this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
1801 points (97.4% liked)

Work Reform

9857 readers
2 users here now

A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.

Our Philosophies:

Our Goals

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Can't relate. I work in software dev, and had to do a bout of job applications over a few weeks a bit ago.

Nearly every single job responded back asap confirming they got my application.

Most of the declines emailed me back to inform me they declined a week or two later.

I got several interviews, looking to asap connect.

Most were normal and standard process. One was way too many steps and wasted my time.

I got three offers tabled, and all were fine to give me a day or two to mull it over.i accepted the best offer and total was only unemployed for about 5 weeks total.

What I can say is hot damn has ChatGPT made the application process take like 1/10th the work lol

Did I make a simple little copy paste for chatgpt to quickly construct my cover letters? You bet your ass I did.

Did one job call me out on it? Yes they did. And they liked it and expressed that having someone who was comfortable using AI tools was actually a plus.

I sent out an LOT more than 20 applications though. I was averaging about 6 to 7 a day over 2 weeks, so prolly close to 120+ applications total.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Really curious what the dead giveaway was for using chatGPT. I feel like most cover letters are already written to sound super flowery and exaggerated.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

"I hope this email finds you" seems to be the go-to intro for ChatGPT lately.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Coincidentally I created a ChatGPT account today for the purpose of saving time writing my cover letters. Do you mind sharing your wisdom with what works for you with your creation prompts?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
"In a moment I am going to ask you to generate a cover letter for me. However before that I want you to ask me any further questions that you need answered to help improve the quality of the output. My name is (name here), my address is (address), the company's address is (company address), and the job title is (job title).

This is the job posting:
(Paste the entire job posting here)

I have that whole thing in notepad filled out, copy paste the entire job posting in, then copy paste that whole thing to chatgpt.

It'll then prompt you with a bunch of extra common questions you can answer to help flesh the cover letter out, you answer what you can, and it'll generate.

Make sure to do a final pass cause it'll hallucinate sometimes, and you can hit the regenerate button if needed if it hallucinated too bad.

Main hallucination to watch for is it just shoving extra facts in there that you didn't supply. "I have an engineering degree" or whatever when you never told you you did lol.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Oh, well sure, obviously not mechanical engineering, I'm a cocktail engineer! Wouldn't lie on an application, right?