“How Do They Have Every Single Thing I Want”: Employer Catches Job Applicant Using ChatGPT To Write A Cover Letter

There’s been much talk about how AI is about to revolutionize absolutely everything you can imagine, but we’re finally starting to see this technology popping up in various fields and raising interesting questions about how we’re going to react to it. On TikTok, a professional career coach named Mandy shared her experience with an applicant who had submitted a cover letter that she realized was written by ChatGPT.

Mandy’s discussion in her videos and in the comment sections under her posts raises interesting questions about where using ChatGPT is acceptable to us. Read on to hear her story and weigh in on whether you think the applicant behaved appropriately.

AI-driven tools like ChatGPT are raising questions about how we’re going to respond the new technological capabilities that they’ve unlocked

Image credits: careercoachmandy

These questions became very relevant for one employer who shared how she discovered that a job applicant had sent her a cover letter generated by ChatGPT

“I just posted a job opening for a resume assistant, because I’m expanding that part of my coaching business. I posted it on Upwork and received this within like five minutes. I was reading it and was like, “Oh my gosh, this person is really qualified. Like, how do they have literally every single thing that I want?” I was like, “wait a minute, let me let me try [this].” So I told [ChatGPT] to write a cover letter based on the description. And then – are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? I ignored chat GPT because I was like, there’s just some trends that I don’t understand. It is writing a cover letter based on my job description.”

Image credits: careercoachmandy

@careercoachmandy he really said copy paste #chatgpt #coverletter #jobsearch ♬ original sound – Career Coach Mandy

Some commenters defended the applicant for making clever use of an emerging technology to save time

Image credits: careercoachmandy

“Okay, I totally agree. My first reaction was, “this person is so smart. They’re brilliant, they’ve hacked it, props to them. They’re super resourceful.” The only reason that this does not work in this specific instance, is because the job is for a resume writer. If you look closely at the cover letter, there are a lot of mistakes, right? So, ChatGPT isn’t perfect. They took a sentence that I had written about having run a business for five years and made it that person’s sentence. So that was my first clue. I was like, “why would you say what I did is what you’ve done?” So there was some logical conclusions there. There were other hints, like taking the exact words that I’ve used in the job description. I think that that is a dead giveaway for anyone who is going to spend time to actually read stuff. So it’s a hack, but as a career coach, I would say don’t use this, because anyone who reads it closely is going to realize it’s not actually well written.”

@careercoachmandy Replying to @ocynvdm ♬ original sound – Career Coach Mandy

Some commenters took issue with the concept of cover letters in the first place, questioning why they are required

Image credits: careercoachmandy

“So I’m actually a career coach. I usually tell people to not spend more than 10 minutes writing a cover letter. I say that the cover letter should be three parts – about you, about the company, and then about why you plus the company. Just make a really simple template, have that be your go-to and then just spend five minutes per company, researching some facts so that you’re applying with intention, and it shows that you’ve put in the time. Now, I will say that from an applicant’s perspective, cover letters are like their own version of hell, I get it. They’re really difficult to write. They’re extremely time consuming. And it’s generally the most hated part of the entire process. However, I will say that as a coach, from what I’ve seen, I can think of at least four or five people who in their interview process, people have remarked on “Oh, I actually really liked what you wrote in your cover letter.” So from that perspective, yeah, it does actually sometimes make a difference.”

@careercoachmandy Replying to @sunshineandvalentines ♬ original sound – Career Coach Mandy

Judging by commenters’ reactions, we can get an idea of why the applicant thought to use ChatGPT for their cover letter in the first place

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