The foundational goal of communication is to say what you mean while meaning what you say, right? Well, are you saying what you mean when you use AI to write your cover letter? I would dare to determine yes, so long as you have planned out each point you wanted to make and you personally managed and contributed to the revision process. In this way, it’s like you replace instant coffee with a drip-drop brew fresh from the roastery. Initially, it was the concept of coffee and the rising steam of the instant version that awakened your craving, culminating in the fresh-roast cup of goodness you hold now between your happy hands.
Get my drift? An instant product just won’t cut it when your full and hearty self rises to the occasion. You simply must own your voice and mean what you say, infusing each sip of truth with the robust flavor of your lovingly harvested personality beans.
Imagine however, that you are a stressed-out job hunter and as an unusual exception, have allowed AI to write every word of a particular cover letter. You have sent it off without a single dash of alteration. After your submission makes its way past the gates of ATS, an actual person reads it and requests an interview. At the interview you are asked what you meant in a certain paragraph. You are not sure what you meant because you did not write the paragraph. In fact, you didn’t write the cover letter at all—you delegated. You relied on AI, because there were just too many job applications to get done that day, and time was limited and the stakes were high and the competition daunting. Oh my!
If you are the muse of a project, even if you conduct zero of the actual work, should you get all the credit? Isn’t everyone else cutting corners in order to get ahead? Don’t some celebrities “write” novels their ghostly task force actually composes for them? I guess in such cases the contractual relationship excuses the plastering of a household name onto the cover of a book written by a barely-known someone else. Perhaps the novel could have been a biography rather than a memoir, but oh well—agreements are often made in the name of money. But in the realm of employment, you can’t (or shouldn’t) officially hire a ghostwriter, just like you can’t (for sure) officially hire someone to attend your interview in your stead. It’s got to be you in that office chair on the spotlit side of the desk. You won’t be able to talk an interviewer out of doubting you because you were caught pretending. So maybe don’t pretend.
AI is a tool. It’s the box of supplies, and it’s the teacher. It’s the process but not the finished product. It might look finished but that’s just veneer. Say you’ve been taking painting classes at a really nice art studio down by the beach and the resident art teacher gives specific instructions for everyone to paint the exact same shapes with the exact same colors. You learners are to be “creative”, but only as long as you do what the teacher wants. What if after everyone has finished, each painting looks practically identical and now the teacher wants to have an elegant open studio in the evening, with drinks and appetizers, so as to showcase all your amazing finished products. Unfortunately, each product is like the last. So the exhibition equals a room of redundancy. You figure the show might as well have consisted of one single painting and a bunch of mirrors positioned around it for a modern-esque duplication effect. That tactic would save loads of paint, at any rate.
Thus through the lens of art, you can view the limits of saying what you mean with AI. The takeaway is that you should include yourself in the mix, beyond spitting out the job description. Who are you and why are you compatible? Say it. Show it. Be it.
Some people talk in their sleep or they have dreaming freak-outs, during which they think the imagined is real. They sweat and scream and flail. Actually, the other night, I dreamed I was plummeting down into a huge canyon, scraping along the cliffside as I fell. It was palpably terrifying but in the dream I saved myself by striking at the rocky ground with a large wooden staff that had a bendy-spring elbow. Well, AI freaks out too—you just don’t see the chaos, only the outcome (unless, perhaps, you’re a coder…then you might see it all). With its random hallucinations, AI can say things that aren’t true. If you’re not careful, you might represent yourself inaccurately in the job hunt, handing off written materials that introduce a person who doesn’t actually exist. AI with its templating nature, might give you what you want or it might gush forth an algorithm, a phantom, or even a decayed whisper of what once was.
Templates are a standard part of professional life, and we all follow templates to some extent. For example, we were taught at a young age to greet people, to say hello and goodbye. These are examples of a greeting template, in verbal form. Transferring the concept to letter writing, there are certain straightforward details that should be included in the correspondence. For example, we say hello (“Dear Charlie,” or “Hello Charlie,”) and goodbye (“Best, Shawn” or “Sincerely, Shawn”) in a professional tone and order. We do not say goodbye (Toodles) at the top of the page and hello (Wuzzup) at the bottom. See, there is only so much wiggle room when it comes to standard courtesy, whether in-person or on-paper. Yet, there is sufficient room in which to wiggle. It’s the cup half full kind of scenario.
If you allow blanks to be unconditionally filled in with AI’s conditionally intelligent assumptions about logical verbiage, you might be in for an awakening. Say that you, along with a whole group of job seekers, are simultaneously applying for the same role and you all give the same prompt to your respective AI bots. Since everyone has read the same job description and snatched up all the same key words, everyone’s AI produces similar cover letters that feature a precisely consistent writerly voice, across the board. Stretch your mind to imagine that all you applicants take a little field trip to some mythical conveyor belt of interviews, and you all undergo your interviews back to back, each of you reciting the words of the cover letters you so carefully memorized. You might sound like a patterned cacophony of revolving machines, spewing forth the right combination of intonations for the sake of persuasion. Maybe as a group, you run the risk of canceling each other out. You are like a choir all singing the same note in unison for the entire length of the song. Let’s step out of that nightmare and into a film.
Remember in the 1982 musical film Annie, when Mr. Warbucks was trying to locate little orphan Annie’s long-lost parents, so he put out an ad in the newspaper offering a reward for the effort of retrieving their daughter? Hundreds of people flocked outside of Warbucks’ mansion, all ready to claim their “daughter”. Not a single one of them, however, knew about the other half of a locket Annie’s real parents had promised they would bring her someday upon their return. Not only did no one in the crowd know about the locket, it turned out that Annie’s parents had passed away long ago, so all these people claiming to be her parents were just doing so for the money. These desperate people were posers, pretending to be what they were not. It was New York City during the Great Depression—a great depression in more ways than one.
AI can provide a false sense of identity as it shapes the delivery of your thoughts into a certain language that might prove far different than the way you speak. AI can facilitate instant applications to numerous roles without your eyes ever landing on the materials. Take a moment to consider if omitting your human energy from the application process really serves you. At the very least, make sure that you can always explain your materials in a way that reflects your written style. Thus, your written style should reflect the way you speak.
After writing with AI, you really need to read aloud. (By the way, we offer a top-notch AI-driven cover letter writer in our Callings.ai product, to get your gears rolling.) Your desired content is created in a matter of seconds, and now you have a collection of words and sentences that were formed through robotical logic. This is the first draft—the early draft, like an outline, like a pencil sketch before all the fun colors and brushes come out to party.
You get to bring the fun! Now go ahead and read your letter aloud. Try a serious voice. Now try a silly voice. In this way, you can reflect upon how it feels to say the words. Move the words around in your mouth. Feel your face change as you pronounce. After intoning, digesting, and re-emphasizing the sentences, it’s time to compose a transcription of your interpretation, from your mind directly to the page. This is how you say what you mean.
AI is here to help. It’s here to stay. But make sure to hold the wheel and drive the craft, as you are the ultimate bearer of information.
It’s your brain, after all.
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