Ah yes, AI.  The two letters that seem to be on everybody’s lips these days.  It’s a frontier of technology that is obviously evolving at lightning speed, leaving all of us to wonder about the future and what the ramifications of these new technologies will ultimately be.

While I’m not all that qualified to speak about the broader implications of AI in society in general, however, I can certainly share some further thoughts about how these technologies seem to be impacting the career and job search world.  Having been spending lots of time over the past year researching many of the new AI-driven job hunting tools out there, here’s where I think things currently stand:

1) AI is not the boogeyman behind why you’re not getting hired.  While almost everybody I encounter seems convinced that the reason their resume isn’t getting more traction is due to AI, I actually see little evidence of AI being used heavily in hiring so far.  Sure, your resume needs to be optimized for keyword-scanning (ATS) systems, but this isn’t anything new — such systems have been around for 20+ years and aren’t all that sophisticated.  They’re not AI in any true sense.  So as long as you make sure you have all the right relevant industry terms and jargon on your resume, and aren’t using a highly graphical format that would trip up scanners, you should be in pretty good shape.  AI isn’t (yet!) the likely reason your applications may not be bearing fruit, as much as it may be tempting for many people to think so.

2) AI is awesome for some job search tasks and “meh” for others.  As I wrote about previously here, the use of AI systems like ChatGPT can be a godsend for certain job hunting tasks like identifying keywords, exploring career alternatives, and conducting research into things like training options, salary levels, and emerging occupational trends.  For example, if you type “top 100 skills in project management” in almost any AI site, you’ll get an awesome list of terms that you might have overlooked.  Or if you query such a site with “top 50 career alternatives for teachers” you’ll get a ton of very practical suggestions.  These cases aside, however, I feel these tools still fall quite a bit short (see my next bullet) in terms of actual job search document creation, and they also doesn’t quite live up to the hype in terms of other benefits I’ve seen touted, as well.  For example, yes, there are AI sites that can now assist you in practicing and refining your interview skills — but there’s not really any “intelligence” taking place.  Most of them just prompt you with basic questions, record your answers, and spit out very low-level metrics about the length of your responses and such.  Potentially helpful at some level?  Sure.  But such systems can’t provide anywhere near the feedback that a real hiring manager or HR friend of yours might offer, nor can they read body language or understand the real context behind any answer.  So again, AI tools are capable of some amazing things, but the idea that they’ve suddenly made all other job search methods, tools, and approaches obsolete is extremely overblown.

3) AI is a great crutch for writing, but not a replacement.  One of the biggest areas of excitement for some job hunters is the potential use of AI to assist from a copywriting standpoint, helping them tune up the language on their resume, LinkedIn profile, and cover letters.  And a great many job hunters I meet are already using tools like ChatGPT to this effect.  In my opinion, however, I don’t think the technology is quite there yet.  Such sites are not only incapable of formatting such documents in the appropriate ways, but the content that AI systems usually spit out is usually, well, very canned and “artificial” in nature.  Garbage in, garbage out, as the old saying goes.  So while I’ve had numerous people show me examples of pieces they’ve created using AI, in almost every case, the content is composed of a bunch of fancy words that don’t really say anything and the passages produced are laden with vague, cliched terminology.  So while certainly better than nothing, and perhaps a helpful crutch to those who really don’t enjoy writing, I wouldn’t recommend relying entirely on these systems for generating critical career documents.  One day they may get there, but at least in terms of their present iterations, the AI-generated materials I’ve seen produced are pretty dull and uninspiring — and don’t contain the creativity, spark, or authenticity to help candidates stand out from the crowd.

4) AI is going to depersonalize the job market even further.  Alas, while most of us already decry the degree to which email and web technologies have depersonalized the job hunting process, I fear the explosion of AI is going to make this infinitely worse.  If you already aren’t thrilled about the lack of feedback, follow-up, and communication from employers, just think of how bad things will get once tools like (as just one random example) LazyApply catch on, where a job hunter can use AI to send out 150 job applications per day with the push of a button.  Companies will be so overrun with “junk” that they’ll have even less time to correspond with legitimate applicants.  Ironically, I’m already seeing signs that these technology trends are leading to a surge in network-driven hiring in the marketplace, with employers starting to place even more emphasis than usual on reaching out to source talent via relationships — allowing them to avoid the bombardment of applications they inevitably receive when publicly posting a job.

5) AI isn’t going away; get out in front of it!  As a final thought I’d share, I think it’s safe to say that barring the rise of some unprecedented acts of regulation, AI is here to stay and for better or worse we’re all going to have to learn to live with it.  So rather than complain about the growing presence of these new technologies, the smartest professionals are going to be those people who decide to embrace AI — and learn to capitalize on it.  In light of this, I’d challenge all of you to ask yourselves “how is AI going to impact MY field and how can I learn to use these tools effectively — and make myself more marketable — versus falling behind the curve?”  Along these lines, I’d encourage you watch a compelling video here that a contact of mine sent me (thanks JC!) that talks about the baseline skills almost everybody should be learning related to the AI revolution.  Whether it involves studying the art of “prompt engineering” or seeking out training in AI-related tools within your field, again, I highly recommend people get comfortable with learning how to use these new technologies instead of ignoring them, hoping they’ll go way.

So there are my quick thoughts on the subject — any further observations, thoughts, or actual experiences with AI any of you out there would like to share?  Is anybody using a particular AI tool that they’ve find explicitly helpful or productive in their search efforts?