Revolutionising Talent Acquisition with ChatGPT and GPT-3: A Candidate’s Perspective (Part 2)

This blog is the second instalment of a 2-part series looking at the ways in which ChatGPT and GPT-3 will revolutionise Talent Acquisition. Part One explored this topic from a Recruiter’s Perspective. 

Back in 2018, I wrote an article about Counter-AI in Talent Acquisition.

It was a time when we observed a surge of AI start-ups in Talent Acquisition Technology ecosystem. My point of view was that the integration of Artificial Intelligence in the recruitment process will not end by helping the recruiters or organisations to work smartly and efficiently. It will also ignite a counter-reaction from the candidates’ aspect as well, where we would see the bots or solutions serving the candidates just as much as they serve the recruiters. My rationale was based on Newton’s Third Law of equal and opposite reaction. And we did see a few candidates-centric solutions in the market.

However, there are not as many AI-tools available for the candidates as one would like to see. Generally, revenue is generated from the employers who can afford licensed subscriptions (rather than charging the job seekers to use it). It is commercially not viable, unless a marketplace is developed and candidates’ attention span is marketed to the organisation, like the LinkedIn model. Additionally, the technological and computational limitations of Artificial Intelligence, including Generative AI, in 2018 still had a long way to go to attract the masses. However, with the advent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a freemium one-stop-shop that serves multiple needs, we can expect the development of numerous commercially viable solutions to assist candidates.

After exploring how Recruiters can benefit from ChatGPT in my previous article, this time I’ll shift the focus to the job seekers. I’ll explore how ChatGPT can be used to a candidate’s advantage, whether by utilising the existing ChatGPT tool or developing customized solutions with the GPT-3 API. The possibilities are vast. Let’s scratch the surface:

Resume Creation and Job Search Assistance:

A Harvard Business School study found that millions of qualified candidates are screened out by the Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). On the flip side, The Australian CEO Survey revealed 90% of the business are affected by staffing shortage 2023. This tells us 2 things:

1. The focus on keyword matching that exists in the current systems severely lack an understanding of contextual information, and
2. Qualified candidates are struggling to understand the need to use certain keywords to please the ATS to move their applications forward.

This rift in today’s ATSs is contributing to the talent shortage challenge globally.

ChatGPT can help candidates to overcome this hurdle. It can draft a professional resume, provided candidate’s are able to provide enough information about their education, experience, skills, and achievements.

Let’s expand this simple concept further. Imagine a tool that integrates GPT-3 API with job postings at LinkedIn, Indeed and other job boards. This tool would be capable of providing real-time job recommendations from multiple sources based on the candidate’s expertise and personal preferences, such as target employers, locations, salary, and organisational culture. This tool could also be used to draft a “perfect match” resume for the candidate to apply for the job, including a uniquely tailored cover letter customised for every job application. Recruiters may not even realise that the perfect fit candidate would actually be the result of a mature Natural Language Processing (NLP) model.

Interview Preparation:

Once a candidate manages to pass through the ATS, the next nervous moment is the interview process. Candidates struggle to prepare for the interview process. 47% of recruiters say they would reject a candidate who had little knowledge about the company they applied for. ChatGPT is a very handy tool to assist candidates in preparing for interviews by providing answers to commonly asked questions, information about the company and industry, and personalised tips and advice based on the candidate’s resume and background. It can also provide mock interview simulations to help candidates improve their skills and techniques. It is surprisingly good at providing situational questions.

Let’s expand this scenario a bit further. How about if the candidates record their audio or video responses to the questions given by ChatGPT? Speech can easily be converted into text and then GPT-3 has the ability to analyse the responses to provide further areas of improvement, and highlight any factual mistakes in the answers.

Salary Negotiation:

Most would agree that the  salary conversation with the recruiter is an immensely nervous time for candidates. In fact, more than 50% of candidate don’t negotiate their salary. One of the biggest reasons is the lack of knowledge or information and not having enough data in hand to know their self-worth. There are a few free open tools and government resources available to find an estimated salary benchmarking, however this requires an effort to research those tools to get the relevant information. And with the ever-changing market trends, these tools are not able to provide up-to-date information.

Enter ChatGPT and the potential for a candidate-focussed Talent Intelligence. There is an opportunity to develop an Artificial Intelligence based Talent Intelligence Model to serve candidates to advise them on how much they should demand from a specific organisation in a specific location by analysing multiple data sets, such as demand and supply of the talent, skills demand, industry’s compensations guidelines, micro and macroeconomic factors etc. This could be achieved by using the GPT-3 API to extract information from Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT), web scraping, and other subscription based resources. Well informed candidates will accelerate the trend of public salary disclosure and promote salary transparency.

Social Media and Networking:

It’s a low hanging fruit for the candidates to use ChatGPT to assist in drafting email messages that can help  initial conversations. There are a few opportunities here. The GPT-3 API can be developed to integrate with LinkedIn API to analyse key decision makers and recruiters from candidates’ employers or industries of choice. It can recommend who to connect with. It can initiate an icebreaking conversation upon candidate’s approval. GPT-3 can even help finding mutually interesting topics using web scraping techniques to initiate a warm conversation, which would hopefully convert into career opportunities.

Career Coaching:

ChatGPT can provide career advice, recommendations for additional courses and skills, and insights on career paths, skills to develop, and market demand for future roles. It can also provide information on industry trends and the qualifications in high demand. This information will be helpful for candidates to make informed decisions about their career development and improve their chances in job interviews. By making use of ChatGPT’s knowledge base and NLP capabilities, candidates can receive valuable guidance to advance their careers.

Thought Leadership and Content Generation:

It’s no secret that several highly capable candidates and subject matter experts shy away from sharing their knowledge and expertise with the wider audience. The reasons could be the language barriers, not having greater communication skills, being too busy, or simply knowledge sharing is not on their priority. ChatGPT is one of the most powerful tools available to bridge the communication gap by assisting in the content generation, allowing these experts can share their knowledge with minimal effort. It has the ability to understand the context and a minimal input with average English can connect the dots to generate a compelling message. It is capable of adjusting the tone of the language as per the required format, such as an article, whitepaper, scientific research paper, or to conversate with a wider audience to no relevant background.

Final Thoughts:

The role of Talent Acquisition is continuously evolving, and the use of tools like ChatGPT will speed up this evolution. Artificial Intelligence will create a “Counter-AI” or “bot vs. bot” scenario in Talent Acquisition, provided scalability of such business cases is viable. It is not about robots replacing recruiters, but about embracing, upskilling, and utilising technology for our benefit. Those who embrace and utilise such technologies will have a competitive advantage over the others whether it be a recruiter or a candidate. From the candidates’ perspective, those who adapt will increase their chances of benefiting from technology.

With the evolution of multiple fields in AI, its ubiquitousness, and ever-increasing computational power at affordable cost, the utilisation of technology in Talent Acquisition will continue to accelerate over time. Many tasks such as interviews scheduling and coordination, applications screening, and even candidates sourcing will gradually phase out from human interaction, while new opportunities will arise.

ChatGPT is a cornerstone, not a destination. As I write, OpenAI is reportedly working on GPT-5 which is said to be connected with the live internet, i.e. there will be with no knowledge cut-off date. Google is coming up with a similar tool Bard, and Microsoft is not content just by investing over $10 billion in ChatGPT, but is also integrating NLP in Bing search. Josh Bersin has recently written about his experience using Microsoft Bing and ChatGPT, if you’re interested to know more.

As AI transitions towards AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) with capabilities beyond our imagination, regulations at a global level are needed sooner than later however this is outside the scope of our discussion. Interesting times ahead, aren’t they?