When Erica Schwartz graduated from Boston University in 2017, she hit a wall many young job seekers face in marketing. It can be that you do everything right and still don’t get the interview.
She applied for hundreds of jobs before finally landing the job. Adding to her constant frustration, she told CBS MoneyWatch the process was tedious and time-consuming. She said, “It sucks.
Schwartz, who started job hunting again in 2018, vented his frustration to his younger brother, Victor, who was then studying computer science at Duke University and working on ways to automate job applications. He made his sister an early guinea pig for this tool. The tool collected job postings from across the web, automatically filled out surveys, generated cover letters, and submitted hundreds of applications that tracked everything throughout the process.
“I was able to apply in bulk without doing anything,” she recalls. More importantly, Erica received her 30 interview requests.
“I was shocked,” she said. “Even though I received so much [interview requests] “I didn’t have to take it all in. I didn’t feel hopeless and I wanted to be more selective at that point,” she said.
Five years later, Erica has made three more career changes with the help of her brother’s start-up, now called Sonara. The new business, which raised $800,000 two years ago, now has about 500 users.
Erika, now 27, has become an evangelist for RoboRecruiter, recommending it to friends and former managers, including her former boss at NBCUniversal, who was recently laid off.
Courtesy: Victor Schwartz
Sonara is one of the fastest growing tools aimed at facilitating and largely automating people’s job search process, sending hundreds of thousands of applications at once. Massive, a startup that helps applicants auto-apply for tech jobs, uses massive amounts of data pulled from venture capital databases like Pitchbook and Crunchbase to match applicants with jobs, while simultaneously I also write a cover letter.
Browser extensions like SimplifyJobs and LazyApply leverage the technology behind Indeed’s EasyApply and LinkedIn’s apply With LinkedIn feature, promising to complete hundreds of applications with just a few clicks. (SimplifyJobs is free. LazyApply starts at $99 for he and offers a money-back guarantee if a candidate doesn’t get an interview within 30 days.)
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numbers game
The adage that finding a job is more about who knows than what you know may apply to those who are already employed, but to young adults looking for their first job. is often a “game of numbers,” said Victor Schwartz.
“As a young person in my career, I don’t have an extensive network and, you know, I don’t have 10 years of experience, but I’m very dependent on this ruthless process of helping by nature,” he said. I was. “In this game, it really means finding and applying for jobs online, and there’s no way around it.”
Courtesy: Victor Schwartz
“Inundation of applicants”
According to a recent survey by recruitment software maker iCIMS, 1 in 4 new graduates have already used AI technology such as ChatGPT to apply for jobs, and almost half are interested in using it. But recruiters are less enthusiastic, with nearly 40% saying the use of AI in the process by applicants is a deal breaker.
“Everybody is talking about this in the talent acquisition community,” says Christy Spilka, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at iCIMS.
According to iCIMS internal data, there has been a surge in job search activity this year. Overall job applications increased by 31% between January 2022 and he April 2023, while applications for finance and technology jobs jumped by more than 50% over the same period, while business services There was a 41% increase in applications for
“Many jobs, especially those that work from home, are inundated with applicants,” said William Stonehouse III, co-founder of Crawford Thomas Recruiting. “We’re seeing a growing number of resumes that are customized to the exact job description and cover letters that appear to be tailored to the job being applied for,” he said. “I have heard stories of candidates getting perfect marks on coding tests and exercises where 80% are considered passing.
Being on the other side of a flood of applications can be confusing.
A month ago, Zen Media’s head of public relations, Oliver Hayes, posted a public relations intern job opening on LinkedIn. It’s nearly five o’clock, and Hayes leaves the computer to eat dinner. An hour later, he returned and checked his email to find over 100 applications.
“I said, ‘What happened? Why are there 161 unread items?'” he recalled. “I had to close the tap.”
Hayes was initially happy with the number of applicants, but changed his mind as soon as he started reading resumes. “They felt generic and a little too robotic,” he says. “They lack the usual personality that we see in applicants.”
After using ChatGPT and encouraging his marketing team to do the same, Hayes concluded that many of these applications were written by robots. It took him a month to narrow down his resume to six final interview candidates. He said he would not push applicants to use the tool, but said he was considering adding more steps to the application process to prevent a flood of applicants. Rather than asking for a writing sample after the first interview, he said he believes “that area would probably be shaved off if we asked for details and examples of work and successes upfront.”
Individual Recruiter
Schwartz and other job seekers dismiss the idea that they are making the application process cheaper.
“Job applications have to be long to determine a candidate’s interest, and there’s this belief that if you don’t spend half an hour applying, ‘I don’t know if you’re serious,'” he said. .
In contrast, his startup “acts like an agent on your behalf,” and “you can start the process by receiving an interview request rather than sending an application,” Schwartz said.
It can lead to misses as well as hits. “I know nothing about sports,” said Erica Schwartz. She once attended an interview with the Brooklyn Nets and was asked to create marketing materials to promote the NBA team, she said.
“I never saw a Nets game, I didn’t know what it was… I think I said, ‘Unite Brooklyn.'” (She was eventually offered the job. , turned down for a higher paying and permissible position) will increase remote work. )
Massive founder Dan Vykhopen describes his startup, which contracts recruiters as part of the application process, as a tool for employers to attract job seekers without advertising. The startup raised $2.3 million last year.
“We want to fill out your application better than you, and we want to match you perfectly with the right job. That’s the most frustrating part,” he said.
Vykhopen added that the interview rate for entry-level applicants using Massive is between 1% and 4%. Intermediate or advanced software He has an engineer platform success rate of 20% to 25%, but he acknowledged that workers in the field are “very easy to hire in almost any market.”
“I think in a few years everyone will have their own recruiter — their own AI recruiter,” he said.
Admittedly, there are potential downsides to robo-applications. Too many sloppy applications can put you out of potential employers, or risk someone using AI assistance to get a job they can’t do (mostly employers).
But some job hunters are ecstatic to know they can turn the tables on their employers, at least for now.
“Companies feel like they lack a soul,” said Erica Schwartz. “They never make an effort to respond and hunt you down…we just numbers to them. “
“If you apply, you have to present yourself,” she added. “If HR thinks it’s annoying, you shouldn’t work for HR.”
