[LI] Bots, chatbots, & job applications

Below are three separate items (not articles) posted to LinkedIn on 24-25 April 2017. They each consist of a link plus a brief discussion. The theme again is aspects of the job market in the wake of automation.

Resume Apps and Tricks to Get Past the Bots,” Uncubed.com, 24 May 2017 (posted 24 May 2017)

This is all well & fine, but if bots are screening resumes, shouldn’t there be bots to write & format them too?

(my comment)

If selection processes are getting more automated, apps are only a halfway solution, and “tricks” sounds like the wrong message. How to more efficiently and accurately convey substance in a way that makes sense to the automated screening (bots) and then to the human reader? Sounds like the perfect job for a different kind of bot, working for the applicant.

3 chatbots to help you find your next job,” VentureBeat.com, 19 June 2016 (posted 25 May 2017)

Earlier efforts at automating aspects of job seeking, with chatbots. Contrast with Robert Coombs’ writing bot.

(my comment)

For a while it seemed that to say “bot”was to mean “chatbot,” with the goal of something that could communicate via voice with humans. Bots of course can be designed to do other tasks. What has interested me as an observer of technological change is automation of the batch of written tasks involved in typical job applications. So until now I haven’t paid that much attention to the potential roles of chatbots in the job market. Interesting that people have been working along these lines too.

How I turned my resume into a bot. (And how you can too!),” by Esther Crawford, TheMission.co, 17  April 2016 (posted 25 May 2017)

From 2016, but relevant to automating job searches. Combine Esther Crawford’s chatbot w/ self-driving text resume?

(my comment)

It seems like different people are working on different pieces of an eventual “intelligent agent,” that could write a resume and cover letter on one’s behalf, complete an application, follow up by text and/or voice, hand off to its owner, and learn in the entire process. Since, as the article title suggests, bots are everywhere, ultimately there could be bots of job seekers interacting with bots of recruiters, and the form of what they exchange will change dramatically. The resume, for instance, may only exist in printed form when needed, and take a different form for each instance it is called up (based on the same body of data to which it has access, and in function of the person & organization to which it is going) – in effect, a “quantum resume.”


Other blogs > LinkedIn > LinkedIn articles & posts, 2017 (Jan–Jun)

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