Can AI Apply to Jobs for Me?

 

Can AI apply to jobs for me? 

With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a lot of industries are being changed rapidly. For example, video content editing, copywriting, transcription are all tasks that can be handled fairly well by AI. Job applications are effectively a full-time job for candidates looking for employment in this job market, and an AI solution would save job seekers a ton of time that they could then put towards enjoying their life, focusing on their current jobs, or focusing on school. 

With the redundancy of job applications asking for the same information over and over again, it seems like job applications are something that would be right up AI’s alley for automation. So you might be wondering, can AI apply to jobs for me? There are a few AI job application bots out there, and a user was kind enough to report her experience publicly to Business Insider. The results are quite shocking. 

Attempt #1: Sonara AI Bot 

Aki Ito, who published her story about using AI to apply to jobs for her in her Business Insider piece, effectively tried all of the major AI bots that exist on the market today. The first AI bot she used was Sonara at just $80/month. While Sonara promised to apply to jobs for her using AI, the process still involved a lot of work from Aki, and the applications she wanted were not sending out properly.

“After I spent a half hour uploading my résumé and completing my profile, Sonara showed me maybe a dozen job options. I greenlighted a few of them, and the bot promised it would send them out. Each morning when I logged back on, it would send me a trickle of new options to consider. But the ones I approved continued to sit in the queue, unsent. It was hardly the job-applying firehose I was looking for.”

She still needed to put in work to search for and select the jobs she wanted, and even then could not get her applications to submit. 

Attempt #2: Wonsulting AI Bot 

She continued on with her search and found another AI bot called Wonsulting AI. While it seemed promising at just $20/month, Wonsulting AI was ultimately even worse than Sonara. 

“It was more manual than Sonara: Every time I wanted it to pull in more job openings, I had to input my experience level and specify the title and location of the position I was looking for. Like Sonara, it didn’t show me many job openings, and it was pretty glitchy. About one in three applications never went through.”

Sonara ultimately was unreliable and required a level of manual work that seems comparable to just doing the applications yourself. 

Attempt #3: Massive AI Bot

She then turned to Massive, another AI application bot. While better and less glitchy than Sonara and Wonsulting AI, she found that there was a list of pre-set and non-customizable corporate occupations that she could apply to. While she could make do with the limited selection, what she couldn’t make do with is the limited number of jobs it could apply to. The AI bot could only apply to 50 jobs a week, which she found was not sufficient volume to hit any real traction in terms of interviews. 

The search for a truly automated and reliable solution that can apply with large volume continues. 

Attempt #4: LazyApply AI Bot

Finally, Aki found LazyApply, what seemed to be the most promising AI job application bot on face value. Based out of India, the LazyApply AI bot could apply to up to an incredible 750 applications per day. That should do the trick. She linked LazyApply to her job boards like LinkedIn, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter, and let it do its thing. 

LazyApply turned out to be absolutely unhinged. Here’s what she reported from her experience with LazyApply:

“I started to panic. In one application, the bot indicated that I speak conversational-level Spanish, which I definitely do not. In another, it reported that I was African American, even though I had specified in my LazyApply profile that I am Asian. I shouldn’t have been surprised, given AI’s well-known propensity to make stuff up.”

The fabrications from the AI application bot got even worse, to the point where the applications made no sense: 

“A few applications in, I realized that LazyApply wasn’t using the updated résumé I had given it. Instead, it was attaching a document I didn’t recognize, titled “Aki Ito Cover Letter, Resume, Links for Insider.pdf.” That’s strange, I thought. Did LazyApply auto-generate a cover letter for me? I wondered whether it was any good. But when I opened the PDF, I saw it was dated October 24, 2020. It read: ‘Dear Mr. Carlson: I’m writing to apply for the analytical features editor position at Insider.’ Instead of sending out the updated résumé I’d provided, LazyApply was submitting an old cover letter it had found buried in the depths of my LinkedIn account, from when I had applied to BI three years ago. In a single spurt, 27 employers — ranging from a website I had never heard of called CryptoNewsZ to venerable publications like The Boston Globe — received an application from me that talked about how much I wanted to work for one of their competitors.’

Submitting a cover letter instead of a resume will result in getting your application tossed immediately. Submitting a cover letter addressing another company, let alone a competitor, is also grounds for an automatic rejection email.

So can AI apply to jobs for you? In AI’s current form, AI is too unreliable, submits incorrect and harmful information, often requires manual effort comparable to just doing the applications yourself, and cannot do enough volume.  

Can I Hire Someone to Apply to Jobs for Me? 

The search for a solution continues. If an AI cannot apply to jobs for you, you might be wondering, can I hire someone to apply to jobs for me? The answer here is yes.

You can hire a virtual assistant (VA) to apply to jobs for you. Countries like the Philippines have low-cost labor with strong English, making it perfect for outsourcing tedious and redundant tasks like job applications. Your virtual assistant can upload your resume, input your information like first name, last name, address, work authorization status, veteran status, disability status, race, gender, and other tedious questions that repeat on every job application. This saves you a ton of time so you can enjoy your life or focus on your current job or schoolwork. 

How Many Applications Can A Virtual Assistant Do? 

A virtual assistant can reliably complete 50 full-length job applications in an 8-hour work day. This means your VA can apply to 250 jobs for you per week Monday through Friday, adding up to 1,000 job applications per month.This is significantly more volume than AI can do for you, with the exception of LazyApply. From our customer surveys, we find that our customers used to submit just 10-30 applications per week before outsourcing their job applications to our human virtual assistants of virtual assistants. This is a 10-20x increase in job applications just from hiring a virtual assistant to apply to jobs for you. 

Where Can I Hire Someone to Apply to Jobs for me?

To hire a virtual assistant to apply to jobs for you, use a job application service like OverApply, that employs real virtual assistants out of the Philippines. This will ensure that your virtual assistant is experienced with doing job applications for other clients. This will also save you time because you will not have to micro-manage an untrained virtual assistant.

How Many Interviews Can I Expect if a VA Applies to Jobs for Me?

While results vary depending on skill, qualifications, years of experience, and resume quality, the majority of our clients get their first interview within 1-2 weeks, and regularly get interviews every week after. We have 2 options: 1,000 applications per month or 600 applications per month. Results are superior on our higher volume 1,000 applications per month package, but 600 applications per month also bring in strong results. 

How is Application Quality when using a Virtual Assistant to Apply to Jobs?

In order to have your virtual assistant submit high quality and targeted job applications, you need to be very specific yet comprehensive in our description of the types of roles you are open to. After signing up with OverApply, we send out a Google Form that requests information we need to calibrate our job application targeting. This includes information such as salary requirements, a comprehensive list of job titles you are open to, remote/hybrid/on-site preference, and location preferences if looking for on-site/hybrid roles. 

Once we have this information, it is fairly simple for our virtual assistants to set up these filters on LinkedIn and/or other job boards. We also do not apply to anything older than a week to make sure that we are targeting job applications that are likely to convert to interviews. We also do not do EasyApply applications on LinkedIn unless specifically asked to, as these applications are unlikely to convert to interviews. 

How Long Will it Take for my Virtual Assistant to Land me a Job?

While your virtual assistant can land you interviews, your VA cannot convert those interviews into job offers for you. Results vary depending on interviewing experience and skill level, but most of our clients on our 1,000 application per month package are securing offers within 2 months, while most of our clients on our 600 application per month package are securing offers within 3 months. 

These are very impressive results in this market, with many strong and qualified candidates remaining unemployed for 7-12 months with minimal interview pipeline to speak of. 

How Does a Virtual Assistant Handle Cover Letters and Essay Responses?

A common question we get is the following: How do our VAs handle cover letters and essay responses? While virtual assistants are great and redundant and tedious tasks, we do not want to involve them in tasks that require creativity. As such, we do not apply to roles that require cover letters or essay responses. There are enough job postings out there in most fields that we can easily hit 1,000 applications per month without having to submit a single cover letter or essay response. 

While AI can handle cover letters and resume adjustments, this actually causes more harm than good as it often injects false information into these cover letters, as seen with Aki’s experience with LazyApply. A virtual assistant will handle your job applications flawlessly without the need to use any cover letters or essay responses, eliminating the risk of submission of a harmfully edited cover letter/essay response. 

AI vs Virtual Assistants: Which is Better for Job Applications?

With the unreliability of AI, AI cannot apply to jobs for you currently. The best option for somebody looking to automate their job application process is to hire a virtual assistant to apply to jobs for them. 

If you can’t find the time to apply to jobs and want to learn more about how you can use our virtual assistants in your job application process, visit our website here. To see testimonials from our delighted customers who outsourced their job applications to us, look at our testimonial page here. 

Unlike AI, our virtual assistants can only handle so many clients. Our job application service is therefore subject to capacity constraints, so we recommend reviewing our website as soon as possible so that we can apply to jobs for you in a timely manner.