Will AI make resumes and cover letters even less useful than before? Very possibly.
For example, EarnBetter, a startup founded by former Credit Karma employees, is developing a platform that allows users to upload an existing resume or cover letter and have AI rephrase and rewrite it for a particular job opening. Co-founder and CEO Tuck Hauptfuhrer introduces EarnBetter, which is currently free to use, as a way to “level the playing field for job seekers.”
“We have always felt strongly that job seekers need more support, not another expense,” Hauptfuhrer told TechCrunch in an email interview. “And you don’t need to be tech savvy to use the AI job search assistant. For example, there is no long or complex onboarding flow or prerequisite of knowing how to activate AI. To get a new resume, simply upload your existing resume and EarnBetter will reformat and rewrite it in minutes.”
EarnBetter also provides a job search tool and editing package for cover letters and resumes that automatically highlights skills and experiences potentially relevant to open positions. Users can save vacancies for later, indicate that a position is not of interest to them, or submit a job application through EarnBetter.
EarnBetter makes money by charging employers when people find and submit job applications through the platform. Hauptfuhrer says people created more than 100,000 resumes and cover letters during EarnBetter’s beta period.
“The job search market is large. Traditional job boards, staffing companies and others compete to help people find jobs and employers hire talent,” she said. “EarnBetter is solely focused on supporting job seekers by leveraging generative AI to offer a free, fast and easy-to-use product.”
Image credits: Earn better
But what about those poor souls who spend years crafting and perfecting their draft resumes and cover letters? Well, they may soon be in the minority. According to a recent survey by Resume Builder, nearly half of current and recent job seekers were using OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT, to write their resumes or cover letters.
Even before the advent of AI generating job applications, candidates writing letters and resumes from scratch may have been behind.
According to Vox, only about 2% of the millions of ads on the job search platform Indeed mentioned a cover letter as of March 2023. And many hiring managers report that they don’t actually read cover letters, but only They check to see if they are included if a listing requests it. In the rare cases where hiring managers do When they review resumes and cover letters, they don’t necessarily look at them: One study found that recruiters spend an average of six seconds on a cover letter.
Be that as it may, one could argue that AI-based tools like EarnBetter give those who have access to them (which is not everyone) an unfair advantage in the job search, at least in the sense that they save time on applications that They require resumes. and cover letters.
However, the Hauptführer does not see it that way and maintains that EarnBetter provides a service for employers as well as job seekers, not only by connecting them with candidates, but also by ensuring that resumes and cover letters are “professionally written, cleanly formatted and tailored to your needs.” [each] position” (although “professionally written” is in the eye of the beholder, I firmly state that).
“In this way, we help employers initially evaluate candidates based on the relevance of their skills and experiences rather than their ability to format a resume,” said Hauptfuhrer. “EarnBetter’s AI-powered job search assistant can also help identify roles that a job seeker may qualify for beyond what she is looking for. By doing so, EarnBetter can help widen the aperture of someone’s search and broaden the talent pool for employers.”
In any case, venture capitalists evidently see EarnBetter’s business model as promising. Andreessen Horowitz, Abstract Ventures and Figma founder Dylan Field are among the investors in the startup’s $4.5 million seed round, the proceeds of which Hauptfuhrer said will go toward expanding the eight-person team at EarnBetter already create new products and services powered by AI.
“EarnBetter is an AI-native company and we are obsessed with thinking about how advances in AI can benefit job seekers,” Hauptfuhrer said. “Generative AI is exceptionally powerful. By designing a product that is free, fast and easy to use, we aim to make the power of AI accessible to all job seekers.”
