I asked ChatGPT to write my cover letter and here’s what our hiring managers thought…

Over the past few weeks, a new version of AI (ChatGPT), has broken the internet!

Many users have praised this newer version, exclaiming how easy it is to use and how impressive the range of knowledge the chatbots have is. They have been used for news articles, University papers, coding & now…cover letters.

Working in recruitment, I decided to test this out for myself. One of the lengthier tasks when applying for jobs, the dreaded cover letter. I wanted to see if this really was the future of recruitment!

All I had to do was give ChatGPT some sentences, some brief job descriptions and some made up experience. I waited for the result and sent this over to our hiring managers to see what they thought.

What our hiring managers thought:

There was a lot of talk about the cover letter lacking personality, looking too much like it had been copied and pasted and that it needed to be more specific to the company you are applying to work for. Niall Adams (Executive Recruitment Consultant & Team leader, Elderly Division), expressed how normally in a cover letter, you would include how you could motivate and empower your team to meet objectives rather than just “I can do this, I can do that.” In other words, it’s too robotic!

Here’s what Michael White (Executive Consultant & Team Leader, Specialist Division) had to say about it…

“It doesn’t look too bad actually! However, Artificial intelligence likely won’t provide any insight to your personality, your goals and what you’re looking to achieve.

Some of my top tips for helping to write a cover letter:

• Address your recruiter or hiring manager by name. Using your recipient’s name quickly makes your cover letter stand out.
• Link your history to the job description. Carefully review the job description before you write your cover letter. Pick out a few leading job requirements and connect your work history examples to those requirements.
• Show, don’t tell. Don’t just tell your audience about your achievements. Show them/give examples.
• Insert your personality. Hiring teams want to know if you’ll be a flexible co-worker. Try to make your cover letter reflect your personality.
• End with a call of action. Don’t tell the letter recipient that you’d like for him or her to reach out immediately. That’s overstepping boundaries. But you should feel free to let them know that you’re excited to talk with them soon.
• Coordinate your letter with your CV. Finally, you can coordinate your cover letter with your CV.

As Specialist Healthcare Recruiters here at Domus Recruitment, we make sure to inject personality into your Cover letters and formatted CV’s so that you come across as your best-self throughout the recruitment process.

So…Million-dollar question…

Would you trust Artificial Intelligence to write your cover letter?