[LI] CVs & cover letters need automation; job sites do AI

Below are four separate items (not articles) posted to LinkedIn in mid to late March 2017. They each consist of a link plus a brief discussion. The general theme is how automation under the name “artificial intelligence” (AI) is being applied to recruiting/hiring processes, and now to job sites, but not yet to job seeking/application tasks such as writing resumes and letters:

Getting Past the First Cut With a Résumé That Grabs Digital Eyes,” New York Times, 8 July 2016 (posted ~7 March 2017)

As if the juxtaposition of the still manual composition of resumes with the automation of hiring were not clear enough already, here is advice going beyond layering in keywords for digital searches. But my question is, to the extent we’re writing for machines, wouldn’t it make sense to automate the writing and “optimizing”? And as the processes on both ends are made more intelligent, wouldn’t the logical next step be for the them to just communicate directly, without production of a static resume that is then digitally read? (Instead of a pile of resumes, the recruiter in this scenario then gets as detailed a set of reports as s/he requests on the candidates from the intelligent program that interfaces with the intelligent resumes. Fault the details here, but something like this is bound to replace the current approach to resumes.)

Resume/CV Writing Service for college faculty and administrators,” HigherEdJobs.com, 16 February 2017 (posted ~8 March 2017)

A higher education mailing list I’m on passed on an item about “TopResume,” a company whose pitch “Leave Your Resume/CV to the Experts” highlights a fundamental problem with the current paradigm for conveying information about one’s work history and accomplishments: too much is expected of one or two pages (or a few in the case of CVs). To the extent where one can argue – as TopResume does – that the writing of them requires specialized skills to achieve desired results. With books, manuals, and a never ending stream of advice on how to write, what to put in and leave out, formatting, and now digital optimization, resume/CV writing has now become a specialization in itself, for which people can ask to be paid. Where is this trend going? Ultimately I think to automation (with apologies to resume writers, but we’re all in the crosshairs anyway). The question then is whether that automation resides more with paid services like TopResume (and inevitably the big resume aggregators), or in programs that individuals can control and tweak. Open-source software for resume/CV production anyone?

Boomerang Respondable,” Boomeranggmail.com, n.d. (posted 27 March 2017)

Would anyone using Boomerang Respondable care to briefly share their experience? Am trying to see a couple steps ahead where something like this might be combined with a program having access to data on companies/organizations and their recruiting staff. In theory one could have a program to draft cover letters (not just emails) tailored to the user’s background and the recipients’ preferred style. Yes, another angle on what we’re calling “AI.”

Job Hunting Meets Artificial Intelligence – HackCollege,” icrunchdata.com, 22 March 2016 (posted 28 March 2017)

A year late in catching up w/ this item on AI & job hunting (there is a bit more out there re AI & recruiting). However this is not AI working for the job seeker, but AI on job boards working off a user-created profile (plus apparently some learning). Still a way to go before a job seeker could leverage their own AI program to go across boards & employer sites on their behalf. That’s different than what seems here to be just an evolution (albeit interesting) of job boards that by their nature are self-confined (i.e., any AI process there works only there and is theirs – note the quote about “our AI system”). So this is really about AI & the intermediaries in the job market.

(my comment, 28 May 2017)

The above link returns a 404. Plz use this link:  www.hackcollege.com/blog/2016/03/22/job-hunting-meets-artificial-intelligence.html


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

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