A client proudly told me that he had sent out five applications in one day, made possible simply by having Chat GPT write his cover letters. In the 25 years I have been involved in job applications, every technological innovation has fired the imagination of job applicants to delegate their application activities. Will it work this time? And if so, would it even be desirable?
I looked at the five letters and was amazed at how familiar they sounded. They were full of beautifully worded self-assessments, grandiosities, generalities and a lot of «application-speak», of course all so impersonal that they could have been written for different jobs as well as by different applicants. So, they suffered from exactly the same thing as the majority of motivation letters written by real applicants. How can this be explained?
Average is not enough
Apparently, Chat GPT manages to produce an average cover letter, which it compiles by analysing texts on the net. Since many motivation letters are of insufficient quality, the average of these can only be poor. So, if you want to write average – i.e., insufficient – motivation letters, you can possibly save yourself the effort. Chat GPT seems to be faster and the time saved can be used elsewhere. A negative influence on the success of the application may have to be accepted.
However, if you focus on quality, and I advise all specialists and managers to do so, you still have to take the trouble of formulating your application. In this respect, not much has changed in the last 25 years and I do not expect any revolutionary innovations in the next few years.
Not everything changes!
Even if there is a shortage of skilled workers, companies are looking for good employees in order to be successful in an environment characterised by great competition. And the application should not be underestimated as a work sample in recruitment.
A good motivation letter shows that applicants have thought about the job, can express what interests them about it and what they bring to it. An old NZZ advertisement puts it in a nutshell: «Work on the language is work on the thought» – and that takes a lot of effort. That’s why I advise you to do the following: Make a lot of phone calls before applying; this will automatically make you apply less often. And for the remaining applications, make a correspondingly great effort. When applying, quality definitely comes before quantity!
The time spent looking for a job and applying is a chance to take a closer look at yourself, if you allow yourself to do so. You will gain more clarity about your career goals and needs. In addition, every letter is an exercise in communication and self-marketing. And hand on heart: we can never communicate well enough!
So much to do, so little time – the art is to delegate wisely. That’s why I don’t iron my shirts myself- but self-awareness and self-marketing are non-delegable matter for the boss in my Me Incorporated!