Job Hunting using AI: Your Secret Weapon or Your Biggest Obstacle?
Introduction - The AI Paradox
With the advance of technology, it has made our lives much more efficient by speeding up daily tasks. This is true with the coming of AI, where it is being touted to helping us with daily mundane tasks much more efficient. At the same time you probably have seen the headline that with AI, a lot of jobs will be replaced and automated away. There is always this paradox that comes with AI.
Bringing this to job hunting, AI can help you write cold outreach emails and craft your resume etc. within minutes. It definitely makes the usual boring things when applying for jobs much easier. However, I am not sure if AI actually made job hunting easier.
In this article, I will aim to answer these 2 questions:
Is AI actually making it easier or harder for people to apply for jobs?
With AI being used in screening candidates, does it make it more fair or unfair?
AI is a double-edged sword. It can either Help or Hinder you.
Perspective of Candidate using AI to help you in your job applications - AI helps you.
Today, ChatGPT or Google Gemini can very easily help you craft resume bullet points. I used to sit for weeks trying to craft proper bullet points - does the language sound like I did a lot? Is it my grammar correct? Does it sound substantial?
Now I can simply give Google Gemini instructions “I want it to sound majestic”, and it can be done for me very quickly. (I prefer Gemini because lesser people are using it and because Gemini sounds more natural.)
Using ChatGPT or Gemini on voice conversation mode can also help you prepare for interviews. You can even ask it to give you feedback on your answers. This used to be done with an actual coach which you may have to pay for. Now all these tools are at your fingertips and are free to use.
In such cases, AI becomes a tool that helps you in your job applications.
Perspective as a Candidate applying to Companies who are using AI to screen - AI hinders you.
On the other hand, when you are applying to companies who use AI, AI may be a hinderance. In a panel discussion, I was asked a question on whether the use of AI in recruitment creates fairness or unfairness.
To me, fairness is a metric that can be measured only if you know the criteria that determines the outcomes. If I know how and what I am being judged upon when I am applying, then I can tell if the outcome I got is fair or not.
If a company uses AI, there comes this opaque layer of screening that is done by AI. And because the criteria is driven by an algorithm, the criteria for which you are being hired upon is hidden behind this idea of “company secrets”. You don’t know how you are being judged.
An example: A company says that they use AI to “Remove Bias” from hiring processes. If we don’t know what bias they are removing, is it fair or unfair to you as an end user? It’s difficult to tell.
So from that perspective, even if AI can help you with all the easy tasks, but yet prevent you from getting hired, is it better for you? In such a case, I think AI hinders your job hunt.
Why Companies are using AI in Hiring Processes
Before we blame companies for such hiring practices, we need to first understand why companies turn to technology. Let me share a personal experience back at one of the FMCG companies I interned at before in 2019 to explain why. (I will not name this company here hahaha.)
This is a company well-known for their graduate programs as it is a prestigious program. When I was interning there back in 2019, they had only opened 3 roles for their Marketing Graduate program. However, for that 3 roles, there were nearly 2,000 applicants.
How do you think they screened through those 2,000 applicants? This was a time before AI was even a thing. Technology was indeed used to screen candidates and many will ultimately get cut out in the first round of screening before even interacting with a human being.
So from a candidate’s perspective, if your application got rejected, you may find it difficult or unfair if technology (or AI in today’s context) was used to filter you out. The worse thing is you don’t know why you got rejected.
But from the company’s perspective, they are using AI because they have so many applicants so they have no choice but to use AI to shortlist in the fastest way possible.
My take on this - it shouldn’t matter whether AI is being used or not by a company, your aim is to get in the company. Whether or not AI is used, you need to learn how to get in.
Concluding Thoughts
There is no doubt that AI definitely has helped to increase our efficiency in certain job hunting tasks. However, AI has also brought upon some obscure issues when used within hiring processes.
As with most things in life, we have to be mindful that the answer is always somewhere in the middle. With AI, there are both pros and cons to it depending on where we stand.
What we can do is to control our actions and what we are doing with our careers. It is important to plan ahead when you are making your career moves. It is also important to be intentional and know why you make certain moves in your career. This allows you to stand out from other candidates when it comes to substantiating your career decisions.
Side Note:
This is one article of a series of 4 articles. In this series, I explore the relevance of resumes today and share how to optimise your resume. This came about because I had went onto a radio show on Money FM89.3 to discuss about this topic. You can watch this on YouTube by clicking here.
I highly encourage you to read this first article before moving on to the others as I want to preface the reason for why focusing on your resume is important. More importantly, illustrating to you the impact your resume could have on your financial wellbeing.
