Generative AI can help you apply for jobs now.
Hi everyone, Weâve got some exciting changes on the horizon. As we gear up to cover whatâs becoming an especially disruptive era in Silicon Valley, weâre relaunching as Voxâs technology section. This section will bring you the same insightful coverage youâre used to getting from Recode â everything from techâs role in our lives to the future of work â with an expanded focus on innovation and transformation. That means you might see some new bylines in addition to the ones you already know. It also means weâll be saying goodbye to the Recode branding. Weâll be redesigning this newsletter in the next couple of weeks, and we look forward to a new era of tech coverage at Vox. You can read more about the change [here](. Thanks so much for reading all these years â and hereâs to many more! âAdam Clark Estes, editor Maybe AI can finally kill the cover letter Grace wanted a better-paid job based closer to where she lived, but she dreaded writing another cover letter. And although her job as a land-use planner does require some writing, she felt a cover letter wouldnât actually do a good job of showcasing it. âItâs technical writing,â Grace said. âItâs not plucky âYou should hire me because Iâm amazing but my weakness is Iâm extra amazing.ââ Instead, she took a friendâs advice and used ChatGPT, the text-generating AI software thatâs gone viral in recent months. Grace, who asked that we leave out her last name so as not to jeopardize her employment, gave the AI the job description and fed it some qualifications she wanted to highlight. ChatGPT spat out an âadequateâ cover letter that she gave a quick edit. She ended up getting the job but she doesnât think it was because of her cover letter. âI think they just looked at my resume,â she said. Grace is one of a growing number of [job seekers turning to AI]( to complete what can be one of the more arduous â and arguably unnecessary â steps in the hiring process. A recent online [survey]( from job service site Resume Builder found that nearly half of current and recent job seekers were using ChatGPT to write their resumes or cover letters. [LinkedIn](, [TikTok](, and [media outlets]( abound with info on the best ways to get a decent cover letter from the software. Using technology like ChatGPT to apply for a job raises some thorny ethical questions, like whether youâre misrepresenting yourself to a potential employer. But job seekers see it as a necessary step toward getting ahead in a job application process thatâs fraught with inefficiencies and unfairness. The hiring process, in general, is getting [longer and longer](, and companies themselves [are using software to screen out employees]( â a process that feels like a black box. Consumer AI software can let job seekers feel like theyâre fighting bot to bot. It also forces people to ask if cover letters are even important these days, and if there might be better ways to design the application process so that job seekers donât have to resort to an AI to write one in the first place. Do cover letters even matter? The main point of cover letters is to explain why your experience would make you a good fit for a position, but thatâs also information hiring managers can glean from your resume or a phone call. And now that AI can make a pretty decent cover letter with the right prompts and a bit of editing, the exercise of writing one by hand can feel more pointless than ever. The extent to which employers are asking for cover letters these days is unclear. Alex Alonso, chief knowledge officer at the Society for Human Resource Management, says that âmostâ professional jobs still ask for a cover letter. Recruiters we spoke to pegged that rate at closer to 10 or 20 percent. Data from Indeed, which hosts job listings for both jobs listings that traditionally require cover letters and those that donât, shows that just 2 percent mentioned a cover letter. What we do know is that many hiring managers [are not actually reading cover letters](. Alonso says that hiring managers spend very little time, a couple minutes at most, reviewing an applicantâs qualifications before deciding whether or not to disqualify them. While a cover letter can be a place for applicants to explain why they might be good for a role they arenât quite qualified for, or to explain away a work gap or career change, itâs not likely many get to those details in that amount of time. Rather, most hiring managers â two thirds, he estimates â are simply checking whether or not you included the cover letter they asked for, rather than judging the erudition of your prose. âMost employers donât really put a lot of stock in what goes into the cover letter other than to demonstrate that the person understood that they should have one,â Alonso said. âTo use TikTok parlance: Yes, they understood the assignment.â For the occasions when hiring managers do want to know if an applicant is good at making a persuasive argument or linking their skills to the job description, itâs also not clear cover letters do a good job of these things. For example, James Shea, a freelance writer who has consulted clients on using ChatGPT, doesnât think that a cover letter, with its formulaic structure and braggy nature, is a good way of showcasing his writing talent. âItâs a terrible form of communication,â said Shea. âI have a portfolio of writing that shows I can write. Do I have to write a formal, arcane cover letter?â Shea recently used ChatGPT as a starting point for writing some cover letters. He says heâs been using the generative AI application as a sort of editor, taking bits and pieces from ChatGPTâs output when he thinks the suggestions are good, then tailoring it to be better. Applicants are not the only ones who donât care for cover letters. Itâs also apparent that employers themselves are valuing them less and less. Experts say that requiring cover letters has been on the decline for a while. But whether or not the job explicitly asks for cover letters or someone actually reads them, many job seekers still fear skipping them, lest its absence costs them a job. âI think cover letters have been utterly useless for quite some time now,â said Atta Tarki, cofounder of recruiting firm [TalentCompass]( and author of [Evidence-Based Recruiting](. Still, if an employer asked for a cover letter, heâd include a very short one. âItâs an unnecessary risk not to put it in.â The perceived need for cover letters also varies by industry. Tejal Wagadia, a senior technical recruiter, says itâs rare to see tech companies these days require a cover letter. She also urges hiring managers not to ask for them and to look at writing samples or portfolios instead. âIâm all about candidates and job seekers not doing extra work if they donât have to,â Wagadia said. Still, she does receive cover letters from time to time, and she reads them. Whatâs the alternative? Job seekers are in the strange position of needing to write cover letters that are unlikely to be read but in some cases are important. So why not make the process a little easier? Experts we spoke to said itâs probably fine to use ChatGPT to get a general structure or to get ideas, but that itâs important to personalize and edit your cover letter. A good rule of thumb is to give the AI the job description and your resume, and to tell it what skills of yours to highlight or what tone youâre going for. Itâs not necessary for you to disclose that you wrote your cover letter with the help of ChatGPT. After all, people have been using templates and writing services to write their cover letters for years. Just be sure to edit it enough that that doesnât feel like the case. Alonso, from the Society for Human Resource Management, thinks that disclosing that you used AI could actually be [beneficial](, since it demonstrates to potential employers that youâre efficient and resourceful. And if you can avoid a cover letter â or at least outsource some of the work to ChatGPT â there are far better uses of your time when it comes to actually getting a job. Wagadia says the most important document you submit is your resume, so make sure thatâs up to date, well-written, and has a short summary that does some of the heavy lifting a cover letter is supposed to do, like explaining why your skills are good for a certain job. âA resume should say everything that it needs to say to identify whether youâre qualified for a role or not,â Wagadia said. âAs a recruiter, my first question is: Is this candidate qualified for the role that they have applied for and for the role that Iâm recruiting for? If the answer is yes, whatever the cover letter says does not matter.â Tarki said itâs much more effective to send a short email or LinkedIn message â two paragraphs â to the employer, saying why youâre interested in the job and offering any other helpful information. Networking and relying on common connections to make introductions or vouch for you is also a plus. Austin Belcak, founder of job coaching site [Cultivated Culture]( and creator of a [video]( instructing people how to use ChatGPT to write a cover letter, advocates for spending time you saved on the cover letter doing things like researching the company for ways where you can add value, and networking. If youâre able to snag a referral from people who work at a company, he says youâre much more likely to get an interview than simply by applying online. He also suggests creating a pitch deck that would show rather than tell why youâre good for a role. There are clearly many good alternatives to the dreaded cover letter. But until it can be replaced completely, people will continue to use available technology to do what they donât want to. Cigdem Polat Dautov became a software engineer to make peopleâs lives easier by eliminating redundant and repetitive tasks. Now, as she searches for a job, she sees using ChatGPT to write cover letters just like sheâd use any other technology. She enjoys playing around with the software to see what it can yield, and then edits around its shortcomings. âIn the end, itâs a tool,â she said. âRani Molla, senior correspondent [from right to left, Senators Joe Manchin, John Thune, Mark Warner, Tammy {NAME}, and Michael Bennet standing behind a lectern.]( Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images [TikTokâs China problem has a potential new solution]( [Sens. Mark Warner and John Thune have a bipartisan bill to deal with TikTok and beyond.]( [Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, gestures as he speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 conference at Miami Beach Convention Center on April 7, 2022, in Miami, Florida.]( Marco Bello/Getty Images [Thereâs no libertarian approach to preventing the end of the world]( [What Peter Thiel gets wrong about existential risk.]( [Photo illustration of a phone showing a Twitter verified screen, with a headshot of Elon Musk behind the phone.]( Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images [Muskâs Twitter is getting worse]( [Links arenât working on Twitter due to an âinternal changeâ that had âsome unintended consequences.â](
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