Don’t dismiss your human voice

I don't think I'll ever be able to recommend using AI for job searches.

One of my newest customers gave me two copies of his resume: one from last year that he wrote from scratch, and one he designed using ChatGPT.

The resume from last year was actually pretty solid. I could hear my customer's voice as I read the document. I could get a sense of his expertise - his critical thinking skills, his ability to break down situations and troubleshoot at each stage. His content was data-rich with metrics I'd expect to see from a CAD engineer. My only heartache was that the resume was messy, and very much needed to be organized, with a few sections rewritten for easier understanding.

The second resume was upsetting. ChatGPT took a resume with character and substance and turned it into something bland and confusing. All the original logic was gone.

I could easily see a hiring decision-maker reading this version and scratching their head, asking, "Is this guy a real engineer, or is he a bot?"

What's more upsetting is that he'd been using this resume almost exclusively. He'd applied to just a few positions with his original resume before deciding that it wasn't any good, so he fed it to ChatGPT.

My takeaway for job seekers?

1. Don't dismiss your human voice and your human reasoning skills.

2. Avoid the AI bandwagon if your job search isn't gaining immediate traction.

3. Instead of thinking there's something wrong with you/your resume, ask if something else is going on.

(E.g., looking disorganized, lacking clarity/focus, discounting networking/low-hanging fruit, having no online presence, writing "see resume" on applications, etc.)

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