A cover letter is a unique and intimidating type of writing. In a few paragraphs – often formulaic – Job applicants They must accomplish many things: prostrate themselves at the feet of hiring managers, extolling the virtues of whatever company they’re applying to, but also showing off about themselves without sounding ostentatious either.

And after doing all that work, there’s no telling if the hiring manager will just read your letter or scrutinize it more closely to gauge your disconnect.

Now, job applicants are using ChatGPT – an AI-powered chatbot – to do the heavy lifting. Designed by startup Open AIwhich released the current version of the technology for public testing in November 2022, ChatGPT has impressed the world with its ability to perform all kinds of tasks, including typing Taylor Swift song from the perspective of a tree And Passing exams in law and business faculties (albeit to poorer degrees).

But how good is ChatGPT at pretending to be a human? The Times interviewed five job seekers, who shared examples of old and new ChatGPT written cover letters for comparison. (Many did not want to reveal their full names for fear of being discriminated against by potential employers.) One used the AI ​​assistant to blast job applications into volume, another used it to improve her non-native English, and still others used it to personalize their portfolios. Most started with a simple prompt—”Write me a cover letter”—and the results have blown away.

He wrote better than I could.

Jesse landed his current job as an auto service consultant in Vancouver, Canada, using a cover letter written by ChatGPT.

“It’s written better than ever,” he said. A simple cover letter that takes me a week to write.

Like many, Jesse, 34, found it difficult to write about himself and explain his skill set to employers. Use ChatGPT to beautify his resume first, then tell him to use the resume to create a cover letter based on job descriptions for marketing, product consulting, and other roles in the automotive industry.

But he cautioned that it’s still important to double-check everything the bot writes. ChatGPT has Develop a reputation To throw lies now and then with complete confidence, and it can do the same for you.

To Jesse’s cover letters, ChatGPT sometimes adds random facts about him that aren’t true, such as stating that he was a supervisor in a previous position when he merely assumed a “supervisory role”.

Jesse said it often required a back-and-forth exchange with ChatGPT to rewrite specific paragraphs or sentences and come up with a cover letter he liked. He also made small manual edits, such as swapping out certain words. And though it saved him work, there was one extra step: running the message through online AI scanners that popped up to detect the AI-generated writing to make sure it passed the test if companies checked.

“The aspects of using AI to help — it’s a tool,” he said. “Imagine there is an expert next to you telling you how to get better. I got to work a lot faster than when I was working with people designing things.”

‘Why not? The robot reads it. I’ll get a bot to write it.

For J in Austin, Texas, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, clicking ChatGPT to type their cover letters was a no-brainer.

“And why not? And they said the bot reads it,” he says, referring to the cover letter and resume screening software many employers use to filter candidates. “I’m going to get a robot to write it.”

Ji, 28, was laid off from his design job at a financial services technology firm in June and moved into freelance contracts for a few months. Now, they are looking to return to a full-time senior product design position. A job application that requires a cover letter is usually an automatic skip. But now J generates one in a matter of minutes, and has ChatGPT pull personal examples from the resume. After a few minutes of tweaking, it’s ready to cast. While J didn’t necessarily notice an increase in the amount of callbacks received, the tool did allow them to throw their hat in the ring for more positions than before.

Cover letters in general always sound like a bot to me [wrote them]c said “Why do I have to write fanfiction about why I want to work with you? I just need the money to pay my bills.”

“It’s like a virtual friend who will give you an exact answer.”

When Laura Martinez moved to London from Venezuela eight years ago, she could barely speak or write in English. Although it has improved by leaps and bounds since then, it still relies on the help of platforms like Grammarly for writing – and now ChatGPT.

“If you don’t know English [well]”A lot of doors can be closed for you,” said Martinez, 37. In a multi-step job application process, during which the fate of candidates often depends on the whims of the hiring manager, she believes it’s important to use technology to her advantage.

Martinez uses a claim she found in a LinkedIn post advising people to try ChatGPT for their cover letters: “Write me a personalized cover letter explaining why I’m a great candidate for this job. The job title is [Job Title]the company [Company Name]Here is the job description: [Paste Job Description]. “

While editing your cover letter, I made sure to personalize it and omit sentences that you wouldn’t say or that didn’t apply to it. Martinez said the operation also improves her ability to write in the long term. If she’s struggling to write a certain sentence, she also offers ChatGPT prompts to make her writing “polished” or ask her to rewrite her own.

said Martinez, who has already used a speech written in ChatGPT to apply for 15 content creation and social media management positions since she began her job search in January.

“I was very surprised.”

One of the first things Zachary asked ChatGPT to do was practice Spanish with him. Another was writing an episode of “The Office” in the year 2050. ChatGPT did both – and surprisingly enough.

Now, he’s incorporated it into his day job in Southern California working in tech sales and is using it in his job search as he tries to transition into employment.

For cover letters, ChatGPT gave a job description and two sentences with the titles of previous roles he was in.

“It basically filled in knowing what those positions do,” Zachary said. “I was very surprised.”

Then, he’ll edit to remove any filler or harsh “on-the-nose” statements, such as exemplifying the company’s values ​​or mentioning the company’s reputation as a “leading women entrepreneur.”

He’s also using it to paraphrase his resume, giving her paragraphs he’s written and telling ChatGPT: “Make this more brief.”

At work, he uses it to shorten long emails and create cold call scripts to contact potential clients. He’s also seen use cases where job seekers ask ChatGPT, to prepare for an interview, to pretend to be a hiring manager at a company they’re communicating with and identify the top three problems that person encounters.

“I think it’s a tool we can use to make ourselves more efficient,” he said.

Is it plagiarism? I don’t even know.

Cynthia Clifford has also fully embraced ChatGPT in her teaching job at an international school in Vietnam and as she seeks to transform industries and find opportunity in data analytics.

I first heard about it from a colleague at the Data Analytics Accelerator who mentioned using ChatGPT for his cover letters in early December, right after it was released.

“Once class was over, I made a live call and got an account,” said Clifford. “So I wrote my report card comments this semester.”

For her cover letter, Clifford said that she makes substantial edits to the ChatGPT written drafts she created using job descriptions, but that she “does a really good job of extracting some highlights from the job description and keywords and things you might want to highlight.”

She also fed us ChatGPT cover letters that she had already written herself and asked him to adapt them more closely to the job description.

“Is it plagiarism? I don’t even know,” she said. “Plagiarism in general is copying someone else’s work. If you’re copying a computer’s work, I don’t know if it’s plagiarism.”

The technology has been a huge help as she prepares to throw herself into a job search for data analytics jobs, including reviewing her resume and crafting messages for people who connect with people on LinkedIn. She has even used it to generate ideas for portfolio projects demonstrating her ability to use SQL, an important programming language in data analytics.