sure they're a lot more recognisable having seen 30 other generic cover letters that also use them!
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- vlod 3y agoDamn. As a person who likes to write good grammar and sound above average intelligence in my cover letters, I'm probably doing it all wrong. I have to figure out how not to sound like an AI overlord :)
- antonchekhov 3y agoThe overall tone is bloodless, in a relentlessly smooth, confident style. The articles on the news site Axios.com have a similar style - relaxing to read at first, but feel bereft of any convictions after a while.
- humbfool2 3y agoMany AI-generated cover letters share similarities, and once you recognize the pattern, you can tell whether they were produced by an AI or not
- Legend2440 3y agoYou can usually tell: In theory, Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are designed to generate text that is challenging to discern from human-written content, allowing for a wide range of styles and tones. However, in practice, these models are often fine-tuned to serve specific purposes or emulate particular writing styles, making them more recognizable and less versatile. Fine-tuning narrows down the model's output to align with desired characteristics, sacrificing some of the inherent diversity and unpredictability found in their raw generative abilities. This fine-tuning process can result in LLMs producing text that conforms to a specific style or pattern, potentially reducing their ability to seamlessly blend in with the full spectrum of human-written content.
- benabbottnz 3y agoctrl + f “in conclusion”
- mongol 3y agoDetecting if a cover letter is AI-generated can be challenging, especially as AI improves over time. However, here are some general tips that might help: 1. Too Perfect: If the language is too polished, without any flaws, it might be a sign. However, this is not conclusive as many humans also produce impeccable cover letters. 2. Generic Content: AI-generated content might be overly generic, lacking personal anecdotes, or specific experiences that tie the candidate to the position. 3. Mismatched Details: Sometimes AI might include details or skills that don't necessarily align with the person's actual background, especially if it's generating content based on a broad set of inputs. 4. Lack of Personal Touch: Personal nuances, humor, or any unique writing style that most humans have might be absent in AI-generated content. 5. Repetition: AI sometimes has a tendency to be repetitive or overuse certain phrases. 6. Too Structured: While structure is good, if every sentence seems to follow an almost formulaic pattern, it could be a hint. 7. Check References: If the cover letter mentions specific details, cross-checking them with the resume or online profiles might show inconsistencies. 8. Use Detection Tools: There are online tools and software solutions designed to detect AI-generated content. However, their efficacy can vary. 9. Ask Direct Questions: If you're hiring and suspect a cover letter might be AI-generated, you can always ask the candidate specific questions about its content during an interview. 10. Gut Feeling: Sometimes, it's just a feeling that the content doesn't "sound human". Trust your instincts, but always give the benefit of the doubt and follow up with other methods. Remember, the use of AI tools isn't inherently negative. Some people might use AI to help draft or polish their cover letters. What's important is the authenticity of the experiences and skills presented and the genuine fit for the role.
- column 3y agoThey're a dead giveaway because they usually lack any personal touch or deep understanding of the job role. It's like they're ticking off a checklist of generic qualifications without understanding the company culture. You start to recognize the pattern after you've gone through a few hiring cycles. (Took a few attempts, but eventually got an AI response that followed the guidelines—no question repetition and in the style of a HackerNews comment. Pretty neat. ((This too was AI generated)))
- bigtex 3y agoI haven't been in the market for quite some time, but I remember 90% plus of all job descriptions seem to be written by the legal department and all sounded the same. They want the submitter to spend time crafting a unique cover letter but put zero effort into crafting an accurate job description that didn't sound like it was written by a robot.
- Legend2440 3y agoWhy shouldn't we use AI for cover letters? We both know they're nonsense anyway, you don't want to read them and I don't want to write them.
- yakshaving_jgt 3y agoPersonally, as an employer, I completely disagree. I’d prefer to be written to as a human. A short email (as in, a paragraph or two) that an applicant writes themselves explaining why they’re a good fit speaks volumes.
- baq 3y agoIf you’re an employer (and any other employers reading this) you could say somewhere in the application process that you actually read the letters. I think most people assume nobody ever opens them.
- danaris 3y agoIf that becomes something that's expected, in order to get people to continue to send in cover letters, it will be abused. Everyone will say they read the letters—but no more companies will read them than do now.
- iamcreasy 3y agoCan you share more on how to write a good two paragraph cover letters? I try to write good cover letter but at the end of the day sentences feel generic and the job description never usually contains enough meat to bite onto. How can I convince an employer that I am actually interested to have a conversation with them about the job?
- devoutsalsa 3y agoBecause it’s better to not submit a cover letter than to submit something filled with generic AI generated garbage that doesn’t represent the real you.
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- 000ooo000 3y agoShow us your job ad and let's see if it's not full of the same garbage from the other side ;)
- jeswin 3y agoNot guilty: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37740448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37740448
- 000ooo000 3y agoI kept my food down reading that, so you're all clear
- column 3y agoYou know what? I applaud your brevity. Now all you have to do for future job postings is mention "Please do not submit cover letters that are generated by AI. Doing so will result in immediate disqualification.".
- analognoise 3y agoThe dystopian sci-fi premise writes itself.
- klyrs 3y ago> Our product suite helps funds and companies navigate the complex landscape of corporate debt deals and make better decisions with AI-assisted data analysis. Hold on, you're selling an LLM/NLP product and you expect your prospective employees to avoid using the same?
- robbywashere_ 3y agoJust wait until 3D life like avatars start taking the zoom interviews and doing the leetcode challenges
- pavlov 3y agoIf it comes to that, all the return-to-office bosses will feel vindicated. “See? Workers are only trying to fool us when things are remote. We have to keep a constant eye on them in person.”
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoWait wait wait... You've been using AI to rapidly filter through all the resumes, and now finally we have something to fight that, and now WE need to stop? And yes, I don't know if the OP uses AI. This is a more general complaint about the state of hiring managers and the disproportionate advantage they had over the job market. Ability to ingest massive amounts of resumes, parse them, send out emails to take personality tests etc, requiring cover letters why the applicant believes they are the most suitable candidate for the job being offered, and how it will be a magical experience... Now finally, when applicants get some help to do mass-applying, it's not ok? How the turntables... [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FwmGLzyRDk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FwmGLzyRDk
- benzible 3y agoYou have no idea if the author has been doing this. I've hired > 100 developers and have never used AI for this. (also, not being snarky, but it's "how the tables have turned")
- aaronbrethorst 3y agounless you're hiring a DJ. In which case saying something like "how the turntables have turned!" might be appropriate.
- firtoz 3y agoFYI: "how the turntables" is a meme
- loa_in_ 3y agoIs it because AI is accessible to you for only two years as of today?
- benzible 3y agoAI / ML has been integrated into applicant tracking systems for a lot longer than two years.
- 3y ago
- nullptr_deref 3y agoI am sorry to play the role of devil's advocate. The hiring industry put up with ridiculous requirements on the engineers. There is such a disconnect between the requirements on job post and actual job. As a result, all entry level people are forced to apply to 300-400 jobs at least. And you are all looking for programmers. If one thing I know is most of them are having a heck of fun creating their automated system. I know it's annoying to you but it is equally annoying to us. I hope the upper management learns something out of this. Compile a presentation and show it to upper management. If they don't do something, expect more weird stuffs down the line. I think your upper management will force your senior engineers to come with a filter and we will come with ways to bypass the filter. The race to the bottom is on.
- dleeftink 3y agoI was about to say: the automation of HR and candidate screening has given rise to 'hidden workers' that may be ideal for certain positions but are missed due to candidate pre-screening [0]. [0]: https://www.hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work/Documents/research/hiddenworkers09032021.pdf https://www.hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work/Documents/re...
- lovehashbrowns 3y agoI agree with this. Just getting to talk to a human is a massive effort in the hiring process. Before that it’s create an account on workday, have it automatically fill in the form with a pdf resume but it doesn’t change anything because I still have to go through it and make sure everything is correct, decide if I want to put effort into writing a cover letter, fill in all the manual questionnaires like “why do you want to work for us?” that I’m comfortable with, wait 2+ weeks for the automated rejection email, repeat! This is also precious coming from an industry that uses automated emails for rejection. Yeah you don’t want to write 80 personalized rejection emails (probably way more) aaaand we don’t want to write 80 (or more) cover letters. I feel that’s pretty fair. Also isn’t this the industry that uses keywords to automatically detect “good” resumes and skips the resumes that don’t have those keywords?
- asalahli 3y ago
- guessmyname 3y agoTo provide some context, CredCore [1] is a company with around eighteen employees, as indicated on their current LinkedIn page [2]. Given the scale of this company, I believe that crafting a sincere cover letter is a wise choice, should they require one. In the case of larger organizations like Facebook, to mention one example, cover letters are overwhelmingly unlikely to have any impact. It’s highly probable that they won’t even be reviewed, and even if they are, they won’t significantly influence your chances if you can’t successfully navigate the interview process. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37740448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37740448 [2] https://www.linkedin.com/company/credcore/people/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/credcore/people/ I remember when I applied for one of my previous jobs at a relatively small game studio with about 120 employees. The CEO took the time to read every single cover letter they received. This was possible because the number of applicants was manageable, and they genuinely cared about understanding what kind of work each candidate was passionate about. I made sure to convey my genuine passion for the industry in my cover letter, and as a result, I secured a position that aligned perfectly with my interests at the time: learning about and developing distributed systems. Later on, the company was acquired by a major player in the gaming industry. Although the HR department continued to collect cover letters, there was no longer anyone available to read and assess them. When I applied for a job at Apple, I submitted a cover letter with the hope that, at some point during the interview process, perhaps towards the very end, someone would take the time to read it. I thought maybe the hiring manager or some higher-level managers might review it. However, a few weeks into my new job during the onboarding process, I asked some people I had met during the interviews, “By the way, regarding the content of my cover letter, what were your thoughts?” To my surprise, not a single person could recall ever reading or even seeing a cover letter from any candidate.
- gmerc 3y agoInefficient Transfer Encoding. We create elaborate documents with AI to be summarized and distilled by AI, wasting gpu cycles on both ends Same as with email already
- xigoi 3y agoWe need a standardized protocol for resumes and cover letters. …Unironically.
- madaxe_again 3y agoYou’re fighting the tide. Within a few years, everyone’s favourite author will be someone who writes using AI, the highest-flying entrepreneurs and most sought-after employees will be adept at using AI, and you will be forced to jump into the same boat as you discover that your reticence is seeing you left behind. Really, is this any different to the usual smoke and mirrors people use to get ahead? Before now, it was hiring ghostwriters or farming your work out to other humans and pretending you did it and accepting plaudits barefacedly - this is just the newest iteration of the same old shit. Think of Damien Hirst. The guy is renowned as an artist, but doesn’t actually produce anything himself - he has a team of pet artisans who come up with concepts and execute them, and he then sticks his signature and a price tag on them. Just like Michelangelo, or da Vinci, or titian. Think of the biggest pop stars - none of them write their material, none of them can sing or play an instrument - their chief skill is in taking credit and self-aggrandisement. Think of politicians - they have armies of advisors, writers, and staffers - they are empty vessels which echo sonorously. Sorry to break it to you, but this is how it works, and always has. The biggest bullshitter always wins.
- tempestn 3y agoThere's nothing wrong with using AI. I expect you're right that a lot of successful authors and other professionals will use AI, because it can be hugely useful. But like any tool, it can be used well, or used poorly. If a cover letter comes across as having been written by AI, you're using it poorly. If you're using it well, you should end up with something at least comparable to what you'd write yourself.
- sakjur 3y agoYou could be wrong. If you’re going to question the sincerity of everything, it’d be tasteful to question your own conclusions as well.
- madaxe_again 3y agoI don’t pass the work of others off as my own, and if you want to believe that everything is just as marketed, then be my guest.
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- qup 3y agoMaybe it's a reverse filter. If you're dumb enough to hire them with the AI cover letter, they could hold several jobs like yours, or do the job with AI?
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- kdklol 3y agoGuess I got what I deserved...
- palakkadan 3y agoThen stop using ATS to filter resumes.
- ntp_user 3y agoNo. The applicants have to suffer but when we tell the applicants to stop using AI they have to listen. /s
- pengaru 3y agoOh man, please wait while I find that misplaced infinitesimally small violin.
- analognoise 3y agoRight? Like we have to go through whiteboards, multiple rounds, STAR pattern, pretend founders are brilliant and passionate, pretend dumb ass phrases mean things, have "culture fit", show enough passion that we just do it all the time even for fun!, get laid off over Zoom after record profits or because "macroeconomic conditions" and watch the founders cry about how "difficult" it is to lay people off - and they're going to add yet another thing to arbitrarily use as a metric to reject people. Like this company uses AI for late stage capitalism financial shenanigans, but fuck us if we use it to write a cover letter, we're the bad guys? Oof.
- muzani 3y agoWell it's a filter - if the cover letter sounds bad, then just reject the applicant. That's the role of cover letters; it's to get you to read the resume, which is to get you interested in the applicant. Or ignore cover letters like many companies do. We do have a lot of non-native speakers here who say "I'm using AI because my English is not good". I think that's fine to add to the AI cover letter. I suppose it's also fair to ask them to resend a human written cover letter. Some people spam, some legitimately care.
- Esras 3y agoI appreciate what you're going through, I've hired for a wide range of roles and gotten everything from complete garbage and no cover letter to cover letters that were obviously ghost-written to resumes 7 pages long with no meaningful content. The thing that helped me most was to try to put in as much effort as the sender did - if they just used an autofilled-ChatGPT letter? Send them a one-line no thanks. It doesn't have to be much. If you want to just go through the resume anyway, you don't even have to read the cover letter. But so many engineers have also been beaten down by the applicant tracking systems that have come before. All sorts of things to get in front of a recruiter so that they aren't filtered out. I've watched recruiters throw away applicants because they didn't understand why their resume was neat and tidy and watched other applicants get pushed through simply because they filled out 4 pages of everything they've ever possibly done. It's hard to blame people when the signal they get back from applying is so poor.
- FireBeyond 3y ago> The thing that helped me most was to try to put in as much effort as the sender did - if they just used an autofilled-ChatGPT letter? Send them a one-line no thanks. This alone puts you in the ninetieth percentile. Most employers won't even bother with that.
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- nevertoolate 3y agoWe want to convince people that we are smart. AI is just a tool for that. Problem is that smart people use AI smartly, non smart people not so smartly. Here you want to ask non smart people to be smart. Fun times :)
- jader201 3y agoI’m not so sure the problem you have with this is inherently with the use of AI, but rather using the same content for all applications, without tailoring it to your company and role — and it also happens that it was AI-generated. That is, if they used AI but made sure it addressed the specifics of how their qualifications suit the specific role, you’d be fine with it. Ironically, recruiters have been doing this for years: sending the same email to hundreds/thousands of prospects, not even addressing the individual qualifications of the prospect, and why they specifically would be a good fit. I’m not saying you specifically are doing this. But we’re talking about the general practice of using the same cover letter in an application, so I’m arguing that this is no worse than sending the same email to many prospects.
- MailNerd 3y agoAI can now generate verbose content from a short prompt. AI can also summarize verbose content. I see a rosy future for AI. Humans will use it to transform their salient points into prose, and back. Or we as humans could just do away with a lot of boilerplate pretense, and just communicate the important bullet points. This might rid us of a lot or jobs though so it probably won't happen.
- squiffsquiff 3y agoI think that the elephant in the room here is "Why are cover letters required at all?". If it is relevant work/career/etc. experience then it should be in the CV. CV's are expected to have a clear structure and address specific points. Nobody looks sideways at parsing them without reading every word or searching for keywords. What's the argument for some fancy high-effort redraft that's hard to parse? Spoiler- headhunters very rarely request cover letters.
- danaris 3y agoThis is true in Europe, but much less so in the US. There is no standard format for a résumé here, and the advice on what companies are looking for is in constant flux and also constantly contradicting itself. They must be no more than one page—the first page should be work experience, while the second should be education and skills. They should contain only experience—they should focus on skills. They should be absolutely plain and professional—you must use some kind of fancy design to stand out from the crowd. In general, my understanding has been that the résumé should be showing what you've done, learned, and can do, while the cover letter should tell why you'd be good at doing it there in particular. But I've seen job ads that had very specific things listed as expectations for cover letters, and I've seen stories from hiring managers who act exasperated that "no one" has these particular elements to their cover letters (or résumés), which were never communicated, and seem to just be that particular hiring manager's random expectations. It would be great if there were some kind of standardized format for all of this information, and some assurance that companies that try to buck the standard will suffer for it, but we really don't have that.
- notahacker 3y ago> Spoiler- headhunters very rarely request cover letters. Headhunters are the cover letter though, and like to at least claim to employers that they've done some basic screening for fit beyond obtaining the CV. They're also rarely involved in the sort of hires with so many qualified applicants nobody needs to do anything to stand out
- JohnFen 3y agoCVs and such tell what your experience and skillset are (the "what"). Cover letters tell why you're interested in this particular position (the "why").
- frankreyes 3y agoCover letters were required 100 years ago when CVs and resumes had to be delivered by postal mail and the secretary of the company had to direct the CV to the right application and job description, and phone calls or face interviews were not available or practical, because travelling took literally days. Cover letters are literally a "cover" to a resume saying why are you sending that resume. Today, that's just the subject of the email with the resume as attachment. Today, cover letters provide no value to any involved party, and as you can see they can be easily played and manipulated. You're just adding more hoops to your own detriment.
- notahacker 3y ago> cover letters provide no value to any involved party This might be true of a generic letter that's either written by AI or might as well be. But it's absolute nonsense in the general case. Employers would much prefer to deal with the 5% of people who have actually read the ad than the 95% that hit autoapply on everything from the job board. Especially since a couple of sentences on the most relevant aspects of your career is much less effort for them than extracting the same information from 2 pages of resume covering mostly irrelevant stuff. They cover the sort of motivations and experiences you'd never put on a general CV which get candidates would otherwise be extremely borderline interviews. I've literally not binned of CVs of people later hired, based entirely on stuff included only in their cover letter. Since interviews are a much bigger waste of time than reading and writing cover letters, arguably even the really bad cover letters help both parties. You can intentionally negative screen companies with tone and expectations too...
- bazmattaz 3y agoI disagree. For companies that I’m really passionate about working for I’ll craft a custom cover letter where I try to explain why I want to work for that company in particular and include some information about my experience. Sure most of the experience is in the CV but my passion for the company and the market they operate in doesn’t come across in my CV. I’m a PM not a dev of that makes a difference
- Ilasky 3y agoAs someone that’s actively developing a tool to help tailor resumes to job descriptions, I’ve found it to be a boon to my callbacks, if done correctly with care. Frankly, as someone that’s had a bit of a rough time getting through screens, it’s super demoralizing to put honest effort into applications only to get an insta-rejection. These tools are just putting power back into the applicants’ hands that companies have had access to for a while now and I’m here for it.[0] [0] https://resgen.app/blog/shifting-power https://resgen.app/blog/shifting-power
- Fnoord 3y ago> Please don't do this. I spend time going through the resume, the various links in it, and then responding to everyone who applied. But this time, with so much AI-generated verbiage I simply don't want to. Welcome to the club! After so many rejections, I am completely fed up with writing cover letters. My 2 ct: use some kind of AI detection tool to figure if it was written by AI. Don't do those first.
- daft_pink 3y agoI'm really curious if there are common phrases in cover letters that indicate the letter was written by chatgpt.
- beej71 3y ago"As an AI language model..." :)
- brudgers 3y agoA help wanted ad is less effort than finding a candidate through a personal network. An AI application is less effort than tailoring a cover letter. GIGO. Good luck.
- actuallyrizzn 3y agoStop asking for cover letters. They're pointless, no one reads them, and they're not particularly helpful in determining a candidate's fitness. From an applicant perspective, it's asking for free labor to require a cover letter, and using AI to write them is a proportional response.
- lylejantzi3rd 3y agoYou should add that to the post. "Please email your resume and an optional hand-crafted cover letter to {email}. Please don't send me an AI generated cover letter. I'd rather get no cover letter than an AI generated one." Or something to that effect.
- vlod 3y agoPersonally I'm too lazy to use AI for cover letters, but are we going to get prompts like "Please generate a cover letter for this job posting, for this resume, but make it sound like it was written by a human rather than an AI"?
- klyrs 3y agoStop asking for cover letters. The job market is ridiculous and most people need to apply for tens if not hundreds of jobs. We're required to submit our resume, and we're also required to manually enter all the information from our resume into terrible CRM interfaces. On top of that, you want a custom open-ended writing assignment? Get real. If you want a sample of my writing to see how I communicate, ask for that, I can recycle it. I get it. We're not the only fish in the sea. But neither are you.
- mgrund 3y agoExactly. It’s just leveling the playing field. I’ve been doing generated cover letters based on cv, job post and a few other data sources with manual review + adjustments with a very decent callback rate.
- rahimnathwani 3y agoOP never asked for a cover letter. So your comment isn't relevant.
- klyrs 3y agoIf they had pointed to their ad, I may have known that at the time of writing. However, cover letters are required almost universally. Prospective employees know this, and are collectively responding to bullshit-questions with bullshit-answers. Perhaps the tide is turning, but this single small employer's opinion is not representative of the industry.
- rahimnathwani 3y agoIf they had pointed to their ad, I may have known that at the time of writing. Assuming the 'time of writing' was around the same time as you submitted your comment, it was about 12 hours after OP had pointed us to their ad: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37761217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37761217
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- JeremyNT 3y agoThis has leaked outside of tech too. My spouse works at a large public health nonprofit and has started receiving AI copypasta spam for open positions on LinkedIn. Despite the "cover letters considered harmful" sentiment here in the land of tech mercenaries on HN, in most industries (and especially in mission driven organizations) some form of direct personal communication beyond a resume is a useful way to determine if somebody has a genuine interest in the organization and its mission. I don't even know why people are trying to stuff AI generated spam in an interaction where the entire point is to find some genuine human connection. Do they think it actually works? Do they think that demonstrating a complete lack of effort is going to impress anybody? It seems like it would be a huge red flag and negative signal.
- JohnFen 3y ago> some form of direct personal communication beyond a resume is a useful way to determine if somebody has a genuine interest in the organization and its mission. This is true. But I suspect that a lot of people who don't want to write cover letters are people who are just applying for a job that they think they qualify for, rather than applying for a job because they have a genuine interest in that particular company. The lack of a cover letter may serve as a useful clue for when that's the case.
- quickthrower2 3y agoSome people surprise surprise are motivated by, well not dying on the streets. The question is whether spending say 8 hours spamming 100 applications or crafting 2 or 3 is the better route? Given there is no guarantee the job you are applying for even exists… we are indeed in a lemons market.
- carlosjobim 3y ago> I don't even know why people are trying to stuff AI generated spam in an interaction where the entire point is to find some genuine human connection. Do they think it actually works? Kind of obviously they do think it works. And if it works sometimes, it will be worth the minimum effort to send them. Recruiters aren't known for taking their jobs seriously, so why would candidates. You're asking them to write a serious cover letter, when the position might already be filled by somebody's niece, when an applicant is very likely to be dismissed based on sex and origin, or because he looks a little bit like the recruiter's uncle, who she hates.
- b20000 3y agoi think this is the result of companies using ATS
- nitwit005 3y agoAre the candidates writing AI generated cover letters, or did the service they were already using to write cover letters for them switch to AI? Because those services do seem to be a thing.
- vlod 3y agoI hate cover letters like every other engineer and agree with most of the points here about them being a waste of time (for me, pretty much 90%+ applications don't get a response with or without a cover letter). However, just trying to make lemonade out of lemons, anyone care (who's hiring or knows more than the average hacker) and is sick and tired of bad letters, please let us know what a good cover letter should be? e.g. Are you really looking for a sentence on how it would be life's ambition to join your company or is something like the below good: Hi My name is Bob, I'm located at [city],[state] and a senior s/w engineer with a lot of [FE]/[BE]/[Full-Stack] experience. You see you are looking for:[X]/[Y]/[Z] which I have experience in. Please reach out if you would like further info. -Bob-the-builder
- Leherenn 3y agoIn my opinion the cover letter should explain why you applied to this offer. Your cover letter adds nothing, it basically repeats some of your resume. What made you apply to this one and not others (of course you probably applied to other positions, but not every position so surely there must be some reasons)? Is the domain of interest to you? The tech stack? The people? The opportunities? Anything besides "it pays money"? And if the only reason is money, then why this one and not a lawyer position, or CEO, or whatever pays well. Surely you must feel that some of your experience/skills match well with the position. Describe those, but don't just repeat your resume. Add a bit more meat, focus on a project you've worked on that fits. Explain what you liked about it. If you don't have a lot of experience in a domain, but it interests you, say so. Explain why your lack of experience is not a problem (show a project where to had to quickly get up to speed on a new tech, ...). And so on. It doesn't have to be long, a couple of sentences about your motivation, a couple of sentences about how you fit, and that's good enough.
- mmnzur 3y agodefund human resources.
- Ekaros 3y agoIf you do not want cover letters. Please EXPLICITLY tell so in your job advertisements or contact forms. Simple. Both sides are happy the applicants don't have to provide one from AI and you don't have to read them.
- mejutoco 3y agoI would recommend to add something like "include x word in your application" somewhere in the text, so that only people paying attention will catch it. I have seen some job sites even offer this natively.
- punkbit 3y agoIn my opinion is much worse to spend a whole hour writing a cover letter to have to explain the reason why someone is applying, go through the special form to apply for the job answering a number of questions and get no feedback. A person spends 8 hours a day if not more applying, when could spend time doing other things in life that matter most. When lucky, have to go through a 5 stage interview process with changes of getting ghosted at the very end, with 4 hour take home tests that take a whole day.
- RecycledEle 3y agoI agree. The job hunting ritual wastes a lot of time. Let's kill it off by getting rid of HR except as an advisory body that helps people navigate legal requirements. All hiring should be done by the future employee's bosses and coworkers.
- austin-cheney 3y agoAll I see when I look at job postings is tech stack. I am not interested in tech stacks or tools, and especially turned off by frameworks. As a senior engineer with over 15 years I provide solutions to business problems in a given platform. A software platform can generally be described in a single word: Java, Web, Rust, AWS, and so forth. Because of that I no longer bother looking at Who Is Hiring or Work At A Startup. From the perspective of more junior developers this must look like a game with checkboxes and scorecards. That’s exactly how third party recruiters view it. So, I completely understand use of AI boilerplate. Recruiters are the only way most of us are getting past resume submission now and they will game the hell out of your resume to get their commission. Look, hiring is broken. It’s not clear what most employers are actually looking for if it’s not addressed in the job title. I just won employment with this big rocket company and it comes down to Java, test automation, cucumber. The interview was 30 minutes and I was selected because of my experience knowing I have never written Java. A tech stack never came up, but the requirements and expectations are clear on all sides. In order to fix hiring employers must be willing to hire competent people to solve problems, not replaceable cogs to fill a seat. Most developers cannot communicate in writing, so make that part of a job filter that a candidate must write some essay in real time and must demonstrate some super trivial code solution (not leet code nonsense) in real time. Require they have code online somewhere if they pass all the filters. Garbage in, garbage out. I also suggest reading about shovel vs spoon. The requirements for hiring in software are so failingly low that it resembles job placement. If you want candidates to take this seriously then don’t cast a wide net.
- joeblogs 3y agoSummary response: all job apps are bullshit. Seriously, do whatever it takes to go talk to a real human. I'm 50, by the way, and change jobs every two years. This shit works. Job apps are an efficient way to turn you down and fill roles nobody else wants at a bargain rate.
- thedewil 3y agoI use AI for my applications on Upwork. I got more replies than the applications I tailored myself.
- angellawalter 3y ago[dead]
- gardenhedge 3y agoI'm surprised at the hate and the sentiment that all engineers hate cover letters. I think cover letters make sense and don't mind doing them or receiving them. Obviously if I see it's AI generated and doesn't make sense I would just toss it and not look at the CV.
- quickthrower2 3y ago“We’ll get our bots to talk to your bots”
- Cameri 3y agoGet rid of cover letters.
- 4hEn 3y ago> I simply don't want to. What if candidates paid you to? Would you want to?