Career Warrior Podcast #289) Before Writing a ChatGPT Resume, LISTEN to This!

Episode Transcript

Chris Villanueva 0:00
Are jobseekers cheating when they use ChatGPT to craft resumes and cover letters and I have a problem with that because I own my own resume writing service.

LinkedIn presents Welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast if your goal is to transition to more meaningful work, achieve better pay or reach that flow state of work. This is your podcast. I am crispy and whether the founder of Let’s Eat, Grandma. Yes, that’s what the comma the world’s best resume writing service. The values of this podcast are continuous self improvement, persistence and making a difference three things that are very important in my own life. This is what to consider before writing a chat GPT resume. To give a quick disclaimer, I’m just a guy who owns a resume writing service. And I know resumes intimately how people can get hired through them. And I’ve done a pretty decent amount of research on chat GBT. But I will also say it’s March 22 2023. And a lot is going to change in the near future. So if AI ends up destroying the world with laser beams, I am sorry that this podcast episode did not age well.

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All right, so let’s get kicked into our topic of the day ChatGPT resumes so excited because this isn’t really a topical thing going on right now in the resumes world and I don’t think it’s going away. That’s why I’m choosing to discuss it in today’s Career Warrior Podcast episode to open up. This is a quote from an article from Sherm that’s the Society of human resources professionals. The article says out of more than 1000 current and recent job seekers who responded to a recent resume builder.com survey 46% reported using ChatGPT to write resumes or cover letters are both of those candidates about 70% received a higher response rate from employers and 59% were hired. This is a staggering statistic. And as a resume writing service owner, this almost scares me oh my gosh, what is it going on in the world of technology is AI taking over the world and going to replace all of the human jobs? Well, after digging into open AI just a little bit more, there was a lot more going on than the surface level makes it seem. And I’ll delve into that in a second. Because there’s a lot of really cool stuff going on with AI. And there’s also a lot of warnings and a lot of things that AI is not going to replace anytime soon. So the beautiful thing about open AI, which is the company that sources ChatGPT is within seconds, you can come up with some pretty decent sounding stuff. And that can be a resume a cover letter, heck, that can even be poetry, you can say, hey, ChatGPT Can you write a poem or a sonnet in the style of Shakespeare doesn’t even matter, it will spit out something pretty incredible because it pulls from all this past data. So let’s bring in the cover letter example because we are probably job seekers here or at least open to getting a new job and we’re going to need a cover letter and me personally, one thing I mentioned on the show before is that I like to DJ, it’s my dream job other than my current dream job, which is running let’s eat grandma. One day, I want to produce music for 1000s of listeners to listen. Let’s say I want to apply for a DJ position at a club at a nightclub. I don’t think that they typically require cover letters. But let’s go ahead and spit something out using ChatGPT and AJ are awesome audio editor. Would you mind speeding up this cover letter recording of me here? Because I don’t think people want to be bored by all this text. And also, can you transform my voice into a robot because that’s exactly who is writing this freaking cover letter. All right, it says Dear Hiring Manager I’m writing to express my interest in the DJ position your company based in Austin, Texas. As a passionate music enthusiast and skilled DJ. I believe that my experience and talents align perfectly with the requirements of this position. In terms of my qualifications. I’m highly experienced DJ with a proven track record of success in the industry. I have been performing as a DJ for over 10 years and I’ve had the pleasure of playing at numerous clubs, parties and festivals around the world in 2014. I performed in front of a live audience of 5000 ravers which was an incredible experience that solidified my passion as this art form. I’m confident in my ability to read a crowd and create a good exciting atmosphere that helps people dancing all night long, right knowledge of music genres and a wide range including electronic dance, music, hip hop, r&b, and more. I’m also skilled in mixing and beat matching, which allows me to seamlessly transition between tracks, keep the energy levels high throughout the night, blah, blah, blah, and it ends, please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions require further information.

Sincerely, your name. Okay, I’m gonna pause real quick here. Because never in the history of my life, have I ever been able to have something spit out something that actually made sense and was coherent this is actually what a cover letter in general should sound alike. So I’m pretty darn impressed. But at the same time, this is the same exact cover letter I would tell you to not send out to employers. And I’ll go into the warnings of using AI for your job search materials and just a little bit here. So I’m not completely going to rip on AI. I think this is a fantastic tool. But there are definitely some warnings and gotchas that we need to address right here on this episode. So AI can be used in your job search. This is pretty powerful stuff. But I’m going to give you three serious considerations if you’re going to use AI for your job search. The first consideration is the AI may pull from bad data. It may even give you bad or outdated information to include in your job search. In fact, it probably will. It will pull from past resumes and cover letters all across. I don’t even know where they source these things from but all across the interwebs in an echo chamber of mediocrity can be created.

AI only pulls from data that it’s been trained on not necessarily the cutting edge practices that are going to get you hired that are going to make you stand out as the top 1% in your industry. So when I asked ChatGPT to pool a software developer resume I said write a software developer resume for me. It spat out a mediocre vanilla resume. That was a good baseline starting point. But it had a lot of things wrong with it. For instance, there was an objective statement at the very top of the resume something I never recommend, including in your resume. It also included something at the bottom, which is a big nono, which is, quote, references available upon request, which is a big waste of space. And I never would recommend including something like that. Moreover, the resume was very vanilla in nature, it had a very formulaic template to it and the content didn’t really stick out. It wasn’t accomplishment oriented, and it read more like a job posting than anything else. Again, I’m going to counter my own negativity by saying that I am super impressed that I came up with this in the first place by looking at past resumes. But you really need to proceed with caution and understand what a good resume looks like and what is going to stand out in order to impress the hiring manager. And we’ll circle back to that in a second. That’s going to be the actually the last point I’m going to make within this episode.

Thing number two to watch out for when it comes to AI generated resume cover letter or anything that you’re going to be used to apply for jobs is it becomes incredibly easy. I mean, really easy, easier than it ever has been before. To generate false information or at best, not very truthful information about yourself. Now I’ll give an example of the DJ cover letter that I had ChatGPT spit out as well as the software developer resume that I had it spit out in the DJ cover letter, it said that I had a strong. Let me actually go back to make sure I’m quoting Chad GBT correctly, it says my knowledge of music genres span a wide range, including electronic dance music, which is actually correct hip hop, r&b and more stuff. This is not true about my own skill set. Nor would I want a nightclub or a restaurant to think that I have a really intense knowledge of r&b or any of those other genres. I know this is a funny example me DJ. But the output in these systems is only as good as the input you give it. So I just said write me a DJ cover letter. And it gave information that didn’t necessarily have the right content and even gave false information, which I don’t even know where it pulled that from. So you got to be careful with this. Because this has always been a problem, including false information or information that paints a picture about you as a job seeker that isn’t necessarily true. And in the software developer resume, you should see it. It gave a bunch of technical skills that I may not necessarily have as a software developer, JavaScript, C++, all these different programming languages that I may not necessarily know. So you have to be careful because it can be tempting to make yourself look good as a job seeker, whereas it may not necessarily be truthful. It’s just gonna bite you in the butt. It’s not worth it, y’all. So that’s the second warning. In fact, in that same am Sherm article entitled our jobseekers cheating when they use chat GBT to craft resumes and cover letters. It says, in many ways, inflating experiences and skills with chat, GBT produced resumes and cover letters is no different than hiring a resume writing service. And I have a problem with that because I own my own resume writing service. But I make sure that the information I include about my clients is truthful and representative of their skill sets. Don’t embellish things. I think that’s really important. And that’s a caution that I want everyone to be aware of here.

Okay, here’s my third warning when it comes to using an AI produced resume or cover letter. And this is probably the most important thing you’re going to hear about AI or ChatGPT produced resumes than anything I’m going to say here, you have to strategize your content and your resume and cover letter. AI is not going to be able to download information from your subconscious information that you have deep down on the inside that you know is going to get you hired your story, your human elements, the things that still belong and resumes, cover letters and LinkedIn profiles, it’s not going to be able to download some of that in your brain and spit something out. The phrasing is beautiful when these resumes are being spat out, but the content isn’t necessarily there. What do I mean by that the humanity of your resume is what makes you unique. And especially that cover letter when if I put something out, that’s vanilla, and boring and looks like every other cover letter, I’m not going to get any attention. So it’s the different accomplishments that you bring to the table. It’s the stories you have. It’s your experiences that go beyond the job description that is going to make you stand out and get hired. So questions that you should ask yourself, whether or not you use AI to produce your resume or cover letter is what should I be cutting out? From my past experiences? What experience is going to be most relevant for my future employer? What do I need to accentuate? What kind of accomplishment or random skill do I have to bring to the forefront of my resume? And what are the best practices of a resume for today that AI can’t necessarily reproduce? There’s even a disclaimer when you open up open AI that says that some of the data may not be relevant. In fact, 2021 is the newest that they might be able to pull information from. It’s not that new. So it’s important to steer the overall experience and to of course, follow resume experts follow job search experts, recruiters, all these folks who are giving really good solid advice, and use the tool as a tool, not your end all be all for your job search.

And I hope this episode was as exciting as it was for you as it was for me. We have another show coming out next week talking about the biggest warning that I have that you must not miss out on, make sure to subscribe to get the notification and post this episode and tag me I can’t wait to hear from you about what you thought about this episode and anything else that you have. Again, I try to get back to my messages as quickly as I can. And I hope to hear from you in the comments section as well. I’ll make sure to link that Sherm article as well as how you can get help from a resume service such as ours in the description of this podcast episode. Can’t wait to see you next week, the Career Warrior Podcast and before you go remember, if you’re not seeing the results you want and your job search, our highly trained team of professional resume writers here at Let’s Eat, Grandma can help head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast to get a free resume critique and $70 off any one of our resume writing packages. We talk all the time on the show about the importance of being targeted in your job search and with our unique writing process and focus on individual attention. You’ll get a resume cover letter and LinkedIn profile that are highly customized and tailored to your goals to help you get hired faster. Again, head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast. Thanks and I’ll see you next time

Transcribed by https://otter.ai