using ai for cover letters
opinions on this?
has anyone had success doing this?
to the people who are in the recruiting process and read cover letters, does it make a difference?
ive found that cover letters are probably a good way to stand out in the job search, however it takes alot of time for me to write a high quality cover letters. if i want to apply to alot of jobs, i cant write cover letters. using ai seems to be the perfect solution for this, but i fear that ai cover letters will just contribute to the "ai slop" that recruiters receive, and make my application look WORSE than better. kinda just looking for thoughts here
(also not sure if i shouldve posted this here, or on #career-ish xD)
6 Replies
yes I usually feed it my CV and the job posting as attachments and state it must make a cover letter that specifically targets the job spec using my CV as a source
I don’t do it for two reasons. One is that if it’s a job that ask for a cover letter and you don’t feel like the time to write it is worth it, the job might not be one that is actually that appealing to you. The big one though is that it is harder than ever to get hired and to stand out. A unique human authored cover letter is a great chance when a hiring manager has just looked at 100 AI written cover letters in a row that probably all sounds somewhat similar how refreshing it will be for them to read yours
Assuming they notice it's human written
I've heard time and time again that recruiters and hiring managers hate AI cover letters. It's poorly generated, or too vague, or doesn't read like any human person actually speaks (overly flowery language etc.). I would advise not doing it.
However, something I've found it's useful for is stringing together ideas that I already wanted to include. Think of 3 - 5 things to say in the cover letter (reason for choosing the company, skills you can offer etc) and feed that into the AI with a 'Can you please put these together in a couple of casual but professional sounding paragraphs'.
Do a bit of polish, change the wording and make it yours and then you have a decent start for the letter.
I don’t do it for two reasons. One is that if it’s a job that ask for a cover letter and you don’t feel like the time to write it is worth it, the job might not be one that is actually that appealing to you.Yeah this is something ive thought about for jobs i really really want i do put in the time to make a cover letter (usually directly to the recruiter) though theres alot of random postings that require a cover letter so it feels unfeasable to write one for all of them though its sounding like the best approach is to use ai as a starting point and go from there
It can be a good starting point, but make sure you do the due diligence of actually tweaking it and re-writing the parts that don't sound right. You're better off applying to 10 really suitable companies with really good CV and cover letters than 100 with mediocre submissions.