Is everyone now using AI for job applications?

[june35]

I have never used AI for this purpose, but if everyone is doing it I wonder if I’ll be disadvantaged to not use it?

What puts me off is the time to put everything you need into AI, work out what you want it to do, and then edit it. I may as well just write it myself?

But if I’m missing a trick please advise!

I’ve had someone use it in an actual INTERVIEW. Over Teams. They were taking long pauses and continuously glancing down, all their answers were very robotic and ‘samey’.
Asked them a generic question about hobbies and their style of response completely changed and was much more natural, so a dead giveaway.
They didn’t get the job. Fed back to the recruiter who was gobsmacked.

I’ve just used it for the first time to help rewrite my CV and I found it really helpful, because I was looking to make a sideways career move, so jump to a different specialism, and what it was great for was highlighting all of the really relevant transferable skills and experience that I wouldn’t have even thought to include myself. It still took a fair bit of time and effort to edit it though. It was phrased very American and I had to translate it to English.

Will have to see if I get an interview!

It’s usually fairly obvious if AI has been used to draft a cover letter. If we spot it, we don’t interview the candidate. To double check, we have a written timed test/task at interview too, which candidates have to do on a computer at our office which does not have internet access.

So yes, many candidates are using AI in job applications but I think workplaces are getting more robust at screening them out.

Well this is a depressing read I have specifically been told by recruiters to use AI then others are saying don't you can't seem to win!

Like any tool I think it's how you use it not that you use it.

What I have done is spent yesterday getting AI to ask me what have you done and for examples and to explain then make a master list of achievements a bit like a day long coaching session then used that to update my CV.

I was finding it really hard to articulate my value I think because it's been a long time since I interviewed 15 years odd and I do so much I didn't think Jack of all trades would cut it, going through with AI and digging into what I changed and developed helped me work out what is unique about me.

You aren't going to be disadvantaged, trust me. While I know there are probably plenty of decent CVs/cover letters being tweaked by AI, the majority of the ones I see are slop with meaningless buzzwords in and we just delete them. If you're going to put the time and effort in to tailor it to the actual job, make it sound human etc, then we wouldn't - but so, so many are not doing that.

Yes probably. It makes starting super easy and then you can just customise. As someone who made their way in the world through my writing ability it’s quite annoying as now I no longer stand out 😂

I had one interview where I suspected this. It was so awkward so she wasn't in the running for the post at all.

But people can just upload the job description and their CV / CL and tell the AI to tailor it to the job 😂

AI is such a double edged sword. One one hand you have recruiters using ATS for key words and on the other hand candidates are trying to tailor their CV to each role. If you're on new JSA you are told you need to keep applying for jobs.

I have used it a bit to help tailor my CV to a job using a CV that I wrote myself. I think the expectation that candidates know how to keep tailoring and are all expert CV writers is wrong, especially when we now see a new generation of career coaches all over linkedin where you pay up to 1k and they overhaul your CV, give you coaching, interview practice, competency libraries etc. A situation where your still not writing your own CV but the recruiter won't know you didn't write it.

Then there are the jobs who want a personal statement thousands of words long that will take you ages to write and your still not guaranteed to even get an interview.

Also I think there are a lot of poor job descriptions around at the moment and a lot of senior managers who can't interview.

I've been actively applying since January, I've applied for ~50 jobs, had six interviews, no offers yet. On average I'll do 3-6 applications per week, and have found AI invaluable in speeding up the process. I've created a project in Claude that has all my previous applications, a style guide on my tone of voice, a spreadsheet of all the examples and proof points of my experience, and can turn that into a clear and well-structured supporting statement.

I've got 20 years of experience in my field, and the sector I work in is one where AI has been actively embraced by many employers, so there's a reasonable expectation that I'd need to be using it in the role, I don't think it's unreasonable to use it at application stage. I don't misrepresent my experience, I review and redraft to make sure it's accurate and in my voice, but I can't balance an active job search with my other responsibilities while drafting everything from scratch every time.

Employers need to clearly state on their job postings what their position is on AI, and how they're using it on their end, in the interests of transparency and fairness.

I’m assuming you not in one of the main government departments then, as that is not how Success Profiles work.

Lots of applications I have to go through have obviously been answered with AI, some don't even bother to propf read and remove the prompts. We have to interview if they hit a certain score, but it's usually a waste of time as they fail miserably on the face to face interview. If you keep submitting no AI applications, I think, fairly soon, you'll be at the top of the pile for interviews!

but do you say this in the adverts otherwise why mislead candidates by not saying weather you allow or dont allow ai usage ?

That is what I'm thinking of doing next, I'm applying for senior roles so they often involve answering questions and a statement plus has specifications and company information.

Most if not all are now being run through recruiters and they appear to me to be setting their own criteria as an example I've worked in low volume high value manufacturing building a highly complex craft product one I spoke to thought I might not be able to understand how Kitchen cabinets are made which A was a nice to have on the job specification and B looked like the smallest part of the job and C whilst I'm sure has it is complexity I'd be able to learn quickly.
Unfortunately even though I tried to explain the crossover she was having none of it.

This isn't the only example of conversations I've had I understand from the recruiter level they want to get a candidate in and get paid but I think they miss out on good people.

It seems such a frustrating waste of time to keep spending a day on an application for this to happen I get more applications in and increase my chances by being efficient with my time. It

I'm freelance so I've never hired anyone, but if someone had used AI to write their application I wouldn't consider them. If they can't even apply for the job themselves, how are they going to actually do the job?

I know someone who used it to write a cover letter for a senior role, they spoke to it with the mic and said this is all the stuff I want to say, here's my CV, write it for me. It's lazy.

I said be careful because some employers use software to screen for AI like that. He said if the employer was against him using AI in that way then he didn't want the job because that's just how he writes everything now.

I don’t think that poster is public sector at all. Her previous comment in this chain refers to private sector.

As I’ve stated at least twice I’m in the private sector, as are the vast majority of people in this country. No idea where you got the idea that I’m pubsec.

Oh I do apologise, I must have conflated your post with someone else’s. Yes of course you can, your prerogative! We can take that approach when hiring contractors, so long as we’re not being discriminatory of course.

@glitterpaperchain just playing devils advocate here, you say using AI is the candidate not being bothered to write the application, but is the employer bothering to read them? What do you think the AI detection software is running on?

It's easy to spot and we mark all these applications as a fail.

What do you mean 'running on'?

Why would they waste their time reading AI slop?

The application tracking software (ATS) uses AI technology to determine whether an application has a high percentage of AI-written content. Employers use it to do an initial sift of applications and filter down to a shortlist of interviewable candidates; legally employers should disclose whether your data will be handled with AI but not all do.

To be fair, I know that many vacancies in my field get 200+ applications, so I understand why recruiters are using AI sifting tools, but there's a strong chance that the application you submit never gets read by a human at all. I've had automatic rejection emails from jobs at 3am, there's absolutely not a person behind that.

Dismissing it all as AI slop is unfair - the garbage in/garbage out principle definitely applies, but not everyone who's using AI is churning out slop.

(for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not using AI on my writing here!)

because in the olden days there was websites offering guides to structure or prewritten paragraphs for your cv and or books you could copy templates etc where you just altered some key words, it seems the tech has always been similar now we just call it chatgpt etc

plus companies should be honest and say like the nhs does if you use ai then explain how you used it etc,

but do you say no ai to begin with ?