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Generate a Cover Letter by Pasting the Job Post and Your Resume

careered.ai

111–120 of 151 posts

Re: Generate a Cover Letter by Pasting the Job Post and Your Resume

#111

This should just be a feature of LinkedIn. They have all the info about the candidate, the job, the employer, and the domain. And it’s probably already structured nicely. When you click on a job, LinkedIn should just populate the draft cover letter for you from ChatGPT. Hell, LinkedIn should be able to have a chatbot answer recruiter emails on my behalf with me out of the loop. When I’m looking for a job they have al…

To be fair, there are a number of job openings where you can "Apply with LinkedIn", so it's structured data end-to-end.

Re: Generate a Cover Letter by Pasting the Job Post and Your Resume

#112
post #78
post #28

This is so funny, I was just doing this with ChatGPT to apply for jobs. If you make me fill out a bullshit form where I fake being passionate about your company, I’m going to get a chatbot to write it for me. End of story. I just need a job, why do you care if I’m passionate about building CRUD apps for you?

> I just need a job, why do you care if I’m passionate about building CRUD apps for you? Because people that lack passion for their work cut corners to avoid doing it.

I think the opposite applies here - they want “passionate” people because they’re the ones that will work > 40 hours for free.

Re: Generate a Cover Letter by Pasting the Job Post and Your Resume

#113
post #30

So AI resumes and AI cover letters are now being auto-submitted to AI generated automated job postings then parsed by hiring AI. What an absolute circus this is becoming.

Has anyone hiring for a company with more than 10 employees in the 21st century even read a cover letter? And if they have, are they stupid enough to actually believe it? For most people looking for work, rent's due next month, and they are machine-gunning applications, they aren't actually deeply passionate about getting a job at .

I'm applying for places now. I have a cut-and-paste cover letter that I slightly alter between jobs.

Realistically though I'm applying for jobs that match my skills (more or less). It would be nice if you company is cool and saving the world but I've found that most of the time I get a job and then get passionate about the industry.

Even when the company is cool they are the 4th great place I've applied to and the first 3 I struck out at.

It's always the boring banks and such that ask you the "What attracted you to apply here?".

Re: Generate a Cover Letter by Pasting the Job Post and Your Resume

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read them. I don't expect applicants to write them, and if it's a formal letter that they copy-paste around, I skim it and don't really factor it in. But a lot of times the candidate will say why they are interested in the role (they are passionate about the space, they use the product, etc) and it does give higher intent than just a normal application (which candidates often just spray out). (I'm at a 20 person co…

I was hoping my last targeted cover letter would at least get me a real rejection letter instead of a form letter, but no such luck.

I think that's a fair ask. The hiring manager or recruiter should symmetrically put in as much effort as you did to tour application.

That said, a lot of companies get really high volumes of applicants, and can't always do that.

Re: Generate a Cover Letter by Pasting the Job Post and Your Resume

#115
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're someone who knows you. It's how I've gotten the few jobs I've had since 2001. Slightly more seriously, if AI makes cutting through the noise of resumes submitted from unknowns even more difficult, maybe people default more and more to hiring people they know--which they already do to a non-trivial degree.

I feel like you’re right. If generating somewhat convincing nonsense becomes too common, it’ll make too much sense to stick with people you know are verifiable.

This is probably true broadly. To the degree that AI bots overwhelm submission and communication processes in general, people will increasingly say screw it and drop into their networks and private channels.

Re: Generate a Cover Letter by Pasting the Job Post and Your Resume

#116
I used to live in a country where I was screening hiring applicants and the resumes there were freaking GIANT. like huge, multi page things which i never could go through completely attached with copies of diplomas and certifications and all this superfluous stuff that flew in the face of everything I've been told about keeping resumes concise and to the point.

I kind of just felt the same about their cover letters, they always feel a bit just contrived enough to filter out people too lazy to do them or something. I really just cared if they could pass a fizzbuzz and answer some hard questions with "i would have to google that" instead of trying to technobabble me

Re: Generate a Cover Letter by Pasting the Job Post and Your Resume

#117

We don’t require cover letters, but a lot of people send them anyway. Many of them are useless boilerplate. Even before ChatGPT, you could tell that a lot of people looked up generic cover letter boilerplate and treated it like a mad libs where they filled in the company name and job position. I wish more people knew just how low the bar was for writing a decent cover letter. You don’t need to spend hours researching…

> Just a few short sentences that add some context to your application that might not be fully captured in a resume format can make a huge difference. “I’m applying for this internship because I have already done Java in class and that’s where I want to spend my career” That would be 4 lines more than all my internship applicants.

Yep. The bar is so incredibly low for communication.

I know job searching isn’t fun, but it’s shocking to see how some candidates act like they can’t be bothered to even have simple person-to-person discussion about their application or career interests or write even a simple written description.

Re: Generate a Cover Letter by Pasting the Job Post and Your Resume

#118
I just created a prompt to do this yesterday. The cover letters it was outputting were just as good as the ones I usually write, and a lot less effort. Unfortunately, with this taking off, I don't think a good cover letter is going to be much of a competitive advantage anymore.

Re: Generate a Cover Letter by Pasting the Job Post and Your Resume

#120
post #11

This just devalues cover letters. As a hiring manager I am strongly motivated to avoid channels which would cause me to wade through a bunch of fake crap. If there turns out to be no way to filter out AI generated text, we will end up that you have to attend an in person interview at some intermediary whose job is just to verify that you are a human being and you have some idea what the job ad said.

As a person who has put a lot of heart and creativity into cover letters for select companies I was very interested in and received form letters declining my candidacy -- I think the process devalues cover letters more than any tool like this (or even the templates that have existed prior).
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