By Tony Gomez, 1st and 2nd Year Career Coach, U Career Success
Introduction:
There is no question that AI (artificial intelligence) continues to develop a presence in the professional world. It’s commonplace in many organizations’ hiring departments across the world already. HR departments use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to manage and streamline the hiring process, including job posting, resume review, and keyword matching, eliminating the need for manual review by human recruiters. Following the ATS screening stage, resumes that closely align with the job requirements advance to human review, and that’s when applicants showcase their unique strengths during the hiring process. If recruiters use artificial intelligence on their side, can applicants utilize it to help on theirs? Absolutely! But notice I said help, not completely do for you. We’ll look at how you can use AI tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Bing efficiently and ethically as a professional tool, and maintain your voice throughout your application process.
The Hiring Documents – Cover Letters and Resumes
The process of landing a professional opportunity begins with a strong resume and cover letter. As a quick refresher, a resume is a brief document highlighting an individual’s education, experience, and skills tailored for job applications. A cover letter is a personalized professional letter accompanying a resume, detailing an applicant’s interest and qualifications for a specific job opening. Creating these can be exhausting and time-consuming, especially tailoring them to each application. They involve a lot of brainstorming, reflection, research, writing, editing, restructuring, and editing again. AI can help you with the tedious work, but your application documents don’t just need to be strong. They need to be authentic. AI can be a tool to enhance your application documents like resumes and cover Letters, add detail to your experiences, and stay clear and concise. Here are three steps to ensure AI is being used ethically when editing your resume:
Leveraging AI in Resume Building: A Three-Step Guide
1. Define Your Professional Objectives:
As living documents, our resumes are continually changing as we advance our education, acquire skills, and gain new professional experience. The same can be said for cover letters as our professional objectives change with us. During each step of the resume and cover Letter process, before you even think about using AI, be sure to have your career goals clearly defined. Throughout the process, keep your voice, objectives, and desired points at the forefront. Never lose sight of what you want to convey and how you want to convey it. Artificial Intelligence can help, but ultimately has zero grasp on your personal experiences.
2. Use AI as a Starting Point:
Once you’ve defined your professional objectives, use AI tools for specific and targeted changes to create a foundation to build upon later. AI is not for copying, pasting, and calling it a day. It can suggest more impactful words, help you organize information, and even ensure your resume matches what employers are looking for based off the job description. Here are some examples of how a student might ask AI to help them polish their resume for their first job out of college.
Example 1 (Social Media Assistant):
Student Input: “I have a bullet point on my resume that says, ‘Managed social media accounts.’ How can I make it sound more professional?”
AI Output: “Transformed and led the strategic management of diverse social media channels, optimizing engagement through targeted content strategies.”
Example 2 (Cashier):
Student Input: “I have a bullet point on my resume that says, ‘Handled cash transactions at the register.’ How can I emphasize accuracy?”
AI Output: “Executed financial transactions at the point of sale, ensuring accuracy and adherence to monetary protocols.”
These are good starting points, but we’re not done yet. In the next step we’ll discuss why this isn’t as impactful. It’s missing a crucial component – you.
3. Review AI Output for Authenticity
Notice how AI filled in a lot of gaps, but not with much substance – it’s all pretty vague. This is where you come in again. It has given you a structure, but now it’s your turn to add the specifics and make it yours.
Be sure to quantify your achievements and add specific details from your experiences. For example, if AI suggested ‘Managed social media channels,’ you could now specify by saying, ‘Boosted engagement on Instagram by 30% through targeted content strategies.’ Additionally, for a cashier position, adding context for tasks you did would be better reflective of one’s experience. For example, “Executed precise financial transactions on a daily basis, managing an average of 40 transactions per hour while ensuring accuracy and friendly customer service.” These changes not only maintain authenticity but enhance the candidates’ profiles as a whole.
This way, you’re building on the AI-generated foundation and making it more tailored to your actual experiences and accomplishments. The AI is your assistant, and you are the storyteller. In the next section, we’ll take a look at why this is important.
Ethics of AI and Content Creation
Without utilizing your voice to its full potential, you run the risk of not just putting out generic sounding work that doesn’t match us, but plagiarism as well. Your unique voice, objectives, and career goals shape the essence of the content you create. Despite the advanced technology now at our disposal, there will always be human touch involved. This is especially the case with content creation. For example, using AI to help you respond to an email would not take as much editing and planning as helping you create resume action statements – but they both involve having an objective and reviewing for accuracy. With your resume, the goal of course is to eventually land an interview. You want to make sure that you exhibit authenticity during all steps of the process. You wouldn’t want to be asked a question about your resume and not be able to give an authentic answer. Whether enhancing our story within a cover letter or developing the best way to highlight experience on a resume, the process must begin and end with you.
Conclusion
AI integration will continue to become more widespread in the workplace, and it brings both exciting opportunities and valid concerns. AI can be a powerful tool to assist with your career goals in a matter of seconds. When it comes to creating documents that highlight our achievements such as cover letters and resumes, we must use these tools ethically and responsibly. The increasing prevalence of AI in the workplace will minimize the time it takes for routine tasks, enhancing efficiency in crafting responses, and unlocking new possibilities for innovation across various industries. In this changing environment, anticipate a greater emphasis on interpersonal collaboration, as a combination of technical and soft skills becomes even more valuable. Embrace the power of AI as a tool to amplify your creativity. Never lose sight of the fact that the most impactful and authentic creations stem from your individuality. Ensure that your personal narrative remains compelling and genuine in the evolving landscape of AI integration. Next time you find yourself working on your career documents, see how AI can help refine your professional story. In the evolving landscape of AI, be sure the process both begins and ends with you. Let your authentic voice propel you towards future career success!
Author Bio: I’m Tony Gomez, a 1st and 2nd year career coach here at U Career Success. Graduating during 2020 has given me firsthand insight into modern obstacles recent grads face in their job search. Along with my passion for simplifying overwhelming concepts, I am dedicated to aiding students in overcoming these challenges in their career search.