"Exact Same Cover Letters": Career Consultant Explains How GenZ Are Misusing AI

OpenAI's ChatGPT is still making waves worldwide and surprising people with its exceptional capabilities. Ever since its advent, people across the world have been using the bot for everything from assignments research to planning holidays. However, Shoshana Davis, a Gen Z career expert and founder of the career consultancy Fairy Job Mother, told CNBC Make It that young professionals have been making mistakes with AI tools like ChatGPT to generate job application answers and cover letters. 

"So I speak to businesses and employers who hire anything from like 10 to 1000s of Gen Z every year. And one of the main challenges that I'm seeing at the moment is the use of AI, specifically ChatGPT, and it's not being used in the right way, and it's not being used effectively," Ms Davis told the outlet. 

The career consultant explained that "employers have been suspecting that job seekers have been using ChatGPT after "getting hundreds of the exact same cover letters word for word," or answers to job application questions that are the same. 

In fact, as per CNBC, a Canva survey revealed 45% of job seekers have used AI to build, update or improve their resume. And it appears that gen Z is leaning the most on artificial intelligence, according to a Grammarly survey. 

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Ms Davis said that while we should definitely "embrace technology and AI," copying answers from ChatGPT can hurt your chances of getting a job. She also shared a recent incident with a recruiter hiring for a brand marketing position. She said that the candidates were asked a question in the job application about their favourite fitness-related product launches in the past year. 

"They said they got about 100 identical responses of 'my favourite campaign launch was Peloton' and the employer was like 'ultimately that was ChatGPT, but then also equally Peloton was released like four or five years ago'," Ms Davis said.

The career consultant added that young people "need to educate themselves" on how to use ChatGPT properly and not just copy answers.