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What job applicants get wrong about using AI

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Many people who use artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT to help with their job search are going about it in the wrong way.

Many people who use artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT to help with their job search are going about it in the wrong way.

Dan Hernandez/S.F. Chronicle

It’s rough out there for Bay Area job-seekers.

With many companies rushing to replace entry-level customer support and coding roles with artificial intelligence, the job market is becoming more competitive than ever. In June, U.S. job listings fell to 7.4 million, down from 7.7 million just a month earlier. Recent data also shows that job candidates need to submit an average of 42 applications just to land a single interview.

I co-founded a resale tech startup in San Francisco called Treet, and we’re seeing the problem firsthand. The truth is, companies like mine are part of a cultural shift. Instead of backfilling an engineering role recently, we invested in AI coding tools to help our existing team do more with less. It made sense, but it also resulted in one fewer job opening in a city that needs more of them. 

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The larger trend, however, confirms the grim labor landscape. Salesforce, one of the city’s largest employers, recently announced that AI now handles 30% to 50% of the company’s workload

Given this backdrop, it’s no wonder applicants are turning to AI tools to give themselves an edge in the job hunt. But while the instinct is understandable, many are using AI in ways that actually hurt their chances.

Every time we open a new role at Treet, we’re flooded with immaculate, 10-paragraph cover letters that all sound the same. It’s clear what these applicants are doing: They copy and paste the job description into ChatGPT along with their LinkedIn profile and say, “Write a compelling cover letter that matches my experience to what this company is looking for.”

I understand the allure: If you leverage AI to craft the perfect message, weaving your experience into the fabric of the job description, you’re sure to get the job, right? Wrong. 

Instead of convincing employers that you’re the perfect fit, you’re demonstrating to them that you take the easy way out and don’t care enough to make it look like you wrote the message. In fact, I’d much rather receive a cover letter full of typos than these monstrosities that are all too easy to spot.

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In fact, even one of the largest AI companies, Anthropic, discourages candidates from using AI in the interview process.

“We want to understand your personal interest in Anthropic without mediation through an AI system, and we also want to evaluate your non-AI-assisted communication skills,” the company told prospective applicants in a press release earlier this year. 

I’m not advocating that job seekers don’t use AI at all, but there’s a difference between using AI as an assistant and using AI as a crutch. 

Once a candidate does land an interview, with or without the help of AI, it’s then up to the employer to figure out how much an applicant’s skills are AI-powered. And thanks to AI’s proliferation, employers can no longer ask applicants to complete take-home assignments. Everything nowadays needs to be in real time. Even college professors are shifting to in-class essay writing to assess actual mastery of the material.

That same AI balancing act doesn’t end when a person is hired. We see it in our sales team. Our most successful sales reps use AI to enhance their messaging, not replace it. Every prospective client, it seems, has their AI-detecting guard up, allergic to anything that sounds remotely written by a large language model. 

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It’s not easy. It takes effort to prompt ChatGPT in the right way so a message is succinct, casual and sounds like an actual human wrote it. People want to buy from people, not from bots.

When training new sales hires, the first thing we teach them is to unlearn everything they know about writing. Even before ChatGPT, most college grads start by writing sales emails in a proper, “professional” format, with eloquently written sentences and perfect grammar, like a college essay. The second I see an email that says, “Dear Mr. Disraeli,” it’s going in the trash.

It’s remarkably easy to misuse AI in a way that comes across as too polished. The trick is to use AI to enhance, not replace, your humanity. 

Guest opinions in Open Forum and Insight are produced by writers with expertise, personal experience or original insights on a subject of interest to our readers. Their views do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Chronicle editorial board, which is committed to providing a diversity of ideas to our readership.

Yes, it’s scary out there. And while that means job candidates and prospects should use every tool to get ahead, they also need to understand how to do so in the right way.  

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So the next time you write an email, throw in a small typo to let me know you’re human or that you cared enough to use AI in a way that makes you seem human. 

Jake Disraeli is the co-founder and CEO of Treet, a San Francisco-based company that powers resale programs for over 250 fashion brands worldwide.



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How Artificial Intelligence is Redefining Business Process Automation

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In today’s fast-paced economy, businesses are under constant pressure to operate more efficiently while reducing costs and improving customer experiences. Automation has long been a solution, but traditional methods such as simple scripts or rigid workflows often fall short in terms of adaptability and intelligence. This is where artificial intelligence comes into play. By partnering with an Artificial Intelligence Development Company, organizations can unlock new opportunities for smarter decision-making, streamlined operations, and scalable growth.

The growing interest in AI-driven automation reflects its role as a key enabler of digital transformation. Unlike conventional automation, AI systems can analyze large datasets, learn from patterns, and make predictions that allow businesses to stay competitive in increasingly dynamic markets.

Why AI for Business Process Automation

Traditional automation methods—such as scripts or Robotic Process Automation (RPA)—are useful for handling repetitive, rule-based tasks. However, they lack flexibility and cannot adapt to new or changing conditions without manual intervention. Artificial intelligence takes automation a step further by enabling systems to learn, adapt, and improve over time.

Through machine learning and advanced data analytics, AI can identify hidden patterns, make predictions, and support real-time decision-making. This makes it possible not only to automate processes but also to optimize them dynamically, driving more value than traditional approaches.

Key Areas of Application

Finance
AI enables faster and more secure payment processing, advanced transaction analysis, and fraud detection systems that continuously learn to recognize suspicious patterns.

Marketing and Sales
From demand forecasting and personalized customer experiences to intelligent chatbots, AI helps companies better understand their audience and increase conversion rates.

Manufacturing and Logistics
AI-powered tools streamline supply chain management, predict equipment maintenance needs, and reduce downtime, ensuring smoother operations and higher efficiency.

Human Resources (HR)
Recruitment processes are enhanced through automated resume screening, predictive analysis of employee retention, and data-driven insights for workforce planning.

Advantages of Implementation

The implementation of AI in business processes brings several clear advantages. One of the most significant is cost reduction: by automating repetitive, labor-intensive tasks, companies can cut manual rework and optimize resource allocation, which lowers operating expenses without sacrificing quality. AI also accelerates processes, as models are capable of handling large data streams in near real time.

This speed translates into faster approvals, more efficient routing, more accurate forecasting, and quicker customer responses, all of which shorten cycle times. Another key benefit is error minimization. With advanced pattern recognition and anomaly detection, AI reduces human error, ensures data consistency, and helps stabilize performance metrics across workflows.

Finally, AI offers unmatched flexibility and scalability. Systems continuously learn from new data, allowing them to adapt to changing rules and business volumes, while cloud-native deployments make it possible to scale operations seamlessly as demand increases.

Potential Challenges

Despite these benefits, businesses face certain challenges when adopting AI automation. Costs and timelines are among the first hurdles. The discovery phase, data preparation, model training, and integration require significant upfront investment, and success often depends on a phased delivery approach to manage risk.

Data quality is another critical factor. If the available data is incomplete, biased, or siloed, the outcomes will inevitably suffer. Strong governance, robust cleaning pipelines, and continuous monitoring are necessary to maintain reliable results. Ethical and legal considerations must also be addressed.

Organizations need to ensure that their AI solutions operate with transparency, fairness, and respect for privacy, while remaining fully compliant with regulatory standards and internal policies.

Conclusion

AI-driven automation is now a core lever of competitiveness, improving speed, accuracy, and margins while enabling adaptive operations. Start small, pick a high-impact process, validate with a pilot, then scale iteratively with robust data governance and clear ROI checkpoints.

















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Here’s what parents need to know about artificial intelligence

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ChatGPT, AI chatbots, and the growing world of artificial intelligence: it’s another conversation parents may not have planned on having with their kids.

A new Harvard study found that half of all young adults have already used AI, and younger kids are quickly joining in.

Karl Ernsberger, a former high school teacher turned AI entrepreneur, says that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

“It is here to stay. It’s like people trying to resist the Industrial Revolution,” Ernsberger said.

Ernsberger believes tools like chatbots can be powerful for learning, but only if kids and parents know the limits.

One example is “Rudi the Red Panda,” a virtual character available for free in kids mode on X’s Grok AI. When asked, Rudi can even answer questions about Arizona history.

GROK

“The five C’s of Arizona are Copper, Cotton, Cattle, Citrus, Climate,” Rudi said.

But Ernsberger warns that children may struggle to understand that Rudi isn’t real, and that “friendship” with a chatbot is different from human connection.

“It’s hard for the student to actually develop a real friendship,” he said. “They get confused by that because friendship is something they continue to learn about as they get older.”

When asked if Rudi was really my best friend, it replied: “I’m as real as a red panda can be in your imagination. I’m here to be your best friend.”

That, Ernsberger says, is where parents need to step in.

For families trying to keep kids safe while exploring AI, Ernsberger’s first recommendation is simple.

“Use it yourself. There are so many use cases, so many different things that can be done with AI. Just finding a familiarity with it can help you find the weaknesses for your case, and its weaknesses for your kids.”

Then he says if your child is using AI, be there with them to watch over and keep the human connection.

“The key thing with AI is it’s challenging our ability to connect with each other, that’s a different kind of challenge to society than any other tool we’ve built in the past,” Ernsberger said.

Regulators are paying attention, too.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, along with 43 other state attorneys general, recently sent a letter to 12 AI companies, including the maker of Rudi, demanding stronger safeguards to protect young users.





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