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Julie Gould 00:09
Hello and welcome to Working scientist, a Nature Careers podcast. I’m Julie Gould.
This is the fifth episode of a series about hiring and getting hired in science.
Over the years, recruiters across all industries have been using tools and tricks to help streamline how they interview and select candidates for a job.
Body language and in-person or sent out pre-interview tests are just two examples that have been used by many.
But now artificial intelligence is also being used by the recruiters, but also by the applicants.
So in this episode, we’ll get the dos and don’ts of using AI tools for your job application, from reading the job advert to writing the cover letter.
As the number of applicants for jobs inside and outside of academia increases, it is becoming more and more important to make sure that your cover letters, CVs and resumes stand out from the crowd.
Boston based Lauren Celano from Propel Careers is a recruitment consultant that works within industry.
And at the moment, she’s embedded within a company as an internal recruitment consultant to help them hire.
Lauren has to look through hundreds of applications for each role that she’s looking to fill. Not only that, but she spends time going through online profiles like LinkedIn to find suitable people to approach.
Lauren Celano 01:30
On the LinkedIn searches, you can be looking at hundreds, if not thousands of people trying to whittle down to like the 20 people you want to reach out to, and same with people that apply directly.
Now, with the job market being, let’s just say, interesting, you know, sometimes there’s 500, 800, 1000 people that apply, and so you only have so much time to be able to call people.
So we may want to, you know, have discussions with 20 to 30 people of that 800 people that apply.
Julie Gould 01:57
For example, when I spoke with Lauren back in March, she was looking for someone to fill an immunologist role with expertise in T cells.
Lauren Celano 02:05
Within a couple days, we had a couple of hundred people apply, and that’s one of 10 roles that I’m working on.
So if you just do the math, there’s only so many hours in the day, so I don’t have the luxury of spending 15 minutes per application to look at everything, to decipher, okay, were they working on T effector? Were they doing differentiation?
Julie Gould 02:28
So with only 10 to 20 seconds for that first glance at a CV or resume, it’s worth making sure that yours is catching the recruiter’s eye.
And those AI tools can help with this. But this help comes with a warning.
The 2024 Nature Careers survey on hiring and getting hired in science found that the use of AI was becoming more prominent across the job application pathway, from writing job descriptions, to candidate selection, to writing CVs.
But what it also found, says Linda Nordling, a freelance science journalist who worked closely with the Nature Careers team on the survey, was that even though people use it, they also don’t like to read content that has been created by it.
Linda Nordling 03:09
In terms of using AI to craft your application, to craft your cover letter and so on, you know, there’s this…recruiters really don’t like it when they can tell that something has been written by AI, and it’s generic.
And how they tell, they say, you know, it’s generic. It’s, you know, formulaic. It says, “Dear sir,” you know.
And it’s not specific to the job. I have this feeling that people who use AI and tools like ChatGPT, well, you won’t really notice, you know, because it’s not, it’s going to be you’re just going to use it as a tool to create something that’s crafted specific for the job.
Probably just eliminate some spelling errors and make it flow, and do that thing.
So as much as everyone says in the survey, you know, we don’t like it when people use AI, I think it’s important to note, you know, when they can tell you’ve used AI.
Julie Gould 04:01
Jen Heemstra, chair and professor of chemistry at Washington University in St Louis, USA, warns against using AI tools to create all your documentation as it will come back to bite you.
Jen Heemstra 04:11
And sometimes you cross things that you wonder if people were using ChatGPT to write some parts of their application, and I think to use, you know, generative AI, to create actual content, or to replace your own creativity, or reflection, or thoughtfulness.
I think that that usually becomes quite apparent then when you show up for an interview and that same reflection or thoughtfulness or ideas aren’t necessarily there.
So it might help people get that first interview, but it’s likely going to backfire on you if you’re using ChatGPT to generate the ideas for you.
Julie Gould 04:50
Okay, so the warning is done, and basically the rule is: “Do not use AI tools to write the entire job application for you.”
Recruiters will be able to tell. So how can people use these tools to help them get their applications noticed?
Some people are still wary of using AI tools and platforms for anything, but often it depends on how you approach it, as to how useful and powerful it can be, says Dr Fatimah Williams, an author and executive careers coach at Professional Pathways in the US.
Fatimah Williams 05:21
I would say think about it as a thinking partner, and then also think about it as being able to sit in the role of, may not fully be career coach, but it can certainly help you with some of your documentation that you’re applying with.
Julie Gould 05:33
So with that perspective, the first thing to note is these AI thinking partners are only as good as the content that they’re learning from.
So giving the AI platform everything it needs to provide useful information is important.
Holly Prescott, a qualified career guidance practitioner and careers advisor for postgraduate researchers at the University of Birmingham, says that one of the first things to be aware of is you need to be intentional with the prompts that you give the AI tool.
She used an analogy to help explain.
Holly Prescott 06:01
Before we had AI, and still now, where I work with a lot of researchers whose question is: “I don’t think I want to stay in academia anymore, what else can I do?”
And the first thing they do to try to find that out is they will go to a large job board, or Google, and type “PhD psychology jobs” and see what comes up, right.
Now, the limitations on that are that it is like, what are you using as your search terms, and you’re using your level of degree, and you’re using your subject area.
They may not be the things that employers who might be the best fit for you, might be searching for candidates. They may not be using those terms to search for candidates.
They may be searching for candidates more based on skills and motivation and interests, right?
So I would say, treat AI the same. You still need search terms.
By that, I mean you need to tell, you need to educate ChatGPT or whatever it is you’re using, you need to I think it really helps have a conversation with it first, so it can get to know how you’re making your career decisions and what you want those to be based on.
Then it can give you answers according to those.
Julie Gould 07:36
If you can tell something like ChatGPT that you’ve got a PhD in theoretical physics, “Give me some career options and potential jobs,” then it’s likely going to give you the obvious ones, but if you’re more specific and add something like…
Holly Prescott 07:49
“But during that PhD, I’ve started to get a big following on Instagram, and I’m really interested in user generated content, and I’m thinking about moving possible moving to fashion marketing, right?”
So you’ve got to really get the AI to understand you understand your priorities and understand what you want to influence your career decisions before getting it to make suggestions for you.
Julie Gould 08:16
Today, job descriptions are incredibly specific, and will use language and terminology that might seem alien. Holly says that AI tools can help translate these job descriptions too and make them more accessible.
Holly Prescott 08:28
This is especially useful if you’re looking to move sectors make a career change, and I find this especially useful, for example, doctoral and postdoctoral researchers who want to move into industry or other sectors, but might be put off by job adverts, the language they use, the jargon they use, and whether they can actually understand if their experience is equivalent to whatever the job advert is trying to get at.
I had an example of this, working with a researcher. We were looking at a job advert, and it kept using the terms “horizon scanning,” and there were various kind of phrases it kept using.
But when we asked, said, “Okay, we’re not sure what this phrase means. Please. Can you explain it to someone with no experience in the sector?”
It then outlined what this really means is being able to research what other companies in the field are doing, how they’re doing it, and process that to help your company to identify gaps and what have you.
That’s a lot easier for someone to then choose an example from their experience of when they’ve absorbed a lot of information, spotted, used that to spot gaps, and use that to address it.
Julie Gould 09:53
Fatimah Williams has had her clients upload job descriptions for the same type of role, but from different companies to these. AI platforms to help teach the tool on what the roles really require from the applicants and how well the applicants might be suited for the job.
Fatimah Williams 10:08
So now you have language from different companies for the same role, and then you’re uploading your resume as well.
And then you can say, here’s the things that didn’t make it on the resume, but I know they’re important, and I don’t know how to talk about these things in a way that this employer would really want.
And you can just write down all the things that you did that you don’t have the quote, unquote “resume-speak” for at the time.
Julie Gould 10:29
What people need to remember when using AI writing tools is that the AI tool is not creating the artefact, the resume, whatever it is you want.
What it is actually doing is helping you to synthesize raw materials and thoughts.
So, for example, when you’re trying to tailor a resume to a specific industry, but you might be having some trouble with it….
Fatimah Williams 10:50
…sometimes you have a draft of a resume, but you know, it’s not quite in the right tone or voice, or some of the right things are not coming forward.
You can start to use like prompts that you can design yourself and just be specific about how you prompt to help you even get some insight on ”How would a recruiter in this industry look at this resume? What feedback would they give me?” That’s something that you can ask an AI writing tool, right?
So that you then get some more feedback and information. Of course, that doesn’t replace doing this with people and individuals and having people look at your materials, but it certainly does help.
Julie Gould 11:25
Fatimah gave me an example of how useful an AI tool can be.
So imagine you’re creating a cover letter for a job. You would start by uploading your CV, resume and a draft cover letter to the AI platform.
And alongside this, you’d tell the platform what you’ve uploaded, but also add some of the elements or experiences that might be missing.
You might also tell the tool what your concerns are about the documents…
Fatimah Williams 11:49
…and then giving the tool giving it a job, right. Or give it a role. So have it act as either a hiring manager, act as a recruiter, and then give it what you would like it to do. “Now, create a resume for me, for these for this particular role in this industry, in X number of words or less.”
Julie Gould 12:11
At this point, it’s important to not just accept what it has created and send it off. That is not what recruiters want, because they’ll be able to tell it wasn’t fully written by a person.
Review what the AI tools create, and then give it some feedback. For example, you might read what it’s created and then realize that it’s missing a demonstration of results.
Fatimah Williams 12:32
And so I’ll ask it, “Even if you have to leave me fill in the blank areas, show me on my resume where I can add more quantification of, you know, my results, so that I can show an employer the outcomes of my work.”
And so it’ll do that. It’ll find places that, “Oh, well, here you said you did this, so now you could just add a percentage. How much did that increase or decrease?”
Oh, “You said you earned or you you receive fellowships. How much was that? How much was the How much was the funding for this fellowship that you got? Or what’s the combined total?”
So now we can say, you know, you’re a researcher with a portfolio of x hundred thousand dollars.
Julie Gould 13:16
One final warning that Fatimah Williams adds is to make sure that you don’t rely solely on the AI tools. When it comes to finding and applying for jobs.
Fatimah Williams 13:24
You need to check it, right? That’s the other thing. You always need to check it, and that’s why I’m saying too, for people who are applying to jobs, you want to be talking to real people about real time things in these roles because you need to be checking.
You wouldn’t even know how best to prompt your AI tool, you or you, I will say this, you will know better how to prompt it after you’ve had conversations with real people who are in the field or who are doing this regularly to help people get results.
Julie Gould 13:53
In our final episode of this series, we’ll be exploring one question that Linda Nordling and the rest of the Nature Careers team really wish they’d asked the survey respondents, because they all mentioned it so many times.
What is an ideal job candidate? Thanks for listening. I’m Julie Gould.
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