Imagine your excitement when your dream job is advertised after you have waited weeks, months or even years for it to come up. You need to get organised and ensure your career documents will put your best foot forward via the application process and then hopefully, to an interview.
Don’t take shortcuts, take that first step to becoming the successful candidate. You could use AI software, but that program isn’t going to help you every step of the way to the end of the application and interview processes. At Résumés for Results (RFR), we feel that it’s all about positive relationship building and collaboration. We pride ourselves on the long-term professional relationships that develop between our Career Consultants and our large client base.
Jennifer Maly, having worked for the business since 2010, services new clients as well as a bank of returning clients who require changes to their existing documents as their careers transition and their needs evolve. Jennifer has had considerable success in guiding clients through the maze that can be government applications, for departments such as the Australian Border Force (ABF), the Australian Defence Force (ADF), and the ATO when the organisation was in a transitional stage of relocation and expansion. Other sectors where Jennifer has assisted with complex and lengthy application processes have been for job vacancies within various state Health and Transport departments.
With a previous career path in education as both a teacher and an administrator, Jennifer offers professional support during the application process for those clients looking to apply for either government or private school vacancies. Facilitating Interview Preparation Sessions via Zoom with her clients is Jennifer’s favourite part of her job, enhancing her clients’ abilities to deal well with the interview situation. AI cannot do this without further original input from the client and will not propose insights to the client about how to improve their interview performance.
Only a person can do that!
Connie Wolf also offers exceptional career services to her RFR clients, particularly those applying for government roles. Part of this assistance often entails hands-on support with the application process itself, which AI cannot do. Connie has helped many clients gain a strong understanding of the process they were facing by performing initial research, and logically planning how to complete the documents within the set timeframe with the minimum of stress. By suggesting ways to maximise the relevance of their documents in relation to the job description, Connie takes the client carefully through the document creation process until all parties are satisfied with the finished products. Nothing is too much trouble for Connie, having developed extensive healthcare applications for clients in that industry. Connie structures comprehensive documentation (beginning with a resume and cover letter) including selection criteria responses that use complicated medical jargon and terms, carefully following the application guidelines.
Resumes written by AI cannot accurately convey your personal career experiences and qualifications in the way that a human writer can to the intended audience. These applications don’t build meaningful relationships that last for years – this is something that can only occur between humans.
One of the greatest things about working with a professional Career Consultant is their ability to provide you with a truly unbiased assessment of your career accomplishments to date. By offering constructive feedback through our Free Resume Review process, we help you to understand the potential of your existing resume document, and how to best emphasise your career achievements to make you a highly sought-after candidate for the job or career path of most interest to you. We really enjoy assisting you in presenting a well-crafted and compelling message that highlights your strengths while minimising any weaknesses.
As an employer, how can you tell if a resume is AI-generated?
The following features may be a giveaway:
- If they are written in US English, they would not comply with Australian spelling conventions, such as writing organization instead of organisation.
- Inconsistent fonts, spacing, bullet points or formatting errors.
- The use of a template, often with a profile graphic, is something we don’t usually recommend for Australian resumes.
- You may notice awkward phrasing or wording, unnatural language patterns or inconsistencies in writing style across the document.
Three soft skills that we believe cannot be replaced by AI content are:
- Creativity
- Interpersonal Abilities
- Critical Thinking.
AI only knows what it is taught, what it has been programmed to know.
Despite the many positive situations that AI can be applied to, AI cannot duplicate the human element of understanding the specific needs of the career client gained through personal interactions, advanced listening capabilities and positive relationship building.
Professional resume writers interact with you in ways AI can’t, establishing solid working relationships built on trust and a mutual understanding of what you are trying to achieve with your career documents. Our Career Consultants adjust their style of working to suit the client’s preferences, not the other way around. Many of our clients have issues with access to the necessary technology to complete applications, so our Career Consultants happily step in and complete the applications for them. AI-powered systems such as ChatGPT don’t offer this kind of customised, personal service. It just spits out generic documents that often have incorrect or outdated information that does not in any way reflect your unique style and personality.
Clients often lack the ability to appreciate or rank their skills that are suited to a particular role. During client consultations, our Career Consultants utilise a range of proven questioning techniques to discover the skill levels of our clients and clearly present this information in the resume. By reading between the lines of achievements and responsibilities to discover which skills to highlight and quantify, a Career Consultant’s keen eye and their input can be the difference between the client getting the job and their application ending up in the Recycle Bin. AI cannot offer this type of service, being unable to pick apart the intricacies of job duties that involve soft skills rather than hard technical abilities and competencies.
Artificial Intelligence is not always trustworthy.
At RFR, we believe it could be dangerous to give all your personal information to an AI website that has few (if any) safeguards in place to ensure your data integrity. You are giving away a considerable amount of personal data when using these websites with no guarantees about the confidentiality and/or safety of your data. The forms ask questions about confidential information such as birth dates, something which is not required for resumes and which can lead to a data breach. At RFR, we ensure the integrity of all personal client information with strict controls and processes.
Having tested several AI websites that offer quick turnaround times with minimal interactions, we found many aspects of the process could put you at a disadvantage when applying for jobs online. The AI generator requests a current job title and the title of the role under consideration from the client.
Starting with little information, any resume created by AI might be recognisable by its use of stilted language that does not have any relationship to the real person and their career. In that case, an employer may be faced with receiving several applications with similar content. An uploaded resume is your first opportunity to get your foot in the door, but using AI might be your undoing.
AI cannot put itself in a hiring manager’s shoes.
The HR Manager who wrote the job ad knows the strategic direction of the company and has taken this into account when writing the role requirements. No AI application can know this information. As part of our processes, Career Consultants often perform simple research about companies to discover this information on behalf of our clients before beginning any document preparation.
Artificial Intelligence won’t catch the subtleties and nuances within a job advert.
Employers often present information in job ads that can give implicit hints as to what their preferences are regarding application guidelines, document style and/or formats. AI cannot see through this and accepts the information at face value. Another example may be the ad itself being a test for the role, such as a job ad with a certain number of errors to be found by the applicant for an editing position. Using AI in this instance could put you at a significant disadvantage as a candidate.
Relevant LinkedIn article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pros-cons-ai-resume-chatgpt-vs-expert-writers/
