I am in the job market this year for tenure-track positions.
I was wondering if you could tell me how good/bad it is to create cover letters using ChatGPT. I am making edits after I generate my cover letter, but I am worried that my applications are not getting picked up because of AI-generated cover letters.
What kind of impressions hiring committee get after looking at such a letter? I am in Math.
What kind of impressions hiring committee get after looking at such a letter? I am in Math.
For me, the effect would be similar to you writing
in big bold letters in your cover letter. Given that this is the sort of person you are, I would know that if my department hired you, we should fully expect you to continue to use AI assistance to write your course syllabi, committee reports, grant proposals, emails, and many other types of work products.
My likely reaction would be to be grateful to you for disclosing so clearly what kind of a person you are, and for saving me the work of reading the rest of your application and thinking how I should rate it.
As someone who recently read 20+ variations on pretty much the exact same cover letter for our department's open job, and was able to recapitulate almost that exact same cover letter by inputting a request to ChatGPT to make a cover letter for our job listing, I recommend against this.
ChatGPT is very good for "punching up" or proofreading a draft that you have already written, but left to create letters on its own usually results in pretty generic letters that will sound exactly like everyone else that requested ChatGPT write the letters for them. You want to stand out (in a good way) with your cover letter, and not blend in with everyone else.
This seems like an unwise idea. Meaningless pablum, whether ChatGPT-generated or not, is distasteful to most mathematicians I know, and is unlikely to go unread.
In my experience at a US research university, pro forma letters that are brief and don't say much anything of substance are commonplace and fine; however, I've heard that at more teaching-oriented universities a tailored cover letter is very important.
If you do write a longer, tailored cover letter, then the purpose is to demonstrate that you've put some thought into the position and why it's a good fit for you. My guess is that ChatGPT-generated output is unlikely to convince anybody of this.
If you use AI as a tool and carefully edit what it produces, then you should be fine. But, it depends on what your prompt to the AI was and what data it was trained on. If it produces generic text then it won't be very useful and might trigger readers that you aren't a serious contender. It might be obvious to some that it wasn't written by a human, even without a check.
I'd recommend against its use for producing cover letters (and other things), but only as a source of ideas. If I received a letter that I thought was AI generated, I'd certainly have doubts about the sender.
One normally writes a "generic" letter on their own and then tailors it for every application, based on the stated needs of an institution. You don't really need an AI for that, assuming you are applying to a reasonable number of positions. But the tailoring has to be sensible. If it is overly fawning or obsequious then it might be less than helpful, but more likely to be auto-generated.
And, if you aren't a native speaker, then an AI is especially dangerous to use as it may say things that aren't really proper, but that you don't "catch".
It's worth remembering that identifying (or even suspecting) artificially-generated isn't that difficult once you know what you're looking for. To use it successfully, at the moment, for anything much more detailed—or nuanced—than a list or basic description, you'd need to adjust the language so much that you might as well have written it in the first place.
In other words, I suspect that using ChatGPT would either harm your approach or just not save you the time you might think it does.
It is likely rather disadvantageous for you to use LLMs to create your cover letter for you.
The hiring committee will use your cover letter (alongside the other information you submitted) to determine if you are a good candidate for the position. Using a LLM both obscures most of the information (as the LLM can and will - by nature - only generate generic text) while - should they notice that it was created by a LLM - make some likely negative implications about you instead.
If I were part of a hiring committee and notice an applicant submitted LLM generated content, I would need to assume that they don't take the job seriously, are likely to continue using LLMs to generate text for them, or (most likely) both - which would make them a very bad fit.
In short: It is a bad idea, you will leave a bad impression, don't do it.
Before I go on I note that the instant I started an answer, the message "Answers generated by artificial intelligence tools are not allowed on Academia Stack Exchange". Bit of hint there, perhaps.
I had a job coach, years ago, who told that the cover letter is the most important part of the application. It's the thing that stops your application being instantly binned (or shredded in more GDPR conscious places).
Every cover letter should be crafted and targeted at the specific role you want.
They won't even glance at your CV if they don't like the cover letter.
One day you'll be the poor sod going through a hundred or more of these and, trust me, AI generated crap will be dumped.
Writing a cover letter (which extends into things like looking for grant money for research and a hundred other things) is a vital skill. Learn it.
Chat-GTP can help with improving an existing draft. It says things things like 'you write this, can you give an example?' or it may suggest better wording (in particular for non-native speakers, it is really good at improving text in this way).
View it in the same way as giving the letter to a friend who may give some suggested improvements, but do not use it to generate a letter from scratch.
I'm maybe a bit more pro-LLM than some other perspectives. My feeling is that using an LLM to help you generate text is fine, but using it as a replacement for thought is not.
In other words, a good cover letter should explain why you are a good fit for the position. There is an implicit question here, that requires thought. Which of your qualifications match the description in the letter? What accomplishments do you have that will make you stand out from the crowd? What are your goals for your research and teaching? If all you do is prompt ChatGPT with "write me a cover letter," it will not know the answers to those questions, and it will show that you have put no thought into it.
However, if you have put in the legwork to have answers for those questions, then you can use a language model much more effectively than simply saying "write me a cover letter." You can write a much more specific prompt like, "Write a letter that talks about my accomplishments X, Y, and Z, and that fits into University A which is looking for B, C, D. Make sure to emphasize my experience in super-duper-modern-technology and explain how it relates to Prof E's research in FGH." You could feed it a cover letter that you've written highlighting your skills and the job description and ask it to modify your cover letter to emphasize things in the job description. If you use it well, the result will be something that reflects the thought you have already put into answering the key questions for yourself.
Of course, once you get text from an LLM, you should not simply copy/paste it and call it done. You should read what it has written carefully, and use it for inspiration. Rewrite sentences to put them in your words (you may emphasize some ideas in a subtly different way), correct errors, add pieces that it has missed or that you have realized are important. In the end, you are still responsible for what you submit, and the text should reflect your thought and your work. But you can certainly use the LLM as an assistant to help you express your ideas.
On some level, the thought is the hard part, and coming up with text perhaps "should" be easy once you have done all that legwork. But you might have writer's block, or English may not be your first language, or just want some help since editing is often easier than starting with a blank page.
