Tell HN: Please stop sending AI-generated job applications (whoishiring threads) | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Please stop sending AI-generated job applications (whoishiring threads)

174 pointsjeswin188 comments

Via yesterday's whoishiring thread, I received more than 70 emails. A good percentage of them (nearly half of them) came with unedited AI-generated cover letters.

Please don't do this. I spend time going through the resume, the various links in it, and then responding to everyone who applied. But this time, with so much AI-generated verbiage I simply don't want to.

I understand non-native speakers of English wanting to use AI. But frankly, just saying "here's my resume (and github/blog/publications etc)" is better than ChatGPT content. Writing longer emails creates an obligation for us (at the hiring end), and when it's AI-generated you're just wasting our time. If there's a distinct AI-generated tone to the email, I'm inclined to not consider the application.

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I am sorry to play the role of devil's advocate.

The hiring industry put up with ridiculous requirements on the engineers. There is such a disconnect between the requirements on job post and actual job. As a result, all entry level people are forced to apply to 300-400 jobs at least. And you are all looking for programmers. If one thing I know is most of them are having a heck of fun creating their automated system.

I know it's annoying to you but it is equally annoying to us. I hope the upper management learns something out of this. Compile a presentation and show it to upper management. If they don't do something, expect more weird stuffs down the line.

I think your upper management will force your senior engineers to come with a filter and we will come with ways to bypass the filter. The race to the bottom is on.

I was about to say: the automation of HR and candidate screening has given rise to 'hidden workers' that may be ideal for certain positions but are missed due to candidate pre-screening [0].

[0]: https://www.hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work/Documents/re...

I agree with this. Just getting to talk to a human is a massive effort in the hiring process. Before that it’s create an account on workday, have it automatically fill in the form with a pdf resume but it doesn’t change anything because I still have to go through it and make sure everything is correct, decide if I want to put effort into writing a cover letter, fill in all the manual questionnaires like “why do you want to work for us?” that I’m comfortable with, wait 2+ weeks for the automated rejection email, repeat!

This is also precious coming from an industry that uses automated emails for rejection. Yeah you don’t want to write 80 personalized rejection emails (probably way more) aaaand we don’t want to write 80 (or more) cover letters. I feel that’s pretty fair.

Also isn’t this the industry that uses keywords to automatically detect “good” resumes and skips the resumes that don’t have those keywords?

How does that have anything to do with the OP and their company? A bad behavior in the industry doesn't justify taking the revenge on one small company. If anything, it creates a negative feedback loop.

> Please don't do this. I spend time going through the resume, the various links in it, and then responding to everyone who applied. But this time, with so much AI-generated verbiage I simply don't want to.

Congratulations, now there's one more company "that uses automated emails for rejection". And rightly so, if you ask me.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with OP or their employer.

Because if someone’s experience is that their cover letter never gets read, and they finally get the chance to automate writing a cover letter, they’re just going to follow the pattern they’ve always experienced.

I also love that the way things have worked for decades is applicants have to do everything by hand, but employers can automate as much as they want. Now suddenly applicants can automate just the writing of the cover letter and suddenly automation is bad and it’s all about being personal and what happened to the human touch lmao. This is just over a cover letter, by the way.

Also this is likely not applicants that are filling out one job application. We’re talking applicants that have probably spent weeks trying to apply for jobs. Spare then the 5 minutes of writing a cover letter for a job they’re probably not going to get for the 50th or whatever time.

yep, you hit it on. I was going to reply the same thing to OP. when companies use AI to determine which resumes/candidates are good, no one can complain, but when candidates use AI to generate cover letters and all that garbage (for the 300 companies they have to apply to) they are literally hitler

This, exactly this! I've been looking for a job for a while now, and of course I automated it... genuinely asking, who reads the 100s of cover letters anyway?

So the era’s gone then. Nobody raises their hat seeing another gentleman on the street anymore. Now that the power of automation is in both hands, everyone has to adapt. Next month we’ll see a medium article about using AI roleplaying chat-instruct mode to bypass the filters and generate what OP finds acceptable or human.

I understand companies not wanting to write personalized rejection emails. I'd settle for them sending automated ones. 2/3 companies that I apply to don't bother to do even that.

> 2/3 companies that I apply to don't bother to do even that.

Your record is far better than mine! I don't think I've ever been informed when I was rejected for a position. I just don't hear from the company again.

Just a heads up, if a field isn't required in Workday, don't fill it in. That includes career and education. Or, maybe just include one of each and delete the rest.

Those fields are mainly for Workday's data gathering anyway vs what hiring managers review.

> This is also precious coming from an industry that uses automated emails for rejection. Yeah you don’t want to write 80 personalized rejection emails (probably way more) aaaand we don’t want to write 80 (or more) cover letters. I feel that’s pretty fair.

This is such a brilliantly good point!

Before getting my current job, I think I had applied to around 180 companies (getting about 10 callbacks -> 3 on sites -> 1 offer).

And I totally used an automated script I wrote for creating cover letters. It was basically a general template about me, listing relevant skills and interests, a blank variable for company name, and then an area where I could say why I wanted to work for XYZ.

Made that part of the process so much easier.

Interestingly, being on the other side, when I’ve reviewed candidate applications before phone screens or interviews, I always enjoyed reading cover letters.

This might fix it: charge the candidate some $amount for each application they send. Also charge the employer $amount * some_factor for each application they receive.

This can filter out candidates that aren't really interested, and companies that aren't really hiring.

The cost to an employer to accept (not review) 100 applications is about 1/100th of the cost to the candidate.

Employers have more information about the applicants individually and in aggregate but candidates don't about the companies.

Employers don't give much basic feedback to candidates, like underqualified, overqualified, not sure, something else.

> Yeah you don’t want to write 80 personalized rejection emails (probably way more) aaaand we don’t want to write 80 (or more) cover letters. I feel that’s pretty fair.

A rejection letter is meant to convey a single fact. A cover letter is meant to convey important information that is relevant to the hiring decision. The two things are not equal.

When I've been hiring, cover letters have often been really critical to making these decisions. If an applicant omits a cover letter or uses one that is clearly boilerplate (or AI generated), that applicant is reducing my ability to assess their suitability for the position. As a result, they're less likely to land the job.

> As a result, they're less likely to land the job.

And you are less likely to hire someone that is a good fit for your role but couldn't put an insane amount of time to apply to your job post and a 100 more.

A rejection letter conveys a single fact because you want it to convey a single fact. You could also write personalized rejection letters that tell the applicant why they weren’t selected to continue with the hiring process. That could help the applicant in their future job applications. But you don’t do that. I wonder why!

And it’s your pickle to put however much stock you want in the cover letter. That’s not what this is about at all. If I were applying to jobs and I know a significant percent of my cover letters will never be read by a single human on earth, I might be tempted to have an AI write it. If you happen to read it and reject me based on whatever likely-subjective metrics you use to determine it was chatgpt that wrote it, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. You could also reject me on a million other factors I don’t control. Either way, I saved however many minutes.

> That could help the applicant in their future job applications. But you don’t do that. I wonder why!

I assume you mean the general "you", not me specifically, because I do, in fact, do that.

Looking on Indeed at Product Management roles recently, those that had been up for 24 hours had typically 300-700 applicants already.

Please tell us with a straight face that you craft a personalized response to each of your 300-700+ applicants.

“ You could also write personalized rejection letters that tell the applicant why they weren’t selected to continue with the hiring process. That could help the applicant in their future job applications. But you don’t do that. I wonder why!”

Dear lovehashbrowns,

We are unfortunately decided to proceed with other applicant this time because even if you have roughly the required work experience for the position, based on your cover letter and resume you seemed to be generally unpleasant people to be around.

Regards, HR, Honest LTD.

When I've been hiring I found cover letters to be useless. I just ignored them and looked at the CV to determine whether the candidate was worth an initial screening interview.

Cover letters can be useful in some instances. I was very grateful to write a cover letter when I was changing careers because I wanted to explain why my prior work experience was seemingly at odds with my intended role.

But I only bother with putting that kind of care into a cover letter if I think I have very good odds of getting the job. In this case, I knew my chances were good because one of their top employees was recommending me.

Cover letters used to be a good indication of communication skills. And I don’t mean English skills, I mean the ability to convey a set of facts in an intuitive way. If you can’t write a coherent cover letter then God help us when I DM you on Slack about a problem.

Not just engineers. My wife recently went through this. Application after application, each expecting a cover letter, as to why my wife is the ideal candidate, and how she would be a great fit in the company.

It's an absolute waste of time.

Then when you get through the first filter, you need to do x aptitude tests and a degrading personality test.

And only THEN, when you understand how those tests work and get to get a perfect score, then you might get an email to set up a phone call.

I'll get laid off end of year.

Now I will soon have to do one (serious) job application a week in order to receive benefits for the time being. If I could use ML to make that part easier (I will get declined a lot without even having been read anyway, not even a non-personal rejection letter) while I put effort into it then all the more power to me. Actually, I'd like to thank the OP for the heads up.

how does the personality test work? what do they want?

> If one thing I know is most of them are having a heck of fun creating their automated system.

... did AI write this?

Hahaha. This has happened to me once before. I do not use sophisticated language and they thought I sounded like AI because of minor exaggeration on venting opinions. I think that is why your anti-ai flag got triggered.

Not a case of unsophisticated language here -- rather, it's a case of an awkward and non-standard sentence construction, which, to be honest, I just parse as someone who doesn't speak English as their first language; ChatGPT wouldn't make this mistake.

I think the assumption that all bad grammar is the result of speaking a non-native speaker is a bad one. I work with a lot of native English speakers and they get all kinds of grammar school grammar wrong.

That's true. But I always thought that HN's "Who is hiring" was more informal, a kind of back door so to say.

It's not anymore, it's just another job board as many others out there..

Um. No you're not. I refuse to participate in a process where I send out 300 bullshit apps.

Instead, network. Reach out to your college profs and family friends. Go to meetups and tech events. Do hackathons. Anything to get time with a real human to build a connection.

Seriously, its how things get done.

Stop asking for cover letters. The job market is ridiculous and most people need to apply for tens if not hundreds of jobs. We're required to submit our resume, and we're also required to manually enter all the information from our resume into terrible CRM interfaces. On top of that, you want a custom open-ended writing assignment? Get real. If you want a sample of my writing to see how I communicate, ask for that, I can recycle it.

I get it. We're not the only fish in the sea. But neither are you.

Exactly. It’s just leveling the playing field. I’ve been doing generated cover letters based on cv, job post and a few other data sources with manual review + adjustments with a very decent callback rate.

OP never asked for a cover letter. So your comment isn't relevant.

If they had pointed to their ad, I may have known that at the time of writing. However, cover letters are required almost universally. Prospective employees know this, and are collectively responding to bullshit-questions with bullshit-answers. Perhaps the tide is turning, but this single small employer's opinion is not representative of the industry.

  If they had pointed to their ad, I may have known that at the time of writing.

Assuming the 'time of writing' was around the same time as you submitted your comment, it was about 12 hours after OP had pointed us to their ad:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37761217

Okay? Do you read every comment on every thread and read all the links in detail, before responding to a tell/ask post? I don't, and I don't think I'm abnormal in this regard.

> However, cover letters are required almost universally.

I've only run into a requirement for one around three times.

I have run into goofier, more elaborate, things than cover letters, but that's another story.

To provide some context, CredCore [1] is a company with around eighteen employees, as indicated on their current LinkedIn page [2].

Given the scale of this company, I believe that crafting a sincere cover letter is a wise choice, should they require one. In the case of larger organizations like Facebook, to mention one example, cover letters are overwhelmingly unlikely to have any impact. It’s highly probable that they won’t even be reviewed, and even if they are, they won’t significantly influence your chances if you can’t successfully navigate the interview process.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37740448

[2] https://www.linkedin.com/company/credcore/people/

I remember when I applied for one of my previous jobs at a relatively small game studio with about 120 employees. The CEO took the time to read every single cover letter they received. This was possible because the number of applicants was manageable, and they genuinely cared about understanding what kind of work each candidate was passionate about. I made sure to convey my genuine passion for the industry in my cover letter, and as a result, I secured a position that aligned perfectly with my interests at the time: learning about and developing distributed systems.

Later on, the company was acquired by a major player in the gaming industry. Although the HR department continued to collect cover letters, there was no longer anyone available to read and assess them.

When I applied for a job at Apple, I submitted a cover letter with the hope that, at some point during the interview process, perhaps towards the very end, someone would take the time to read it. I thought maybe the hiring manager or some higher-level managers might review it. However, a few weeks into my new job during the onboarding process, I asked some people I had met during the interviews, “By the way, regarding the content of my cover letter, what were your thoughts?” To my surprise, not a single person could recall ever reading or even seeing a cover letter from any candidate.

Thanks for writing this.

I feel like maybe we should put some type of personal question in the cover letter so if they ask it during your interview you know they read the letter.

I interviewed maybe a few dozen people in my time at a larger company. I always got resumes but never saw a cover letter, so I don't know if people sent them in or not.

One of the hiring aspects I've heard is that interviews aren't terribly predictive of performance, but past accomplishments are, so I'd read through peoples' resumes and ask them about past projects and what they learned from them - seems like the best way to spend the time. But I was always surprised at how few of my fellow interviewers used the resume like that.

So I was a bit surprised when I was on the other side of the table for my latest job and the interviewer did it to me. It's an impressively competent place and I'm glad to have gotten it.

Cover letters were required 100 years ago when CVs and resumes had to be delivered by postal mail and the secretary of the company had to direct the CV to the right application and job description, and phone calls or face interviews were not available or practical, because travelling took literally days.

Cover letters are literally a "cover" to a resume saying why are you sending that resume.

Today, that's just the subject of the email with the resume as attachment.

Today, cover letters provide no value to any involved party, and as you can see they can be easily played and manipulated. You're just adding more hoops to your own detriment.

> cover letters provide no value to any involved party

This might be true of a generic letter that's either written by AI or might as well be. But it's absolute nonsense in the general case.

Employers would much prefer to deal with the 5% of people who have actually read the ad than the 95% that hit autoapply on everything from the job board. Especially since a couple of sentences on the most relevant aspects of your career is much less effort for them than extracting the same information from 2 pages of resume covering mostly irrelevant stuff. They cover the sort of motivations and experiences you'd never put on a general CV which get candidates would otherwise be extremely borderline interviews. I've literally not binned of CVs of people later hired, based entirely on stuff included only in their cover letter.

Since interviews are a much bigger waste of time than reading and writing cover letters, arguably even the really bad cover letters help both parties. You can intentionally negative screen companies with tone and expectations too...

I disagree. For companies that I’m really passionate about working for I’ll craft a custom cover letter where I try to explain why I want to work for that company in particular and include some information about my experience. Sure most of the experience is in the CV but my passion for the company and the market they operate in doesn’t come across in my CV. I’m a PM not a dev of that makes a difference

As someone that’s actively developing a tool to help tailor resumes to job descriptions, I’ve found it to be a boon to my callbacks, if done correctly with care.

Frankly, as someone that’s had a bit of a rough time getting through screens, it’s super demoralizing to put honest effort into applications only to get an insta-rejection.

These tools are just putting power back into the applicants’ hands that companies have had access to for a while now and I’m here for it.[0]

[0] https://resgen.app/blog/shifting-power

Awesome can you share a link to your tool if it’s ready?

Sure! You can try it at https://resgen.app.

I think that the elephant in the room here is "Why are cover letters required at all?". If it is relevant work/career/etc. experience then it should be in the CV. CV's are expected to have a clear structure and address specific points. Nobody looks sideways at parsing them without reading every word or searching for keywords. What's the argument for some fancy high-effort redraft that's hard to parse? Spoiler- headhunters very rarely request cover letters.

This is true in Europe, but much less so in the US. There is no standard format for a résumé here, and the advice on what companies are looking for is in constant flux and also constantly contradicting itself. They must be no more than one page—the first page should be work experience, while the second should be education and skills. They should contain only experience—they should focus on skills. They should be absolutely plain and professional—you must use some kind of fancy design to stand out from the crowd.

In general, my understanding has been that the résumé should be showing what you've done, learned, and can do, while the cover letter should tell why you'd be good at doing it there in particular. But I've seen job ads that had very specific things listed as expectations for cover letters, and I've seen stories from hiring managers who act exasperated that "no one" has these particular elements to their cover letters (or résumés), which were never communicated, and seem to just be that particular hiring manager's random expectations.

It would be great if there were some kind of standardized format for all of this information, and some assurance that companies that try to buck the standard will suffer for it, but we really don't have that.

> Spoiler- headhunters very rarely request cover letters.

Headhunters are the cover letter though, and like to at least claim to employers that they've done some basic screening for fit beyond obtaining the CV. They're also rarely involved in the sort of hires with so many qualified applicants nobody needs to do anything to stand out

CVs and such tell what your experience and skillset are (the "what"). Cover letters tell why you're interested in this particular position (the "why").

To answer the question of "why", I'm reminded of this post I saw a short while back: https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/mce3j0/why_do_you_wa...

Only a psycho wants to know "why" someone applies to a job.

Jobs are exchanging work for money. Asking more than that turns it into a cult.

I wonder if psycho employers think they are Jesus.

"Why" is important. On the surface, sure, we all get jobs because we need the income. But why are you applying to that particular company over others?

It's important information because if you have two candidates that are otherwise equal, and one applied to the position just because it's a job they qualify for but the other applied to the position because they're excited by the work or company, you'll go with the second one every time. Everyone will be happier for it.

Why shouldn't we use AI for cover letters? We both know they're nonsense anyway, you don't want to read them and I don't want to write them.

Because it’s better to not submit a cover letter than to submit something filled with generic AI generated garbage that doesn’t represent the real you.

Tell that to the companies that require them. The disconnect...

It’s not that hard to write a couple of sentences of original thought to show minimal interest.

You might get disqualified by some automatic process that filters on length. Nobody will most likely read those couple of sentences anyway. And ironically, if they do, they might think you're lazy for writing only 2 and would rather go with the guy that has a longer cover not AI-generated.

That is actually AI generated, because people thinking they can easily differentiate between them probably also think they are immune to publicity.

It's not unheard of to be applying to 50+ companies in the hopes of hearing back from 5. It's not a couple sentences - if you wrote three sentences per letter, thats 150 sentences.

As someone graduating at the end of this year, this is quite the understatement in my experience.

The constant, 0-feedback autorejections make this a demoralizing experience.

Personally, as an employer, I completely disagree. I’d prefer to be written to as a human. A short email (as in, a paragraph or two) that an applicant writes themselves explaining why they’re a good fit speaks volumes.

If you’re an employer (and any other employers reading this) you could say somewhere in the application process that you actually read the letters. I think most people assume nobody ever opens them.

If that becomes something that's expected, in order to get people to continue to send in cover letters, it will be abused. Everyone will say they read the letters—but no more companies will read them than do now.

Can you share more on how to write a good two paragraph cover letters? I try to write good cover letter but at the end of the day sentences feel generic and the job description never usually contains enough meat to bite onto. How can I convince an employer that I am actually interested to have a conversation with them about the job?

Know your audience. As the owner of a company with single digit employees, I put a fair amount of stock in a good cover letter. IE one that shows someone understands what they're applying to and why they might be a good fit. And that they're interested enough in this specific position to make a small effort beyond firing off a resume. I don't mind people submitting bad AI-written cover letters though. It's a clear signal that I can safely ignore the application.

How the hell are job applicants supposed to "know our audience"? The whole point of the process is that neither of us knows anything about the other.

And no; we can't rely on something like "it's a small company" (there are small companies where everyone's too busy to read cover letters, or doesn't care about them), or "they say they genuinely care about cover letters" (that's about as reliable as the list of qualifications, and we all know how idiotic those can often be).

We would all be better off if we could relegate that "getting to know you" part of the hiring process to the interview. It's a relic of a time when applying for a dozen or so jobs would be likely to get you hired, so you could justify putting in a solid hour or so of effort crafting an individualized cover letter for each one.

It shouldn't take an hour to write a decent cover letter, and there are many ways you can learn about the company you're applying to. Starting with the job posting, but LinkedIn and their "about us" page would be a couple more low effort ways. When someone is able to do these things and write a decent introductory letter it's a strong sign that they will also be able to deal well with challenges that come up in the course of work. Plus, as is its purpose, it gives you a chance to describe why you're a good choice for this specific role, and to address any apparent deficiencies in your skills or experience.

That isn't to say that the lack of a cover letter is disqualifying (though a bad one might be), but a good one can definitely set you apart.

Sorry, when you're applying to a dozen jobs a day, it's hard to put that personal spin into it.

I know you think you're a special snowflake that's different from every other company out there, but looking for a job is a grind. A tough one. Why make people dance and sing even more?

> Sorry, when you're applying to a dozen jobs a day, it's hard to put that personal spin into it.

True, it's a lot of work. But plenty of people (myself included) manage it.

I'm not going to say that anyone is wrong for not writing cover letters, of course. But there are lots of people making hiring decisions that put a lot of stock in good ones, so it makes logical sense to provide one.

"I did it, so everyone should have to do it" is a mindset that denies the possibility of progress to something better.

The mischaracterizes what I'm saying. I'm not saying everyone has to do it. Nobody has to do it -- it's your choice. What I'm saying is that doing it can give you an advantage.

> True, it's a lot of work. But plenty of people (myself included) manage it.

Generally what the person recruiting ate for lunch and the state of their bowel has ten times the influence on the success of your application than any amount of time you spend writing a cover letter. It's all random, and you can't know beforehand if your application will arrive at a serious recruiter or not.

You know, I'm more on the side of the worker than capital a lot of the time and I despise much of modern hiring processes, but a cover letter doesn't seem like a big deal to me. I would think you could template it significantly and still avoid making it too boilerplate.

Like start with some bio - as a young child, I took everything apart to see how it worked (much to my parents' chagrin). From that I learned to see the beauty of a mechanical watch ticking away, and I see a similar beauty in a RabbitMQ server ticking away messages, directing them where to go and seeing the inside of the system at work - it's been a lifelong interest of mine.

That part can pretty much stay the same. Then write a paragraph or two about the job. You might not know much but try and find a connection. Like if it's a bank, talk about how you'd like to know more about how money moves over the modern global infrastructure, or if it's some service you've used, talk about how it was helpful. If it's hard to find a connection, then you can say I've got some relevant skills, but I don't know much about your industry and I'd like to learn more.

OK, now do that a dozen times a day, five days a week.

For weeks.

Months.

Can you still bring yourself to do it at all, let alone find something meaningful to say about each one, after all that?

Someone applying to jobs dozens of times per day for months (so over a thousand applications), without bothering to research where the job is, much less write a cover letter, strikes me as working harder, not smarter.

If they were to apply to fewer jobs, less frequently, and more personally, putting more effort into each, they might not need to be searching for months, or making so many applications where it's clear to the company that they don't care whether they get that job or 1 of hundreds of others.

Maybe think of it like phishing vs. spearphishing. Or sending "hi" as an opening line on a dating app, vs. tailoring it to the person. The latter gets a better response rate per interaction.

Ah, yes; I'm sure you're much smarter than all the people who have struggled to find jobs over the last few years. Surely, their problem is their own incompetence, and not the incredibly hostile labor environment that decades of Gordon Gekko-style management have wrought, treating human beings as cost centers to be minimized, rather than as the reason we do any of the work in the first place.

It's simply a different strategy. If you're getting better results working harder on a scattershot, impersonal approach that broadcasts to the recipient that you aren't particularly interested in them, much less suited for each other, more power to you. That goes for jobs, dating apps, phishing, etc.

In all those cases (okay, not phishing), I got better results the other way myself. I also didn't reach out to recipients that struck me as having the type of culture/personality you described when I read up on them. So there's a selection bias there, too, but one that works for me.

> How the hell are job applicants supposed to "know our audience"?

You don't research a company before you apply for a position with them?

a) In most cases? Hell no. I read the basics of what the company is/does, and decide from that if they look worth applying to. I'm not looking for a spouse, I'm looking for a paycheck. Now, if I actually hear back from the company, then I'll do research to get a more in-depth feel for the company's culture and history.

b) How on earth do you expect me to be able to "research a company" to be able to tell whether they're genuinely going to read a cover letter and care what it says? The only way I can think to find that out is to be able to talk to people who've recently been hired there, and fuck cold-emailing random people at a company you're trying to apply to; I guarantee some significant percentage of companies would find that super creepy and shitcan your résumé out of hand.

> How on earth do you expect me to be able to "research a company" to be able to tell whether they're genuinely going to read a cover letter and care what it says?

I don't. That's not what I was talking about when researching a company. You can't (usually) know if a cover letter will be read or valued. But it might be, so it seems worth doing anyway just to gain that possible edge.

Most people probably do the intelligent thing based on probability, outcome and game theory. Sometimes you want to do a lot of legwork to apply. For example a web dev job paying $500k because AI goldrush dollarz (cough anthropic) and othertimes you need a job to tide you over and there is yet another business focusses SaaS hiring devs with cliche perks and so yeah I mean at least be polite and use GPT4.

Remind me why cover letters are nonsense? It's an opportunity to introduce yourself in plain English, drawing attention to specific career highlights, interests and relevant details for the role you're applying.

Are we headed for: why meet anyone face to face when you could send an AI avatar loaded with "professional courtesy small talk"?

Because employers (normally) don't read them.

Pretty much 90%+ (for me and I have a shit tonne of experience) don't respond to any job posting. After a while it's quite hard not to get jaded about how the whole process is a compete waste of time.

I believe I see a lot of that in the comments here. People are frustrated, because even when there's a great skills match, that they don't get a rejected letter, or if they do it's a auto generated one. They are trying to short cut the process using AI or not posting at all.

I an "engineer"... All that is in single or two page document already. That experienced person could scan in a couple minutes if that. And I provided that exact document.

There was a blog article posted on HN about this just last week.

It's because generative AI writes generic "say-nothing" letters. They're impersonal, don't say anything substantive about the candidate's skill, and read like the uncanny valley version of written text.

As the OP said, they're just a waste of time.

All of those things apply to regular cover letters. Cover letters, public apologies etc looked AI generated before AI generation was a thing.

Maybe the cover letters you've encountered have nothing to say? try:

"I was reading up on your company, and came across a podcast interview with your CEO/your CTO/the hiring manager. She was talking about the company culture/goals/story/challenges and said something I really identified with: X. This spoke to me because my own track-record/philosophy/goals include X. For example..."

At least, I try to use it to show I've done some pre-work to ensure a good fit.

Of course, if a person is applying to hundreds of positions, they likely haven't done that pre-work, so that person would have nothing to say.

If company expects this level of commitment and research from candidate. Why not offer exactly same level to them. Just set an appointment automatically and then you can tell how the company is greatest thing that have ever existed and ask candidate to tell why they love to join it so much...

I would indeed expect them to ensure a good fit in response to my doing so. And my doing research actually saves them time doing so, because I included similar information about me. For someone who didn't, why would the company offer it in response?

If someone isn't that interested in that specific job, and would take just any job, they shouldn't do it, but someone who wants that specific job more, will

That's one risk they take by adopting the scattershot, "impersonally apply to so many jobs simultaneously that you need AI to automate it" approach. Another one is getting a job somewhere that ends up being a bad fit

I'll also note that cultural fit can be important for job satisfaction and/or effectiveness, even though you mock the concept as 'the candidate telling how the company is greatest thing that have ever existed and why they love to join it so much...'.

> I would indeed expect them to ensure a good fit in response to my doing so. And my doing research actually saves them time doing so, because I included similar information about me. For someone who didn't, why would the company offer it in response?

Hah. I have done exactly this. Personalized story, breaking down my interest and background (not just rehashing my resume), putting something coherent together.

And, bluntly? I'm an excellent writer. While I may not be cranking out Booker or Hugo award winners, I know how to craft something.

Ninety per cent of the time? Crickets. It's profoundly demoralizing.

This has leaked outside of tech too. My spouse works at a large public health nonprofit and has started receiving AI copypasta spam for open positions on LinkedIn.

Despite the "cover letters considered harmful" sentiment here in the land of tech mercenaries on HN, in most industries (and especially in mission driven organizations) some form of direct personal communication beyond a resume is a useful way to determine if somebody has a genuine interest in the organization and its mission.

I don't even know why people are trying to stuff AI generated spam in an interaction where the entire point is to find some genuine human connection. Do they think it actually works? Do they think that demonstrating a complete lack of effort is going to impress anybody? It seems like it would be a huge red flag and negative signal.

> some form of direct personal communication beyond a resume is a useful way to determine if somebody has a genuine interest in the organization and its mission.

This is true. But I suspect that a lot of people who don't want to write cover letters are people who are just applying for a job that they think they qualify for, rather than applying for a job because they have a genuine interest in that particular company. The lack of a cover letter may serve as a useful clue for when that's the case.

Some people surprise surprise are motivated by, well not dying on the streets. The question is whether spending say 8 hours spamming 100 applications or crafting 2 or 3 is the better route? Given there is no guarantee the job you are applying for even exists… we are indeed in a lemons market.

> I don't even know why people are trying to stuff AI generated spam in an interaction where the entire point is to find some genuine human connection. Do they think it actually works?

Kind of obviously they do think it works. And if it works sometimes, it will be worth the minimum effort to send them. Recruiters aren't known for taking their jobs seriously, so why would candidates. You're asking them to write a serious cover letter, when the position might already be filled by somebody's niece, when an applicant is very likely to be dismissed based on sex and origin, or because he looks a little bit like the recruiter's uncle, who she hates.

I hate cover letters like every other engineer and agree with most of the points here about them being a waste of time (for me, pretty much 90%+ applications don't get a response with or without a cover letter).

However, just trying to make lemonade out of lemons, anyone care (who's hiring or knows more than the average hacker) and is sick and tired of bad letters, please let us know what a good cover letter should be?

e.g. Are you really looking for a sentence on how it would be life's ambition to join your company or is something like the below good:

My name is Bob, I'm located at [city],[state] and a senior s/w engineer with a lot of [FE]/[BE]/[Full-Stack] experience.

You see you are looking for:[X]/[Y]/[Z] which I have experience in.

Please reach out if you would like further info.

-Bob-the-builder

In my opinion the cover letter should explain why you applied to this offer. Your cover letter adds nothing, it basically repeats some of your resume.

What made you apply to this one and not others (of course you probably applied to other positions, but not every position so surely there must be some reasons)? Is the domain of interest to you? The tech stack? The people? The opportunities? Anything besides "it pays money"?

And if the only reason is money, then why this one and not a lawyer position, or CEO, or whatever pays well. Surely you must feel that some of your experience/skills match well with the position. Describe those, but don't just repeat your resume. Add a bit more meat, focus on a project you've worked on that fits. Explain what you liked about it. If you don't have a lot of experience in a domain, but it interests you, say so. Explain why your lack of experience is not a problem (show a project where to had to quickly get up to speed on a new tech, ...). And so on.

It doesn't have to be long, a couple of sentences about your motivation, a couple of sentences about how you fit, and that's good enough.

You’re fighting the tide. Within a few years, everyone’s favourite author will be someone who writes using AI, the highest-flying entrepreneurs and most sought-after employees will be adept at using AI, and you will be forced to jump into the same boat as you discover that your reticence is seeing you left behind.

Really, is this any different to the usual smoke and mirrors people use to get ahead? Before now, it was hiring ghostwriters or farming your work out to other humans and pretending you did it and accepting plaudits barefacedly - this is just the newest iteration of the same old shit.

Think of Damien Hirst. The guy is renowned as an artist, but doesn’t actually produce anything himself - he has a team of pet artisans who come up with concepts and execute them, and he then sticks his signature and a price tag on them. Just like Michelangelo, or da Vinci, or titian.

Think of the biggest pop stars - none of them write their material, none of them can sing or play an instrument - their chief skill is in taking credit and self-aggrandisement.

Think of politicians - they have armies of advisors, writers, and staffers - they are empty vessels which echo sonorously.

Sorry to break it to you, but this is how it works, and always has. The biggest bullshitter always wins.

There's nothing wrong with using AI. I expect you're right that a lot of successful authors and other professionals will use AI, because it can be hugely useful. But like any tool, it can be used well, or used poorly. If a cover letter comes across as having been written by AI, you're using it poorly. If you're using it well, you should end up with something at least comparable to what you'd write yourself.

You could be wrong.

If you’re going to question the sincerity of everything, it’d be tasteful to question your own conclusions as well.

I don’t pass the work of others off as my own, and if you want to believe that everything is just as marketed, then be my guest.

>Within a few years, everyone’s favourite author will be someone who writes using AI,

No. If the author couldn’t even be bothered to write it, people won't bother to read it.

All I see when I look at job postings is tech stack. I am not interested in tech stacks or tools, and especially turned off by frameworks. As a senior engineer with over 15 years I provide solutions to business problems in a given platform. A software platform can generally be described in a single word: Java, Web, Rust, AWS, and so forth.

Because of that I no longer bother looking at Who Is Hiring or Work At A Startup.

From the perspective of more junior developers this must look like a game with checkboxes and scorecards. That’s exactly how third party recruiters view it. So, I completely understand use of AI boilerplate. Recruiters are the only way most of us are getting past resume submission now and they will game the hell out of your resume to get their commission.

Look, hiring is broken. It’s not clear what most employers are actually looking for if it’s not addressed in the job title. I just won employment with this big rocket company and it comes down to Java, test automation, cucumber. The interview was 30 minutes and I was selected because of my experience knowing I have never written Java. A tech stack never came up, but the requirements and expectations are clear on all sides.

In order to fix hiring employers must be willing to hire competent people to solve problems, not replaceable cogs to fill a seat. Most developers cannot communicate in writing, so make that part of a job filter that a candidate must write some essay in real time and must demonstrate some super trivial code solution (not leet code nonsense) in real time. Require they have code online somewhere if they pass all the filters. Garbage in, garbage out.

I also suggest reading about shovel vs spoon. The requirements for hiring in software are so failingly low that it resembles job placement. If you want candidates to take this seriously then don’t cast a wide net.

I appreciate what you're going through, I've hired for a wide range of roles and gotten everything from complete garbage and no cover letter to cover letters that were obviously ghost-written to resumes 7 pages long with no meaningful content.

The thing that helped me most was to try to put in as much effort as the sender did - if they just used an autofilled-ChatGPT letter? Send them a one-line no thanks. It doesn't have to be much. If you want to just go through the resume anyway, you don't even have to read the cover letter.

But so many engineers have also been beaten down by the applicant tracking systems that have come before. All sorts of things to get in front of a recruiter so that they aren't filtered out. I've watched recruiters throw away applicants because they didn't understand why their resume was neat and tidy and watched other applicants get pushed through simply because they filled out 4 pages of everything they've ever possibly done.

It's hard to blame people when the signal they get back from applying is so poor.

> The thing that helped me most was to try to put in as much effort as the sender did - if they just used an autofilled-ChatGPT letter? Send them a one-line no thanks.

This alone puts you in the ninetieth percentile. Most employers won't even bother with that.

Welcome to the club! After so many rejections, I am completely fed up with writing cover letters.

My 2 ct: use some kind of AI detection tool to figure if it was written by AI. Don't do those first.

In my opinion is much worse to spend a whole hour writing a cover letter to have to explain the reason why someone is applying, go through the special form to apply for the job answering a number of questions and get no feedback. A person spends 8 hours a day if not more applying, when could spend time doing other things in life that matter most. When lucky, have to go through a 5 stage interview process with changes of getting ghosted at the very end, with 4 hour take home tests that take a whole day.

Inefficient Transfer Encoding. We create elaborate documents with AI to be summarized and distilled by AI, wasting gpu cycles on both ends

Same as with email already

We need a standardized protocol for resumes and cover letters.

…Unironically.

Just wait until 3D life like avatars start taking the zoom interviews and doing the leetcode challenges

If it comes to that, all the return-to-office bosses will feel vindicated.

“See? Workers are only trying to fool us when things are remote. We have to keep a constant eye on them in person.”

You should add that to the post.

"Please email your resume and an optional hand-crafted cover letter to {email}. Please don't send me an AI generated cover letter. I'd rather get no cover letter than an AI generated one."

Or something to that effect.

Personally I'm too lazy to use AI for cover letters, but are we going to get prompts like "Please generate a cover letter for this job posting, for this resume, but make it sound like it was written by a human rather than an AI"?

Well it's a filter - if the cover letter sounds bad, then just reject the applicant. That's the role of cover letters; it's to get you to read the resume, which is to get you interested in the applicant. Or ignore cover letters like many companies do.

We do have a lot of non-native speakers here who say "I'm using AI because my English is not good". I think that's fine to add to the AI cover letter.

I suppose it's also fair to ask them to resend a human written cover letter. Some people spam, some legitimately care.

AI can now generate verbose content from a short prompt. AI can also summarize verbose content.

I see a rosy future for AI. Humans will use it to transform their salient points into prose, and back.

Or we as humans could just do away with a lot of boilerplate pretense, and just communicate the important bullet points. This might rid us of a lot or jobs though so it probably won't happen.

A help wanted ad is less effort than finding a candidate through a personal network.

An AI application is less effort than tailoring a cover letter.

GIGO.

Good luck.

I’m not so sure the problem you have with this is inherently with the use of AI, but rather using the same content for all applications, without tailoring it to your company and role — and it also happens that it was AI-generated.

That is, if they used AI but made sure it addressed the specifics of how their qualifications suit the specific role, you’d be fine with it.

Ironically, recruiters have been doing this for years: sending the same email to hundreds/thousands of prospects, not even addressing the individual qualifications of the prospect, and why they specifically would be a good fit.

I’m not saying you specifically are doing this. But we’re talking about the general practice of using the same cover letter in an application, so I’m arguing that this is no worse than sending the same email to many prospects.

If you do not want cover letters. Please EXPLICITLY tell so in your job advertisements or contact forms. Simple. Both sides are happy the applicants don't have to provide one from AI and you don't have to read them.

Maybe it's a reverse filter. If you're dumb enough to hire them with the AI cover letter, they could hold several jobs like yours, or do the job with AI?

I'm surprised at the hate and the sentiment that all engineers hate cover letters.

I think cover letters make sense and don't mind doing them or receiving them. Obviously if I see it's AI generated and doesn't make sense I would just toss it and not look at the CV.

I use AI for my applications on Upwork. I got more replies than the applications I tailored myself.

Summary response: all job apps are bullshit.

Seriously, do whatever it takes to go talk to a real human. I'm 50, by the way, and change jobs every two years. This shit works.

Job apps are an efficient way to turn you down and fill roles nobody else wants at a bargain rate.

I agree. The job hunting ritual wastes a lot of time.

Let's kill it off by getting rid of HR except as an advisory body that helps people navigate legal requirements.

All hiring should be done by the future employee's bosses and coworkers.

I would recommend to add something like "include x word in your application" somewhere in the text, so that only people paying attention will catch it. I have seen some job sites even offer this natively.

Fine by me, stop requiring useless cover letters and other idiotic jump in the hoops (not you, everybody).

Heck, made a form with what you want and people can apply only via the form.

You can't fix people, fix your process.

We want to convince people that we are smart. AI is just a tool for that. Problem is that smart people use AI smartly, non smart people not so smartly. Here you want to ask non smart people to be smart. Fun times :)

Oh man, please wait while I find that misplaced infinitesimally small violin.

Right?

Like we have to go through whiteboards, multiple rounds, STAR pattern, pretend founders are brilliant and passionate, pretend dumb ass phrases mean things, have "culture fit", show enough passion that we just do it all the time even for fun!, get laid off over Zoom after record profits or because "macroeconomic conditions" and watch the founders cry about how "difficult" it is to lay people off - and they're going to add yet another thing to arbitrarily use as a metric to reject people.

Like this company uses AI for late stage capitalism financial shenanigans, but fuck us if we use it to write a cover letter, we're the bad guys?

Oof.

Put something in the job description. Like "cover letters should be no more than one paragraph". This will also filter out people who don't bother to read the description fully.

Are the candidates writing AI generated cover letters, or did the service they were already using to write cover letters for them switch to AI?

Because those services do seem to be a thing.

How did you know the cover letters were AI-generated?

1. AI-generated emails try to include parent context, and more often than not they sound very artificial.

2. They can be lengthy.

Time out.

You're dinging people for being too long?

I mean, what are your metrics for a cover letter then?

OP never asked for a cover letter. Just a CV.

It's quite evident after you read a few. Typically convoluted and fancy English.

In other words: Upon perusal of a mere handful, the prevailing characteristic becomes abundantly clear. The prose predominantly revels in a labyrinthine complexity, intertwined with a flourish of ornate lexicon.

> Typically convoluted and fancy English

this is how im told to write for a corporate setting... this is insanity lol, be perfect, but not to perfect.

That looks more like someone who writes cover letters with a thesaurus. (I'm sure they exist).

With ChatGPT some of its stock phrases are quite easily recognisable and I'm sure they're a lot more recognisable having seen 30 other generic cover letters that also use them!

Damn. As a person who likes to write good grammar and sound above average intelligence in my cover letters, I'm probably doing it all wrong.

I have to figure out how not to sound like an AI overlord :)

The overall tone is bloodless, in a relentlessly smooth, confident style. The articles on the news site Axios.com have a similar style - relaxing to read at first, but feel bereft of any convictions after a while.

Many AI-generated cover letters share similarities, and once you recognize the pattern, you can tell whether they were produced by an AI or not

You can usually tell:

In theory, Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are designed to generate text that is challenging to discern from human-written content, allowing for a wide range of styles and tones.

However, in practice, these models are often fine-tuned to serve specific purposes or emulate particular writing styles, making them more recognizable and less versatile. Fine-tuning narrows down the model's output to align with desired characteristics, sacrificing some of the inherent diversity and unpredictability found in their raw generative abilities.

This fine-tuning process can result in LLMs producing text that conforms to a specific style or pattern, potentially reducing their ability to seamlessly blend in with the full spectrum of human-written content.

ctrl + f “in conclusion”

Detecting if a cover letter is AI-generated can be challenging, especially as AI improves over time. However, here are some general tips that might help:

1. Too Perfect: If the language is too polished, without any flaws, it might be a sign. However, this is not conclusive as many humans also produce impeccable cover letters.

2. Generic Content: AI-generated content might be overly generic, lacking personal anecdotes, or specific experiences that tie the candidate to the position.

3. Mismatched Details: Sometimes AI might include details or skills that don't necessarily align with the person's actual background, especially if it's generating content based on a broad set of inputs.

4. Lack of Personal Touch: Personal nuances, humor, or any unique writing style that most humans have might be absent in AI-generated content.

5. Repetition: AI sometimes has a tendency to be repetitive or overuse certain phrases.

6. Too Structured: While structure is good, if every sentence seems to follow an almost formulaic pattern, it could be a hint.

7. Check References: If the cover letter mentions specific details, cross-checking them with the resume or online profiles might show inconsistencies.

8. Use Detection Tools: There are online tools and software solutions designed to detect AI-generated content. However, their efficacy can vary.

9. Ask Direct Questions: If you're hiring and suspect a cover letter might be AI-generated, you can always ask the candidate specific questions about its content during an interview.

10. Gut Feeling: Sometimes, it's just a feeling that the content doesn't "sound human". Trust your instincts, but always give the benefit of the doubt and follow up with other methods.

Remember, the use of AI tools isn't inherently negative. Some people might use AI to help draft or polish their cover letters. What's important is the authenticity of the experiences and skills presented and the genuine fit for the role.

...was this AI generated?

Yes. I would not normally do it, but given the question, I thought it served a purpose.

It was all pretty good until "Remember".

What stuck out to me is the number of bullet points and the numbering, as well as the closing sentence.

Nah I could tell by the first line.

> Detecting if a cover letter is AI-generated can be challenging, especially as AI improves over time.

huh? that doesn't seem true, it's pretty easy to tell AI-written work

> However, here are some general tips that might help:

Oh lol.

(actually written by me ways to tell):

- it will ALWAYS give an irrelevant first couple lines that sound like they're from a third grader's "haha you have to write an introductory paragraph" assignment

- it tries to "both sides" literally EVERYTHING it says. like if you said "how do you make a snowman" it would say something like "Learning to build a snowman can be challenging. However, if you live in a cold climate with snow, it's a great activity for both children and adults!" like what? why do you need a POV contrast here? but it will always do this.

- there's next to 0 sentence length variation.

- no idiosyncratic tendencies, eg using "like" a lot. Few people write like this, we write like we talk (as you can see I picked this example because I'm, like, guilty of it myself)

- no personal anecdotes at all. people like to talk about ourselves. the fact that an AI-generated response will never do this is very weird. (though I guess it would if you said "write a cover letter about myself")

I'm sure there's a shitton of clues that I pick up on subconsciously but yeah AI content is pretty obviously AI content.

This is all true, but just a few more words in the prompt make it way harder. Just adding ‘be concise’ can make it passable.

The ten-point ordered list is a clue as well

> why do you need a POV contrast here? but it will always do this.

Pretty sure this is from all the blog spam it was trained on. They all use this writing style.

No, already the first sentence is typical ChatGPT style.

Especially the first line IMO; the rest actually seems mostly passable, but that first line immediately flagged as GPT-generated to me.

That's the point lol, you can easily tell it's AI because ChatGPT has a certain style.

You can also ask it to change the style. Here are three (also asked it to make it more concise):

*1. Academic Tone (Concise):*

Detecting AI-written cover letters is tough, but here are quick tips:

1. Watch for flawless language. 2. Look for generic, non-personal content. 3. Check for odd details that don't fit. 4. Absence of human touch, humor, or style. 5. Beware of repetitive phrases. 6. Too structured? Might be AI. 7. Cross-reference details with references. 8. Try AI detection tools (varying results). 9. Ask candidates direct questions in interviews. 10. Trust your gut but stay fair.

AI use isn't all bad; authenticity and fit matter most.

*2. Informal and Conversational Tone (Concise):*

Spotting AI-written cover letters is tricky, but here are the real-talk tips:

1. Too perfect? Red flag. 2. Generic content? Not a good sign. 3. Weird details? AI mistake, maybe. 4. Missing human vibes? Yep, AI. 5. Repeating phrases? AI does that. 6. Super structure? AI-like. 7. Fact-check with their profiles. 8. Tech tools? Hit-or-miss. 9. Grill candidates with direct questions. 10. Trust your instincts, but be fair.

AI tools aren't all bad; some folks use 'em to jazz up their cover letters. What counts is the fit for the job.

*3. Sci-Fi Futuristic Tone (Concise):*

In the quest to detect AI-generated cover letters, here are key signposts:

1. Absolute precision: Beware impeccable language. 2. Generality: AI leans generic. 3. Juxtaposed fictions: AI might invent details. 4. Humanity essence: AI lacks human touch. 5. Echo chamber: Watch for repetitive phrases. 6. Algorithmic straitjacket: AI can be formulaic. 7. Verification: Cross-check specifics. 8. Detection tools: Varying efficacy. 9. Directness: Ask direct questions. 10. Intuition: Trust your instincts.

AI use isn't inherently evil; focus on fit and authenticity.

This is a dead giveaway:

“Detecting AI-written cover letters is tough, but here are quick tips:”

It’s his ChatGPT opens most discussions.

  but here are the real-talk tips

This has a "how do you do, fellow kids" vibe.

They're a dead giveaway because they usually lack any personal touch or deep understanding of the job role. It's like they're ticking off a checklist of generic qualifications without understanding the company culture. You start to recognize the pattern after you've gone through a few hiring cycles.

(Took a few attempts, but eventually got an AI response that followed the guidelines—no question repetition and in the style of a HackerNews comment. Pretty neat. ((This too was AI generated)))

I haven't been in the market for quite some time, but I remember 90% plus of all job descriptions seem to be written by the legal department and all sounded the same. They want the submitter to spend time crafting a unique cover letter but put zero effort into crafting an accurate job description that didn't sound like it was written by a robot.

I'm really curious if there are common phrases in cover letters that indicate the letter was written by chatgpt.

"As an AI language model..." :)

Show us your job ad and let's see if it's not full of the same garbage from the other side ;)

Not guilty: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37740448

I kept my food down reading that, so you're all clear

You know what? I applaud your brevity. Now all you have to do for future job postings is mention "Please do not submit cover letters that are generated by AI. Doing so will result in immediate disqualification.".

The dystopian sci-fi premise writes itself.

> Our product suite helps funds and companies navigate the complex landscape of corporate debt deals and make better decisions with AI-assisted data analysis.

Hold on, you're selling an LLM/NLP product and you expect your prospective employees to avoid using the same?

Get rid of cover letters.

Guess I got what I deserved...

> I simply don't want to.

What if candidates paid you to? Would you want to?

Stop asking for cover letters. They're pointless, no one reads them, and they're not particularly helpful in determining a candidate's fitness.

From an applicant perspective, it's asking for free labor to require a cover letter, and using AI to write them is a proportional response.

“We’ll get our bots to talk to your bots”

Then stop using ATS to filter resumes.

No. The applicants have to suffer but when we tell the applicants to stop using AI they have to listen. /s

defund human resources.

i think this is the result of companies using ATS

Wait wait wait...

You've been using AI to rapidly filter through all the resumes, and now finally we have something to fight that, and now WE need to stop?

And yes, I don't know if the OP uses AI. This is a more general complaint about the state of hiring managers and the disproportionate advantage they had over the job market. Ability to ingest massive amounts of resumes, parse them, send out emails to take personality tests etc, requiring cover letters why the applicant believes they are the most suitable candidate for the job being offered, and how it will be a magical experience...

Now finally, when applicants get some help to do mass-applying, it's not ok?

How the turntables... [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FwmGLzyRDk

You have no idea if the author has been doing this. I've hired > 100 developers and have never used AI for this.

(also, not being snarky, but it's "how the tables have turned")

unless you're hiring a DJ. In which case saying something like "how the turntables have turned!" might be appropriate.

FYI: "how the turntables" is a meme

Is it because AI is accessible to you for only two years as of today?

AI / ML has been integrated into applicant tracking systems for a lot longer than two years.

The use of "how the turntables" was likely intentional. See https://digitalcultures.net/slang/pop-culture/how-the-turnta... for reference.

> And yes, I don't know if the OP uses AI. This is a more general complaint about the state of hiring managers and the disproportionate advantage they had over the job market

> You have no idea if the author has been doing this

Why are you calling out GP as if they didn’t openly acknowledge this?

He edited and added everything after the first 2 sentences after I posted my response.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com