With the recent introduction of ChatGPT and Auto-GPT, job searching is changing incalculably. Although artificial intelligence (AI) may not be able to land a job for you yet, it might be able to soon. To capture the shift in a nutshell: Google lists resources, ChatGPT builds materials, and Auto-GPT will eventually land interviews for you.
Introduction
It seems that artificial intelligence is affecting everything. Since OpenAI introduced ChatGPT late last year, “generative AI” has been all the buzz, which is artificial intelligence that can generate previously nonexistent content. The accounting and consulting firm PwC recently pledged to spend $1B in generative AI to improve the automation within their U.S. tax, audit, and consulting practices.
Advances are happening fast. The next big generative AI milestone, Auto-GPT, was released on March 30th, just four months after ChatGPT. Auto-GPT offers much richer output by bringing the “thinking” of many AI “agents” together.
All of this is affecting the job seeking process. The potential impact is hard to believe. Therefore, understanding and harnessing this evolving technology will be essential to conducting an effective and efficient search going forward.
Technology and Job Searching
Internet technology was a transformational milestone in job searching. Before the internet, there was no – or limited – search capability to find a job. The process in general was to scan the Want Ads in the newspaper, contact your local trade association, talk to companies individually, collaborate with your connections, and work with recruiters. With the advent of the first internet search engines in the early 1990’s, you could actively search the internet for specific posted roles.
Eventually, LinkedIn, Monster, and Indeed were born to provide more and better targeted results. In 2017, Google added a job search function to its search engine. Job searching on the internet had become about as broad and comprehensive as possible. What also came with search engines and websites was the ability to find examples and samples of cover letters, resumes, what questions interviewers might ask, and so much more.
The Introduction of Mainstream AI
Cue the ChatGPT launch in November 2022. ChatGPT is AI software, known as a chatbot, that runs automated tasks based on instructions provided in natural language by the user. For example, “Hi ChatGPT. What are 10 questions a Vice President of Development might ask me for the following Software Developer job posting [copy and paste job description].” Job seekers are already using chatbots to create resumes and cover letters, as well as to optimize them for keywords compared to job descriptions (with questionable results that require review and editing).
Now Auto-GPT has joined the party, launching in March 2023. What Auto-GPT brings is the ability for the AI technology to create a project plan for the objective that you define, execute the items on that project plan, check data sources for accuracy, revise the project steps as needed, and deliver the ultimate result. Think, “Hi Auto-GPT. Land me an interview in software development at a company fitting these criteria [input criteria] that matches my skills [input resume and additional information about experience, interests, and background].”
Auto-GPT is known as “autonomous AI,” which means that it has the ability to devise tasks and complete them. It completes the tasks by interacting with other “AI agents” (other AI software programs) to gather information, check itself, revise its steps, and develop a result. Note that the Auto-GPT interface and user experience (UX) is currently not yet very user-friendly and takes some technical knowledge to set up and use.
A Real-Time Example
When Auto-GPT is more user-friendly, it will be very helpful for doing research on companies, industries, and job searching in general. As an example of its power for creating reports, recently @SullyOmarr shared the following Auto-GPT test on Twitter: “I pretended to be a fake shoe company and gave AutoGPT [sic] a simple objective:
- Do market research for waterproof shoes
- Get the top 5 competitors and give me a report of their pros & cons”
Auto-GPT found the top waterproof shoes, analyzed the available information, updated the queries it was using, and validated the reviewers. It created sub tasks to analyze the websites it was reviewing. When it got stuck, it figured it out by itself and fixed the issue in its process. It developed a “…pretty detailed report of the top 5 waterproof shoe companies, with their pros, cons, and a nice conclusion summarizing the report. Oh, and it only took 8 minutes, at a cost of 10 cents.”
How Job Seeking Will Change
Although Auto-GPT and similar technologies will probably have the potential to land you a job at some point in the distant future, in the more immediate future, it will probably be able to land interviews for you. To illustrate, I prompted ChatGPT for a list of the fundamental steps of a job search, and it responded with the following:
- Self-assessment
- Job search strategy
- Resume and cover letter
- Job applications
- Networking
- Interviews
- Follow-up
You could input to Auto-GPT the results of your self-assessments, your resume, and additional interests, skills, and background information, and it can develop a job search strategy and execute the initial part of it. It can develop a resume and cover letters and find appropriate job postings. (Note that AI-generated resumes and cover letters currently have documented quality issues.) I don’t believe that the interface between Auto-GPT and Indeed, LinkedIn, and individual company websites is there yet for it to apply to the jobs for you, but I can only imagine that it’s coming.
Where could this technology be leading us?
- Candidates will apply to a huge number of jobs! Just like online applications led to a huge increase in job application submissions, this could make that number explode
- With that explosion, companies will utilize additional software and AI to screen applications and resumes, so it will be even more difficult than it already is for candidates to get through
- Networking and working with recruiters will become even more important for candidates to break through the noise
- LinkedIn, Indeed, and other platforms will go far past job alerts and proactively provide a daily list of scheduled interview options
- The AI technology will misinterpret either vague or synonymous candidate information and apply to irrelevant jobs, such as:
- Architect – houses or data networks?
- Engineer – software, mechanical, industrial, etc.?
- The AI will work from erroneous information and not flag it
- Eventually (somehow) the interview process could go away and all the job matching will be automated so after you input your job requirements to AI, you will receive a message a few moments later saying, “Welcome to ABC company! How about starting on Monday?”
How realistic is this one-step job searching? Some form of it is coming. The specific predictions above may or may not come true, but a major shift is underway. It’s going to be up to all job seekers to understand the changes and adapt their job search strategies accordingly.