This is what large language models should be used for. Stupid busywork documents that serve no real function beyond demonstrating knowledge of some unspoken norms (i.e., class) or being fed directly into someone else’s AI.
Show HN: AI Cover Letter Writer
61–70 of 77 posts
Re: Show HN: AI Cover Letter Writer
#62Interesting.
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Dear Hiring Manager, I am writing to express my interest in the Xenomorph Wrangler position at Weyland-Yutani. With a passion for xenomorphs, extensive experience with staff management and safety protocols, and an enthusiasm for customer service I believe I am the perfect candidate for this role. At Illia Heavy Manufacturing Concern I had the privilege of leading a team of five in reorganizing xenomorph handling. My team was successful in reducing staff casualties by more than 50 percent per quarter - all while increasing our xeno population from two to 11,290. Through my experience with xeno care, customer service, and personnel management I have developed a unique perspective on how to handle these creatures safely and humanely. Furthermore, my background in customer service has provided me with the skills needed to efficiently manage transfer of xenos to clients as well as ensure their safety throughout the entire process. With my attention to detail and commitment to quality customer service I can guarantee that each client receives satisfaction through our services. In conclusion, my qualifications make me an ideal fit for this role at Weyland-Yutani as your Xenomorph Wrangler. Thank you for your time and consideration; I look forward to discussing this opportunity further with you soon. Sincerely yours,
Re: Show HN: AI Cover Letter Writer
#63Hi all, I created this in about three days. Two of the days was working on the prompt and fiddling around with the temperature and penalties. The Prompt is kind of long (20+ lines IIRC). It was fun watching my cover letters change as I messed around with the algorithm. I created this tool because I hate cover letters. And this is supposed to be an outline that you can edit after to make it less "AIy". Hopefully it wi…
I enjoy the part where it makes up experience and personality traits out of thin air! The cover letter is so well-known that much of that is boilerplate (good with people, extensive customer service experience).
Re: Show HN: AI Cover Letter Writer
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I imagined receiving a pile of requests to write these cover letters, and having a negative reaction. I'd feel they were wasting my time with bulk -- drowning out my ability to meaningfully apply to genuine positions, by artificially raising the workload for each individual application -- as well as being from people who saw no problem in sending me what I'd consider a "fake" request that they didn't actually intend…
Are you seeing companies requesting or expecting cover letters, in recent years? Lately, I occasionally see a job application Web form that has place for a cover letter (text field, or file upload), but if it's there, it's almost always clearly marked optional. I also more often see people on HN talking about not reading cover letters, and not having much time to review most applications at all. If someone sends me a…
As I said, I'm not against cover letters. I think they can be a reasonable tool that benefits both parties, if the interview process genuinely takes them into account and uses them honestly. I also think that the vast, vast majority of posts relating to interview processes in the tech industry on this website (and most others) show a staggering degree of lack of knowledge on how hiring works, and that interviewing in our industry is particularly poor given current normal processes.
But really, I was just trying to point out that the parent's comment didn't hold water.
Re: Show HN: AI Cover Letter Writer
#65This is what large language models should be used for. Stupid busywork documents that serve no real function beyond demonstrating knowledge of some unspoken norms (i.e., class) or being fed directly into someone else’s AI.
Seems like short-term work, though. As soon as this becomes common (which appears to be, oh, right about now), what little value the busywork documents still had drops the remaining distance to zero.
Re: Show HN: AI Cover Letter Writer
#66Pretty cool to see completely GPT-3 written cover letters!
A while ago I made an application that uses semantic sentence embeddings to identify which gaps in skills you have relative to a job description; let me know if it might be of interest to you to include that information in prompts on your site: www.revision.ai/CV
Re: Show HN: AI Cover Letter Writer
#67This makes me wonder just how many things are going to be rendered pointless in the near future as it becomes basically free to fake them.
Re: Show HN: AI Cover Letter Writer
#68I imagined receiving a pile of these cover letters, and having a negative reaction. I'd feel they were wasting my time with bulk -- drowning out the meaningful, genuine ones, from people who invested in the communication -- as well as being from people who saw no problem in sending me what I'd consider a "fake" text that they didn't actually write themselves. How about we try not to send LLM text that pretends to be…
I think people underestimate how often their cover letter is a negative even without this.
I wouldn't doubt that often the cover letter causes people to be eliminated in about 5 seconds because it says the same meaningless bullshit that HR has read a 100 times already that day.
Re: Show HN: AI Cover Letter Writer
#69Pretty cool to see completely GPT-3 written cover letters! A while ago I made an application that uses semantic sentence embeddings to identify which gaps in skills you have relative to a job description; let me know if it might be of interest to you to include that information in prompts on your site: www.revision.ai/CV
It was well done. I put in the bare minimum of information
> Paste the Job Description: Do the STEM stuff
> Paste your Resume: * Worked with kids, * Know some STEM
and it spat out a cover letter that filled in all the unsaid details, completely inventing it from whole cloth, talking about "motivating students" and how "using creative approaches such as storytelling and hands-on activities, I was able to bring excitement into my classes..."
That said, the result was that it highlighted how meaningless and full of bullshit a cover letter is.
Re: Show HN: AI Cover Letter Writer
#70Maybe this is the nail in the coffin of a stupid, meaningless traditional procedure that was already outdated and exploitable a long time ago. If you can’t differentiate between an AI-generated and a real one for your position, you should probably not rely on it anyway.
Either it's just boilerplate with some variables to be filled in--in which case it's very low effort in any case. Or it's an email to someone you actually know, in which case you do want to write something personal. (Which is how I've landed my few jobs over the past 20+ years.)