#Job Applicant

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[inkskinned]

i have chronic pain. i am neurodivergent. i understand - deeply - the allure of a "quick fix" like AI. i also just grew up in a different time. we have been warned about this.

15 entire years ago i heard about this. in my forensics class in high school, we watched a documentary about how AI-based "crime solving" software was inevitably biased against people of color.

my teacher stressed that AI is like a book: when someone writes it, some part of the author will remain within the result. the internet existed but not as loudly at that point - we didn't know that AI would be able to teach itself off already-biased Reddit threads. i googled it: yes, this bias is still happening. yes, it's just as bad if not worse.

i can't actually stop you. if you wanna use ChatGPT to slide through your classes, that's on you. it's your money and it's your time. you will spend none of it thinking, you will learn nothing, and, in college, you will piss away hundreds of thousands of dollars. you will stand at the podium having done nothing, accomplished nothing. a cold and bitter pyrrhic victory.

i'm not even sure students actually read the essays or summaries or emails they have ChatGPT pump out. i think it just flows over them and they use the first answer they get. my brother teaches engineering - he recently got fifty-three copies of almost-the-exact-same lab reports. no one had even changed the wording.

and yes: AI itself (as a concept and practice) isn't always evil. there's AI that can help detect cancer, for example. and yet: when i ask my students if they'd be okay with a doctor that learned from AI, many of them balk. it is one thing if they don't read their engineering textbook or if they don't write the critical-thinking essay. it's another when it starts to affect them. they know it's wrong for AI to broad-spectrum deny insurance claims, but they swear their use of AI is different.

there's a strange desire to sort of divorce real-world AI malpractice over "personal use". for example, is it moral to use AI to write your cover letters? cover letters are essentially only templates, and besides: AI is going to be reading your job app, so isn't it kind of fair?

i recently found out that people use AI as a romantic or sexual partner. it seems like teenagers particularly enjoy this connection, and this is one of those "sticky" moments as a teacher. honestly - you can roast me for this - but if it was an actually-safe AI, i think teenagers exploring their sexuality with a fake partner is amazing. it prevents them from making permanent mistakes, it can teach them about their bodies and their desires, and it can help their confidence. but the problem is that it's not safe. there isn't a well-educated, sensitive AI specifically to help teens explore their hormones. it's just internet-fed cycle. who knows what they're learning. who knows what misinformation they're getting.

the most common pushback i get involves therapy. none of us have access to the therapist of our dreams - it's expensive, elusive, and involves an annoying amount of insurance claims. someone once asked me: are you going to be mad when AI saves someone's life?

therapists are not just trained on the book, they're trained on patient management and helping you see things you don't see yourself. part of it will involve discomfort. i don't know that AI is ever going to be able to analyze the words you feed it and answer with a mind towards the "whole person" writing those words. but also - if it keeps/kept you alive, i'm not a purist. i've done terrible things to myself when i was at rock bottom. in an emergency, we kind of forgive the seatbelt for leaving bruises. it's just that chat shouldn't be your only form of self-care and recovery.

and i worry that the influence chat has is expanding. more and more i see people use chat for the smallest, most easily-navigated situations. and i can't like, make you worry about that in your own life. i often think about how easy it was for social media to take over all my time - how i can't have a tiktok because i spend hours on it. i don't want that to happen with chat. i want to enjoy thinking. i want to enjoy writing. i want to be here. i've already really been struggling to put the phone down. this feels like another way to get you to pick the phone up.

the other day, i was frustrated by a book i was reading. it's far in the series and is about a character i resent. i googled if i had to read it, or if it was one of those "in between" books that don't actually affect the plot (you know, one of those ".5" books). someone said something that really stuck with me - theoretically you're reading this series for enjoyment, so while you don't actually have to read it, one would assume you want to read it.

i am watching a generation of people learn they don't have to read the thing in their hand. and it is kind of a strange sort of doom that comes over me: i read because it's genuinely fun. i learn because even though it's hard, it feels good. i try because it makes me happy to try. and i'm watching a generation of people all lay down and say: but i don't want to try.

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

Job interview tip I got from a tiktok but it's genius:

If you were unemployed for a while, they're going to ask if you can explain the gap in your resume. Unless you were actually doing something cool & relevant, this is hard to answer in a way that makes you sound like a good corporate cog. So here's the best and infallible answer -

No you cannot, because you signed an NDA.

You now sound mysterious, desirable, worldly, experienced. They can't even really ask you more about it! Perfect.

[xtruss]

How To Write The Perfect CV? A Job Applicant Walks Into A Bar

— May 30th 2024

Illustration: Paul Blow

Imagine meeting a stranger at a party. What makes for a successful encounter? Lesson one is to heed the wisdom of a shampoo commercial from the 1980s: you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Lesson two is to remember that you do not need to wear a beret or a fur stole in order to stand out. Lesson three is not to forget that what you leave out matters as much as what you say.

These same principles, it turns out, apply to writing a cv. A résumé is not a list of every job you ever had. It is not your autobiography. It is, like that hair-care advert, a marketing tool. Your audience is made up of recruiters and hiring managers. Like cocktail-party guests, they do not take a long time to decide if they want to keep talking. According to one study, such professionals spend an average of 7.4 seconds skimming a job application. Your guest Bartleby has a few tips on how best to ensure that these seconds count.

The cv’s number-one task is not to put the reader off. If you are thinking of adding a watermark with your initials, think again; you are trying too hard. Use a clean, simple format and avoid fancy fonts (Arial or Helvetica are fine; Century Gothic is not).

Adding colour does not mean using a teal background. Nor does it mean using purple prose. Clichés can be a reason you are passed over for an interview. So can typos; spell-check and proofread over and over. You would be surprised how often someone forgets to include their name and contact details. Dispense with hackneyed descriptors (“cultivated and passionate professional”, “a keen eye for detail”)—facts should speak for themselves. But not all facts. You may think including your ranking on “Overwatch” is a quirky way to illustrate how quick you are on your feet. A recruiter may conclude that it shows you spend hours on the sofa tethered to a gaming console.

Do not hammer your cv out in an hour—take your time to polish it. Condense, filter and distil until what you are left with captures the essence of you. Anyone’s cv can fit on a page, even if you have held residencies in the world’s eight top hospitals or are Christine Lagarde. Forget the personal statement—no one has time for that. If you spent three weeks in the summer when you were 17 keeping the books in your uncle’s hardware store, no one needs to know that if you are now over the age of 25. The older you get, the more you should prioritise work experience over education.

Tailor your résumé for every application by making the relevant tweaks and highlighting different areas. Otherwise you are like the bore who tells the same story to every person he meets. Not everyone—and not every recruiter—is interested in the same things. If you can quantify an accomplishment, do. A second-year law student who just completed his summer internship having worked on six m&a deals? Put that in.

Reasonable gaps in a résumé are not cause for concern. Life happens and sometimes people take time off; you do not have to explain that you spent three months between jobs hiking around Machu Picchu to clear your head and recharge your batteries. A ten-year gap from the workforce may be another matter. So might constant job-switching, which is as much of a red flag to recruiters as admitting to never having had a long-term relationship might be to a stranger at a party. But if this describes your work history then you probably have bigger problems that a cv alone, no matter how masterful, will not fix.

Once you have sent your application, refrain from emailing prospective employers to see if they received it. You risk coming across as that annoying person who texts to see if their previous texts have got through.

In his commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005, David Foster Wallace, an American novelist, used the metaphor of fish oblivious to the element surrounding them in order to point to the dangers of the “natural, hard-wired, default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centred”. Your life, he implied, should illustrate an acute awareness of the outside world. So should your cv. Drafting a presentation of your skills and achievements will inevitably reflect the sovereignty and self-absorption of your “skull-sized kingdom”, as Wallace described it. So as you launch yourself into the job market, follow his counsel to young graduates to try always to be aware of their place in the greater scheme of things: “This is water…this is water.” ■

[smartcitysystem]

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[sophiebaybey]

Not to preach to the choir but I wonder if people generally realize that AI models like ChatGPT aren't, like, sifting through documented information when you ask it particular questions. If you ask it a question, it's not sifting through relevant documentation to find your answer, it is using an intensely inefficient method of guesswork that has just gone through so many repeated cycles that it usually, sometimes, can say the right thing when prompted. It is effectively a program that simulates monkeys on a typewriter at a mass scale until it finds sets of words that the user says "yes, that's right" to enough times. I feel like if it was explained in this less flattering way to investors it wouldn't be nearly as funded as it is lmao. It is objectively an extremely impressive technology given what it has managed to accomplish with such a roundabout and brain-dead method of getting there, but it's also a roundabout, brain-dead method of getting there. It is inefficient, pure and simple.

[hamletthedane]

You know what time it is….

* Regardless of whether you like your actual workplace or specific current practice (e.g. if you hold a nursing degree, you work as a nurse even if it’s in an area of medicine or a clinic that you don’t like)

Survey questions adapted from survey issued by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

[moonchildsfae]

“cataloguing skills” on a resume and it’s just my ability to use the filtered search on ao3

[bluury2]

Wars hitting wild with the “where do you see yourself in 5 years” question on a job application

Inspired by the panels below LMAO

[rambutanjpeg]

nothing a little soap can’t fix

[lorillee]

This is really stupid. Sorry

bonus;

[raydhd]

[indescribable-fixations]

I doodled something...

TW: VERY SCARY ⚠️⚠️

THAT HAS TO BE CENSORED! HE CANT GET AWAY WITH THIS!

[shrineheart]

Yeah.

Sure.

We'll call it enthusiasm.

[theriverbeyond]

got told at work by my manager that i give bad vibes due to my face and body language which sucks because i actually really. love my job.

[deepsi0]

I imagined this shitpost in my head and giggled longer than I should have