Career coach explains how Gen Z job seekers are misusing ChatGPT: 'Exact same cover letters'

A Canva survey conducted on 5,000 hiring managers and 5,000 job seekers from India, US, UK, Germany, Spain, France, Mexico, and Brazil in January found that 45 percent of job seekers have used AI tools to generate or improve their resumes. (File photo)

While artificial intelligence (AI) has made it easy for professionals to write resumes and cover letters for job applications, experts have been pointing out certain disadvantages with the practice.  Shoshana Davis, a Gen Z career expert and founder of the career consultancy Fairy Job Mother, told CNBC Make It how young professionals have been making mistakes with AI tools like ChatGPT to generate job application answers and cover letters.

“So I speak to businesses and employers who hire anything from like 10 to 1000s of Gen Z every year,” Davis told the publication. “And one of the main challenges that I’m seeing at the moment is the use of AI, specifically ChatGPT, and it’s not being used in the right way, and it’s not being used effectively.”

She further explained that employers have been suspecting that job seekers have been using ChatGPT after "getting hundreds of the exact same cover letters word for word,” or answers to job application questions that are the same.

Interestingly, a Canva survey conducted on 5,000 hiring managers and 5,000 job seekers from India, US, UK, Germany, Spain, France, Mexico, and Brazil in January found that 45 percent of job seekers have used AI tools to generate or improve their resumes.

Sharing a recent incident with a recruiter hiring for a brand marketing position, Davis said that candidates were asked a question in the job application about their favorite fitness-related product launches in the past year.

“They said they got about 100 identical responses of ‘my favorite campaign launch was Peloton’ and the employer was like ‘ultimately that was ChatGPT, but then also equally Peloton was released like four or five years ago’,” Davis told CNBC Make It.

She added that young professionals “need to educate themselves” on how to use ChatGPT properly and not just to copy answers.