Not That Kind of Doctor - How to Use AI to Land Your Dream Academic Job (Ethically!)
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02/14/2025
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Navigating the academic job market is challenging—balancing research, teaching, and applications can feel overwhelming. In this episode of Not That Kind of Doctor, Nick Husbye and Guy Trainin explore how AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and others can support your academic job search. We cover:
How AI can help draft cover letters, CVs, and application materials.
Using AI to tailor documents to specific job postings.
Generating interview questions and preparing your responses.
Ethical considerations when using AI in professional applications.
Avoiding “AI-generated blandness” while maintaining your voice.
Whether you’re a seasoned professor exploring new opportunities or a doctoral student preparing for your first job search, this episode offers practical tips and cautionary tales on using AI effectively (and ethically).
Chapters
00:00 - Welcome to “Yes, AI Can Help… But Don’t Be That Person”
03:05 - So… What AI Tools Are We Actually Using? (Spoiler: We’re Polyamorous)
05:25 - Training Your AI: More “Crafting a Pet” Than “Magic Button”
09:03 - AI vs. The Cover Letter That Ate Your Soul
13:00 - Interview Prep: Let AI Ask the Hard Questions (So You’re Not Sweating Later)
17:00 - Campus Docs: When the Strategic Plan Reads Like a Fruit Salad
22:48 - Don’t Sound Like a Robot: Surviving the Interview (With Your Soul Intact)
24:56 - Post-Interview Emails: Avoiding “Dear Hiring Committee at [Insert Wrong School]”
28:52 - Final Thoughts: AI Is a Tool… Not Your New Dissertation Advisor
#AcademicJobSearch #AIinHigherEd #AIforProfessors #ChatGPTforAcademics #AcademicCareers #HigherEdCareers #AIJobTools #JobSearchTips #AIinEducation #PhDLife #FacultyApplications #AcademicCoverLetters #AIInterviewPrep #NotThatKindOfDoctor #ProfessorTips
Using AI In Your Job Search - Not That Kind of Doctor with Nick Husbye and Guy Trainin
www.youtube.com/@tltenotthatkindofdoctor
Searchable Transcript
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- [00:00:00.330]Hi, and welcome back to Not That Kind of Doctor,
- [00:00:03.900]the podcast where we explore the challenges
- [00:00:07.740]and triumphs of navigating academia and beyond.
- [00:00:12.240]I'm Nick Husbye, I'm an associate professor
- [00:00:14.130]of elementary literacy education here at UNL.
- [00:00:17.190]And I'm Guy Trainin,
- [00:00:18.330]professor of education here at UNL.
- [00:00:20.880]And today we're diving into the fascinating world of AI.
- [00:00:25.230]This is fairly recent that we have the capacity to use it
- [00:00:30.300]and we think that you can really use the help
- [00:00:35.070]of AI when you're looking for a job,
- [00:00:37.020]especially an academic job.
- [00:00:38.700]But it's true, even outside academia, you can use it.
- [00:00:41.910]Exactly.
- [00:00:42.743]And it is, it feels a little Jetson esque, right?
- [00:00:45.720]Like it's no longer this futuristic fantasy.
- [00:00:50.250]It's here and it's changing the ways that we do things.
- [00:00:53.070]It's changing the way that we interact with one another
- [00:00:55.290]and we can, we think,
- [00:00:58.230]leverage this tool in order to help us with the job process.
- [00:01:02.850]So whether you are a seasoned professor looking
- [00:01:06.060]to make a move or a soon to be graduated doctoral student,
- [00:01:09.960]we think that AI has something to offer you.
- [00:01:13.470]And we'll be exploring the various ways
- [00:01:17.040]that you can use AI.
- [00:01:18.210]It's not going to be an exhaustive list,
- [00:01:20.370]but we are going to talk about how you can,
- [00:01:22.890]how it can help you prepare your documents,
- [00:01:25.200]how it can help you in the interview process
- [00:01:27.630]and with the follow up after that.
- [00:01:30.300]Lots of little
- [00:01:31.380]and big ways that you can really use
- [00:01:34.620]that power to address something
- [00:01:36.750]we actually talked about when we talked about the academic
- [00:01:39.690]job search, and that is how do you craft
- [00:01:43.530]a somewhat different set of materials for every job?
- [00:01:47.310]And how do you do this when suddenly you may be
- [00:01:49.770]applying to 30 jobs?
- [00:01:51.090]That is, that is a high order while you're trying
- [00:01:53.610]to finish a dissertation.
- [00:01:55.830]Or if you already have an academic job
- [00:01:57.690]and you're looking for the next one,
- [00:01:59.820]you are working full-time, you're teaching,
- [00:02:01.560]you're doing all the things,
- [00:02:03.060]but now you are also on top of that doing an extra thing.
- [00:02:07.050]And so thinking about how we can use this technology
- [00:02:10.200]to really help you.
- [00:02:12.450]And we wanna be careful about not using AI blindly, right?
- [00:02:16.200]So we want to discuss some of the ethical considerations of
- [00:02:19.650]how that's working, as well as what are some
- [00:02:23.640]of the pitfalls when you are perhaps tempted
- [00:02:27.900]to fall into the, oh, AI will do that for me, kind of trap.
- [00:02:32.040]How do we avoid that?
- [00:02:33.360]Yes.
- [00:02:34.193]And so if you are ready to discover how AI
- [00:02:37.680]can really give you an edge in the job search while
- [00:02:41.220]being careful, ethical,
- [00:02:42.930]and also careful that everything
- [00:02:45.060]that you're sending out into the world is true
- [00:02:47.910]and is putting you in the best light then
- [00:02:53.160]stay with us on Not That Kind of Doctor and let's go.
- [00:02:56.670]Let's go.
- [00:02:57.900](intense music)
- [00:03:05.490]So what are the kinds
- [00:03:07.710]of AI you are using right now, generative AI.
- [00:03:10.230]Generative AI.
- [00:03:11.100]I am basic.
- [00:03:14.970]I am a basic, I am still using ChatGPT, which,
- [00:03:19.740]you know, works for me.
- [00:03:20.967]And one of the reasons that I still used,
- [00:03:23.951]one of the reasons that I am using ChatGPT is
- [00:03:27.030]that I have trained it to do particular things
- [00:03:30.990]and we have a history.
- [00:03:33.270]And because of that, I can get it to do
- [00:03:37.320]closer to what I want it to do in fewer prompts.
- [00:03:41.160]And that's important to me.
- [00:03:42.390]It actually saves me time
- [00:03:44.220]because I've front loaded it with a lot of information.
- [00:03:48.870]Yeah and I think that's a huge part of it
- [00:03:50.940]because there are a few models out there.
- [00:03:53.550]I use multiple models
- [00:03:55.200]because I'm doing some of my research about that,
- [00:03:58.020]I'm teaching about that.
- [00:03:59.181]Oh, we know, we know you're AI polyamorous,
- [00:04:01.590]It's all good.
- [00:04:02.640]Yeah, different screens, they all know about each other.
- [00:04:05.640]There's an agreement.
- [00:04:07.080]And so I've found that different,
- [00:04:11.700]different AI gives you somewhat different results,
- [00:04:15.060]but eventually, I completely agree with you.
- [00:04:17.670]And that is, if you can choose a model that is good enough
- [00:04:20.910]for you and that you can start shaping
- [00:04:25.350]and making sure it knows certain things about you,
- [00:04:28.080]it makes the process a lot easier.
- [00:04:30.510]And it makes the process
- [00:04:31.800]of getting the product you want a lot faster.
- [00:04:34.800]So for example, in Claude,
- [00:04:36.480]you can upload things you've written and it creates a style.
- [00:04:41.700]So if, especially if you are in the middle
- [00:04:44.490]or you've done some of the work in a job search,
- [00:04:47.220]you can upload the previous letters and the, and your CV
- [00:04:52.110]and resume and whatever other documents you have.
- [00:04:54.870]And it can create a style
- [00:04:56.490]and a knowledge base based on that.
- [00:04:58.710]And that makes it considerably easier.
- [00:05:01.770]So sometimes it's actually better
- [00:05:05.280]to use AI in the more advanced stages
- [00:05:08.490]because you already have a voice that AI can learn about
- [00:05:13.140]and use versus starting from scratch
- [00:05:16.020]and having AI write your letters.
- [00:05:17.550]Because if AI write the letter
- [00:05:19.590]without knowing much about you
- [00:05:20.970]and without knowing a little bit about your style,
- [00:05:24.280]it's going to be very mechanical.
- [00:05:25.290]It's going to sound like everybody else.
- [00:05:27.240]And our job is to make ourselves stick out
- [00:05:30.600]and say, I'm a great fit to this.
- [00:05:32.970]Not, I'm like everybody else in a more generalized sense.
- [00:05:36.450]So the danger here is that generalization.
- [00:05:39.390]Right, the thing that you always wanna keep in mind
- [00:05:41.340]is any kind of generative AI is kind of like that friend
- [00:05:47.490]who always says yes to everything.
- [00:05:49.830]Yes. You know?
- [00:05:51.090]And ultimately you stop being friends with that person
- [00:05:54.990]because the decision fatigue is just oof, real.
- [00:05:58.560]And so you have to,
- [00:06:01.860]generative AI doesn't just give you
- [00:06:05.580]good quality products unless you invest in it.
- [00:06:09.300]So I find it helpful to, like you said,
- [00:06:13.080]begin building up a dossier
- [00:06:15.750]of the characteristics of your writing.
- [00:06:17.610]And whenever I'm working on a new
- [00:06:21.780]project that I'm able to use AI to support, that's one
- [00:06:26.040]of the first things that I start doing.
- [00:06:27.930]I start building the profile of what are the characteristics
- [00:06:31.950]of the final product.
- [00:06:34.020]And then we start working on the ideation stuff.
- [00:06:37.110]But I always keep that in the back of my head.
- [00:06:39.930]And so if you're thinking about job applications, you know,
- [00:06:44.760]teaching the AI, this feels very science fiction-y,
- [00:06:50.040]but teaching the AI about who you are, what are your skills,
- [00:06:55.020]how might you rethink your skills based upon, you know,
- [00:06:59.640]what the job is asking for is really important.
- [00:07:03.150]Don't just input and say, write me a letter of application
- [00:07:05.580]'cause it's going to, it'll, it'll create your letter,
- [00:07:08.910]but it's gonna be a meh letter, right?
- [00:07:11.640]Like, as opposed to if you have a profile built up,
- [00:07:16.530]it's going to be more specific to you
- [00:07:18.510]as well as the job itself.
- [00:07:20.940]And that's really important.
- [00:07:22.590]And one of the things that I loved
- [00:07:25.560]as I watched graduate students apply
- [00:07:28.650]for multiple jobs is we did an experiment
- [00:07:32.730]and we took his cover letter
- [00:07:34.170]and we put it inside for evaluation.
- [00:07:36.780]So one of the things you can do is instead
- [00:07:39.000]of direct help in writing,
- [00:07:41.520]which sometimes can create these structures
- [00:07:44.430]and sentences that are easily identified, identifiable
- [00:07:47.640]as AI, and I'm pretty sure you don't want that.
- [00:07:52.140]I recently got a letter, an email from somebody
- [00:07:57.450]that I recognized as this was written with the help
- [00:08:00.480]of ChatGPT, and my brain went, hmm.
- [00:08:04.080]So this was a short email and you needed help.
- [00:08:08.070]And so I didn't know, I mean,
- [00:08:09.810]and I do a lot of AI, so eventually I had to come to terms
- [00:08:12.870]with the fact that it was actually perfectly fine.
- [00:08:15.240]But when you are applying for a job,
- [00:08:19.080]you do not want people thinking about how much AI do you use
- [00:08:22.320]to actually craft this.
- [00:08:24.570]And so we did some work
- [00:08:27.810]and we asked ChatGPT
- [00:08:29.070]to give feedback on the cover letter.
- [00:08:31.590]And the same thing that came over repeatedly is,
- [00:08:35.280]this is way too long.
- [00:08:36.240]The cover letter was about five or six pages, yes.
- [00:08:40.650]And you usually want,
- [00:08:42.750]but when you are writing an application,
- [00:08:45.060]if you haven't seen our previous episode about preparing
- [00:08:48.780]your materials, you don't know.
- [00:08:50.970]Nobody says this needs to be two pages long.
- [00:08:54.390]I mean, usually the job posting does.
- [00:08:57.360]Some do, many don't.
- [00:08:59.970]But this is a great opportunity.
- [00:09:03.300]So one of the things
- [00:09:04.320]that you can do is you can actually put into the AI your
- [00:09:08.850]letter and the job description and say to ChatGPT
- [00:09:13.380]or in my case my friend Claude, very often,
- [00:09:17.400]how does my letter match the job description?
- [00:09:21.840]And it'll say, well it's very good
- [00:09:23.490]because it always tells you you're awesome.
- [00:09:25.680]This is one of the problems with it.
- [00:09:27.320]Oh, mine doesn't.
- [00:09:28.153]I have trained mine to be like, look,
- [00:09:29.760]if we are bro, if we're gonna be friends,
- [00:09:32.400]I don't need a yes friend.
- [00:09:33.720]I need a friend who's gonna push me and make me better.
- [00:09:35.880]And that is your job.
- [00:09:37.020]And it's like, I'm a little uncomfortable.
- [00:09:38.880]I don't care.
- [00:09:41.550]Have these conversations with your AI on time.
- [00:09:44.760]And that's part of creating this
- [00:09:48.060]specifically tailored AI that knows something about you
- [00:09:52.140]and then ask them to evaluate and to give some suggestions.
- [00:09:56.130]So even if it's trying to butter you up,
- [00:09:58.710]it'll give you suggestions about what's not
- [00:10:01.140]evident in your letter.
- [00:10:02.640]Or if you want, you can put the full corpus of your letter
- [00:10:06.390]and your CV and whatever else.
- [00:10:09.510]Like looking at all of the documents, it's still not clear
- [00:10:12.450]how you match with this kind of a request.
- [00:10:16.230]This is especially helpful, I would argue,
- [00:10:18.960]when people write very detailed, very long ads.
- [00:10:23.244]Yes.
- [00:10:24.077]And those are, I find those problematic in general
- [00:10:27.840]because it's like, how can I respond to 47 things
- [00:10:32.850]that you want in this position without understanding what's
- [00:10:36.240]more important and what's less?
- [00:10:37.740]Well, and I think, I think that's where
- [00:10:39.300]before you start going into the, here's my letter,
- [00:10:42.150]how does this match, ask it to do,
- [00:10:46.200]here's a job description.
- [00:10:48.720]What are some concrete ways that I can speak to
- [00:10:51.870]what this job description is asking for?
- [00:10:53.520]And help me understand based upon the ways
- [00:10:56.310]that this job posting is written, what's most important
- [00:11:00.780]and what's least important.
- [00:11:02.730]It's all important, but there's some stuff that's going
- [00:11:05.640]to be really foregrounded
- [00:11:06.885]and some stuff that's gonna be somewhat backgrounded so
- [00:11:09.630]that you can think through that determining of importance
- [00:11:13.980]and be sure that you're asking why for that, that whatever,
- [00:11:20.370]whatever bot you're using to help you think through, oh,
- [00:11:26.280]this because of this.
- [00:11:27.853]But that also gives you a way to think through
- [00:11:31.260]where your attention needs to go to.
- [00:11:33.150]And then once you have that down, like there's,
- [00:11:36.780]there's some computational thinking here, right?
- [00:11:38.790]There's some logic models.
- [00:11:40.140]Once you have that down, okay,
- [00:11:41.550]here's my letter, now based upon what we know here,
- [00:11:44.130]based upon what we've discovered here,
- [00:11:46.801]how does my letter match up?
- [00:11:48.900]What are revisions that I could make to this in order
- [00:11:51.570]to help me make this more clear?
- [00:11:55.680]And most of this is about discovery.
- [00:11:59.190]And the important thing
- [00:12:00.840]to always think about is you cannot just
- [00:12:05.520]rewrite it with AI saying match this letter to this job.
- [00:12:09.030]I mean you can play that game and it might work,
- [00:12:12.030]but you have to be very, very careful that
- [00:12:16.740]what we sometimes call hallucination isn't happening
- [00:12:19.680]because AI, if it's missing data,
- [00:12:22.050]sometimes it says I don't have that.
- [00:12:24.450]Depending on AI, sometimes it just makes up stuff
- [00:12:28.050]or changes it in a way
- [00:12:30.570]that you would not be comfortable with.
- [00:12:32.790]So it is really, really important
- [00:12:34.950]however you're using AI to make sure
- [00:12:37.590]that you've gone over everything
- [00:12:39.390]and you make sure it's not saying anything
- [00:12:42.180]that you don't want it to say.
- [00:12:44.910]Not in tone, but definitely not in content.
- [00:12:48.150]Yes, and you can put some boundaries around that.
- [00:12:50.190]Like when we're generating this, these are the sources
- [00:12:54.960]that you are referencing.
- [00:12:55.980]You are not referencing anything else.
- [00:12:57.540]Particularly now that it has like web search ability.
- [00:13:00.570]Yeah, yeah.
- [00:13:02.084]These are the documents you're referencing.
- [00:13:02.917]You are not referencing anything else.
- [00:13:04.230]This is it, this is all you get.
- [00:13:06.120]And then it pouts a little bit, but still.
- [00:13:08.310]And this is why when we talk about different AI,
- [00:13:11.940]you do need to know that there are differences.
- [00:13:14.220]So Gemini and ChatGPT query the web,
- [00:13:18.581]so they'll go and fetch stuff unless you tell them not to.
- [00:13:22.523]Claude does not.
- [00:13:24.600]Claude is right now at least a closed box.
- [00:13:27.570]So it's been trained and it is not going
- [00:13:30.750]and gathering anything in real time.
- [00:13:32.820]The advantage is it doesn't mess up those kind of things.
- [00:13:36.090]The disadvantage obviously it can't go out
- [00:13:38.790]and find out things right as things change.
- [00:13:41.670]So that's something to think about.
- [00:13:43.020]And eventually the last new, the newcomer is DeepSeek.
- [00:13:47.730]And what DeepSeek does,
- [00:13:49.470]and that's what you talked about is DeepSeek actually
- [00:13:52.410]tells you where the thoughts are coming from.
- [00:13:54.960]So there's a script before the answer that says, here's
- [00:13:58.350]how I'm thinking about your answer
- [00:13:59.820]and these are the things I'm focusing on.
- [00:14:01.740]So that ability to read
- [00:14:03.300]that not insignificant script allows you to know
- [00:14:07.576]what were the considerations that led
- [00:14:12.660]to this answer.
- [00:14:13.860]So if it considers, if you don't like the considerations,
- [00:14:16.440]you can actually change the prompt
- [00:14:18.060]and make sure that it adheres to what it's,
- [00:14:21.930]what you want to do.
- [00:14:23.310]Again, knowing that AI in general are trying
- [00:14:26.670]to satisfy whatever you ask them to do,
- [00:14:29.460]and they will do it when there's not enough information,
- [00:14:32.490]they will try and go and get other information to fill in.
- [00:14:36.540]And that's where it gets super tricky.
- [00:14:39.390]And you are completely responsible
- [00:14:41.970]for everything that comes out.
- [00:14:43.620]And you don't want to be that person.
- [00:14:45.810]And that's where the ethics of this come about.
- [00:14:47.520]Because you want to ensure
- [00:14:50.340]that you are not miscommunicating one who you are,
- [00:14:54.690]you're not misleading that search committee.
- [00:14:58.380]So you want to make sure
- [00:15:00.660]that you are putting those boundaries on that you are,
- [00:15:05.010]you are an active participant in the
- [00:15:06.570]construction of those materials.
- [00:15:07.950]Even if you are using AI, I would highly, highly
- [00:15:12.946]encourage you to not ever rely fully on anything AI-ish.
- [00:15:19.050]You need to become a much better editor and curator
- [00:15:23.730]I think when you're using AI.
- [00:15:25.440]Yes.
- [00:15:26.280]Because you don't have as much control.
- [00:15:28.110]And that's something that I've been,
- [00:15:29.678]I mean you have control,
- [00:15:31.560]but not during necessarily like the,
- [00:15:33.780]during the generative process.
- [00:15:35.760]And so you have to be able to go back in, edit it,
- [00:15:38.370]make it make sense, make it fit who you are,
- [00:15:40.802]and just making sure
- [00:15:44.160]that you are not shoving it into AI
- [00:15:47.400]and using whatever comes out.
- [00:15:48.780]That's not gonna work well.
- [00:15:49.890]Well that's going to be just like,
- [00:15:52.920]or even worse than just using the form letter
- [00:15:55.380]that you send everybody, right?
- [00:15:56.430]Sometimes with the wrong university's name in the letter,
- [00:15:59.430]because that's exactly how it's going
- [00:16:00.990]to read without that care.
- [00:16:03.420]But, and we're talking a lot about the editing
- [00:16:06.510]and the refining and all of that,
- [00:16:09.300]and it's almost sounds like it's more work.
- [00:16:11.490]It's not more work
- [00:16:12.480]because AI can help you speed up the adjustment
- [00:16:16.140]and really get you to the point where you are,
- [00:16:20.490]you have a direction, you have comments, you have something
- [00:16:23.040]to work on which speeds up the process.
- [00:16:27.240]Especially if you have, you know, you found 10 possible jobs
- [00:16:31.440]and now you wrote the first letter, you are happy with it,
- [00:16:34.140]but now it's a somewhat different job.
- [00:16:36.390]And now you have to start changing anything.
- [00:16:38.898]And this is where, this is the moment
- [00:16:42.150]for me at least when I'm working with graduate students
- [00:16:44.910]who are doing this work, this is the moment where like,
- [00:16:47.250]okay, you've got the core text
- [00:16:50.010]that you can use, now let's make sure it fits.
- [00:16:53.160]This is where AI can really be super helpful.
- [00:16:56.760]Alright, so the next step is interviews, right?
- [00:17:00.027]Oh, the dreaded interview.
- [00:17:01.017]The two interviews, the zoom interview
- [00:17:02.910]and the interview in person.
- [00:17:04.440]So what do you think AI can do for us in that realm?
- [00:17:08.430]So I think AI is going to be helpful in terms of
- [00:17:14.520]helping generate questions
- [00:17:17.490]that could be asked within that interview.
- [00:17:20.520]Knowing that the Zoom interview is often that first initial,
- [00:17:24.840]like, who is this person?
- [00:17:27.540]How did their interest match up?
- [00:17:29.220]Like it gives you, it gives you a more in depth experience
- [00:17:32.190]based upon the materials that you got
- [00:17:33.750]that were submitted to the job.
- [00:17:35.400]And then once you get there,
- [00:17:36.870]that's when things get really specific.
- [00:17:39.600]And that might be where the,
- [00:17:42.405]the AI can be most helpful as it's really working
- [00:17:47.160]to think about what is,
- [00:17:51.150]who is this institution?
- [00:17:53.400]What is this job within this institution?
- [00:17:56.460]And what are some questions that folks at varying levels,
- [00:18:00.840]deans, other faculty chairs that they're looking for,
- [00:18:07.860]helping you generate some of those questions.
- [00:18:09.900]And then also based upon
- [00:18:12.690]those questions, helping you think through responses.
- [00:18:16.560]Like what is it that you want to be conveying?
- [00:18:19.170]Like what is, I hate to talk about branding, but branding.
- [00:18:23.730]Yeah.
- [00:18:25.102]What is the branding that you want as you move into
- [00:18:28.230]that interview space?
- [00:18:29.970]So in prep, it's great to get the questions.
- [00:18:35.040]And again, I want to remind you that you want to put
- [00:18:38.610]as many documents into the AI
- [00:18:41.880]that describe the job, the expectations,
- [00:18:45.420]the more details you can put in,
- [00:18:48.450]the more specific the questions
- [00:18:51.360]and the closer they will be to the questions
- [00:18:54.330]that might actually be asked.
- [00:18:55.800]If you just ask, what are people gonna ask me in a,
- [00:18:59.130]in a Zoom interview for a job, that's so general,
- [00:19:02.430]it's going to give you the five questions that, you know,
- [00:19:05.010]every job will ask.
- [00:19:06.840]And that's not going to be helpful
- [00:19:09.210]because academic job search is inherently different.
- [00:19:11.490]They're gonna ask different questions
- [00:19:13.590]and they're going to be a lot more specific.
- [00:19:15.600]So you want to be ready for that.
- [00:19:17.400]The second piece is, and this is the hardest documents
- [00:19:20.400]to read, especially if you're doing more than one
- [00:19:22.290]or two applications,
- [00:19:23.790]is actually the documents about the college,
- [00:19:26.100]about the university.
- [00:19:27.630]Maybe they have some kind of a strategic plan.
- [00:19:30.990]And wading through these documents is incredibly hard.
- [00:19:34.800]Sometimes they're concise, often.
- [00:19:37.080]They're not.
- [00:19:38.459]They're a fruit salad of,
- [00:19:40.350]because they, they cover, for example, a strategic plan
- [00:19:42.870]for our university covered everything
- [00:19:45.690]and every, all departments and all colleges.
- [00:19:47.970]So the language is general and all of that.
- [00:19:50.400]And one of the things that I found really,
- [00:19:52.200]really useful in trying to wade
- [00:19:54.660]through these long documents is something like Notebook LM
- [00:19:57.750]that has been very famous last year where you can put a few
- [00:20:00.930]of these documents and then it,
- [00:20:02.550]you can ask questions about it, just these documents.
- [00:20:05.850]So it does not go at all beyond the documents.
- [00:20:09.090]And so you can, you will not be confused by things
- [00:20:12.660]that the AI imagines
- [00:20:14.670]and then you can get it in the form of just a summary sheet
- [00:20:19.260]or even you can guide it to give you questions
- [00:20:23.220]that are more relevant to the job.
- [00:20:24.570]Or you can get a short podcast like
- [00:20:29.700]thing where they describe what's in the materials.
- [00:20:33.780]So if audio input is better for you
- [00:20:37.170]or if you're driving to work
- [00:20:38.427]and this is the best time for you to think about this,
- [00:20:41.010]you can turn it into an audio and then listen to it.
- [00:20:44.040]It's usually 12 to 15 minutes.
- [00:20:46.650]The more documents you have, the better it is.
- [00:20:49.080]But it'll give you a description
- [00:20:50.460]and it'll give you some insights that you trying to go
- [00:20:53.580]through a document that has, you know,
- [00:20:55.860]47, sometimes 147 bullets and you're like,
- [00:21:01.590]I can read the bullets but I don't know what's ticking.
- [00:21:04.740]You can actually get a better summary that way.
- [00:21:07.920]And that helps you prepare when you are, again,
- [00:21:11.280]if it's one university you can take the time,
- [00:21:13.650]but if you are applying to multiple universities,
- [00:21:16.705]there's a moment where it becomes solid.
- [00:21:18.420]So you can actually use something like Notebook LM
- [00:21:21.960]to get a summary like that.
- [00:21:23.801]Well, and I also think that it's helpful in terms of,
- [00:21:26.760]'cause I think one of the potential pitfalls of this is
- [00:21:30.240]then once you are, once you're, once you've come up
- [00:21:33.390]with these example questions
- [00:21:35.340]and you've come up with answers, is to not be able
- [00:21:40.230]to improvise in the moment.
- [00:21:42.390]Like if they ask you a question,
- [00:21:43.860]remember that humans are still
- [00:21:46.470]superior to the AI technology.
- [00:21:48.420]For sure.
- [00:21:49.253]Who knows how long that's gonna last.
- [00:21:50.400]But you know, but if they throw you a curve
- [00:21:55.260]ball to be able to take
- [00:21:58.740]what preparation you've done and address that moment.
- [00:22:02.400]Also don't memorize scripts.
- [00:22:04.980]Yeah. Memorize bullet points.
- [00:22:07.170]Like what are the most important things that you want
- [00:22:09.240]to convey at every instance in this interview?
- [00:22:12.780]Like what is the branding, again, coming back to
- [00:22:15.570]that branding so that
- [00:22:19.110]if a question comes out of left field, you can say,
- [00:22:23.640]that is a great question,
- [00:22:25.440]I need a minute to think about that.
- [00:22:27.150]Here's how and organizing your thoughts
- [00:22:29.220]and then going back, like ultimately you have
- [00:22:32.760]to have the thoughts.
- [00:22:34.470]Yes, absolutely. To convey.
- [00:22:36.854]Like AI is not gonna interview for you.
- [00:22:39.660]So remember that it's a tool
- [00:22:42.510]to help you perform within those interviews.
- [00:22:46.080]It's not the interview itself.
- [00:22:48.090]And so you want to make sure that your understanding of
- [00:22:51.210]what AI has helped you think about is flexible enough
- [00:22:54.810]that in those situations you don't come off as robotic.
- [00:22:59.100]Yeah, or you don't come off as I'm actually reading a text
- [00:23:03.450]that I just prepared.
- [00:23:05.193]Right.
- [00:23:06.026]Because I always say this
- [00:23:08.158]as somebody who's made many videos, it is actually very hard
- [00:23:11.370]to read text and look natural as if you're speaking
- [00:23:15.420]and not just reading the,
- [00:23:17.550]the reading becomes automatic.
- [00:23:19.440]Why Guy, I have no idea what you're talking about.
- [00:23:22.170]This is really new and interesting to me
- [00:23:24.000]as I read off this imaginary teleprompter.
- [00:23:25.980]What do you mean it's hard to do?
- [00:23:28.170]It is hard for me.
- [00:23:29.460]Limited processing power.
- [00:23:31.050]However, the last thing I wanted
- [00:23:33.360]to say about interviews is we recommend and,
- [00:23:37.047]and I think we still recommend practice with people.
- [00:23:41.190]So practice giving the answer in front of people.
- [00:23:43.500]If it's practice for a Zoom interview,
- [00:23:45.210]actually practice doing this on Zoom.
- [00:23:47.400]Yep.
- [00:23:48.495]So people can give you feedback.
- [00:23:49.547]However, especially Gemini is really right now in live mode
- [00:23:52.830]can see you.
- [00:23:54.090]So you can actually place your iPad or computer
- [00:23:58.440]or whatever to do the interview with you
- [00:24:02.940]and to after that give you feedback.
- [00:24:05.700]So yes, it can be done.
- [00:24:07.980]I don't know how I feel about this.
- [00:24:09.510]I don't know either.
- [00:24:10.590]But I think if you don't have a choice
- [00:24:12.810]or if you are having a moment in the middle of the night
- [00:24:16.500]and you're like, I need another practice session,
- [00:24:19.050]don't wake me up.
- [00:24:20.400]Call Gemini.
- [00:24:22.440]Yeah.
- [00:24:24.570]We should try this and then we'll see.
- [00:24:26.610]Oh, living in the future is scary.
- [00:24:28.080]Yes, it is.
- [00:24:29.310]It is just like the, the podcast in Notebook LM,
- [00:24:34.440]where they pause and they say,
- [00:24:36.930]and you can hear them breathing.
- [00:24:39.000]My thought is, you are digitally designed voices.
- [00:24:44.188]You do not need to take a breath. thank you very much.
- [00:24:46.470]Yeah, I mean it's not,
- [00:24:47.397]and the future isn't necessarily scary,
- [00:24:49.080]it's just how quickly and fast this is all happening.
- [00:24:54.440]Alright, so if we're thinking about,
- [00:24:56.490]this is your favorite part, thinking about follow up
- [00:24:59.670]and networking.
- [00:25:00.690]You love a good network.
- [00:25:02.250]You love a good connection with people..
- [00:25:05.580]You love a good, I know you'll love a good email.
- [00:25:07.260]I'm still, I'm still chuckling a little bit about your, oh,
- [00:25:10.320]this email was constructed by AI.
- [00:25:15.720]Why use of AI but also challenging.
- [00:25:18.540]Yes.
- [00:25:19.907]So if you are not sure how to construct
- [00:25:23.280]a letter back or a note or an email, AI is great.
- [00:25:28.470]I suggest, like we did with everything else,
- [00:25:30.960]do not copy and paste.
- [00:25:32.250]It is fairly obvious when you do, so if you are stumped
- [00:25:38.027]for ideas or if you want to think about
- [00:25:41.610]how we can do this effectively, AI can help you think
- [00:25:45.540]through, again, I recommend not copying and pasting
- [00:25:48.510]because AI has very specific patterns
- [00:25:51.390]that even though they're hard to pin down,
- [00:25:53.400]you often can tell, again,
- [00:25:56.336]not with a hundred percent accuracy.
- [00:25:57.570]So the advantage of AI
- [00:26:01.080]for me especially is usually when you are sending a thank
- [00:26:04.770]you right after your Zoom interview
- [00:26:06.780]or especially on campus interview, you are loaded,
- [00:26:11.040]you are tired, you are exhausted,
- [00:26:13.230]you want to do this quickly.
- [00:26:14.460]So AI is for me the help to just push you
- [00:26:18.690]to say, I can do this.
- [00:26:19.860]I know I'm mentally fatigued and all of that,
- [00:26:22.542]but with the help of AI, I can just send this follow up
- [00:26:26.520]and try to connect in one way or another
- [00:26:29.970]and AI can get me over that hump.
- [00:26:33.270]So sometimes, often for me,
- [00:26:34.950]because the construction of these things is often difficult
- [00:26:38.310]for me, maybe because both culturally
- [00:26:40.260]and linguistically English is hard for me,
- [00:26:42.330]American culture is a little bit harder,
- [00:26:44.190]having an advice about how to say this nicely.
- [00:26:48.210]Not to say too much, but not to sound abrupt, my emails tend
- [00:26:51.150]to be abrupt, anybody that experienced them.
- [00:26:54.780]And so you, you don't want to leave people
- [00:26:58.350]with potentially a kind of negative feedback.
- [00:27:01.230]So this is where it is incredibly helpful
- [00:27:03.690]because often for me, the difficulty in the follow up,
- [00:27:07.350]especially the emails
- [00:27:08.430]and even handwritten notes, is that I don't know exactly
- [00:27:12.780]what to write, so I keep pushing it off
- [00:27:15.000]and then it's too late to do that right?
- [00:27:17.601]There's a period where you can send a thank you note.
- [00:27:20.250]There's a period where that thank you note
- [00:27:21.930]is a little bit late.
- [00:27:23.490]It's like milk, there's an expiration date, right?
- [00:27:26.073]Like the window closes and also the, the again,
- [00:27:31.526]train your AI to do what you want it to do, right?
- [00:27:37.560]So like I've got in ChatGPT,
- [00:27:42.240]I've got some different genres
- [00:27:44.460]that I have laid out the characteristics of,
- [00:27:46.680]and this is how, this is what I prioritize in my responses
- [00:27:53.010]and it's really been helpful in terms of
- [00:27:57.749]like, there's very little editing now that I have to do,
- [00:28:01.230]but that's because I've been actively building
- [00:28:03.660]that base from which ChatGPT can pull from.
- [00:28:07.890]And it knows, it knows me.
- [00:28:11.700]If only it were, you know,
- [00:28:12.900]if only, if only it could take out the trash every once
- [00:28:15.120]in a while, that'd be great.
- [00:28:16.140]Like that'd be a great partnership.
- [00:28:19.230]But if you are, if you haven't done that work, then yeah,
- [00:28:22.740]you definitely again wanna make sure
- [00:28:24.688]that you're editing, avoid copy and paste
- [00:28:26.610]unless you know that you've done that work
- [00:28:31.140]and it's able to kind of like write who you are.
- [00:28:37.890]I like, I love it when ChatGPT will be like,
- [00:28:39.960]well you're somewhat cranky.
- [00:28:42.420]And so I said this and I was like, ah, you know me
- [00:28:47.130]maybe too well.
- [00:28:48.300]So main things we want you to remember from this episode.
- [00:28:52.140]I think the first one is
- [00:28:53.400]that AI can be helpful in tailoring your job search
- [00:28:57.870]to the specific descriptions, in getting you,
- [00:29:01.140]especially if you're stuck
- [00:29:03.703]and you're not sure how to respond in responding,
- [00:29:06.450]in evaluating your materials.
- [00:29:08.610]Great help.
- [00:29:10.140]Yes. and remember it is a tool, it is a tool
- [00:29:13.860]that you can use in order to get particular kinds
- [00:29:17.190]of work done.
- [00:29:18.690]However, that doesn't mean
- [00:29:21.000]that you put input into ChatGPT
- [00:29:24.480]and you take whatever the output is without questioning it.
- [00:29:27.810]Like you can't lose that human element.
- [00:29:31.140]You need to keep injecting yourself into that process,
- [00:29:35.490]particularly because you want to make sure
- [00:29:38.160]that you are representing yourself really,
- [00:29:40.950]really well within that job search and those materials.
- [00:29:43.890]And you really want to start crafting this early.
- [00:29:48.990]And part of the work with AI that we recommend is starting
- [00:29:52.590]to tailor the AI to your preferences,
- [00:29:55.440]to the language you use.
- [00:29:57.390]So it becomes more about you
- [00:29:59.490]and closer to the way you articulate things
- [00:30:02.490]and farther away from just a generalized mechanized voice,
- [00:30:06.570]which it is very good at.
- [00:30:08.100]It makes me think of my grandparents owned a restaurant
- [00:30:11.100]back when I was a kid and one of the things
- [00:30:12.660]that they would do, 'cause I'm from the upper peninsula
- [00:30:14.310]of Michigan, pasties are a thing.
- [00:30:16.020]If you put gravy on it, what kind of monster are you?
- [00:30:18.570]But every Friday there,
- [00:30:21.663]it used to be pasty night at the restaurant
- [00:30:22.890]and my grandma Donna had a dough cutter, you know,
- [00:30:27.840]which is like a wolverine like thing that you would use
- [00:30:31.470]to cut the butter into the dough.
- [00:30:33.674]And because she had worked it so much,
- [00:30:36.900]literally the dough cutter, the butter cutter was shaped,
- [00:30:40.457]shaped like her bowl.
- [00:30:41.290]And that's really what, yeah,
- [00:30:43.770]'cause she would push it up against the side of the bowl
- [00:30:46.290]to get the flour and the butter to go together.
- [00:30:48.360]But that's really what you're doing with ChatGPT.
- [00:30:52.320]You are forming it to, you know who you are
- [00:30:56.247]and the kinds of work that you want to do.
- [00:30:58.110]I had just thought about that.
- [00:30:59.580]Thanks for that.
- [00:31:00.413]That is a great metaphor.
- [00:31:02.880]And that means you can't
- [00:31:04.380]the night before an application is due, just go to ChatGPT
- [00:31:08.400]and get a result.
- [00:31:09.233]This will be a really bad result.
- [00:31:11.790]No, don't do that.
- [00:31:13.440]Take the time because you're doing a job search.
- [00:31:15.690]Take the time, use AI over time, consult with it.
- [00:31:19.890]But make sure you check it, make sure all of it is ethical,
- [00:31:23.820]that nothing has been sent without your very
- [00:31:27.480]discerning eyes.
- [00:31:29.454]So you do not end up sending wrong information
- [00:31:34.320]into the world.
- [00:31:35.153]Also don't think about your use
- [00:31:38.430]of AI as a one-off, like, as a singular moment.
- [00:31:42.150]Think about it as conversations
- [00:31:43.500]'cause that's really where the power comes in.
- [00:31:47.070]As it learns more about you, you learn more about it.
- [00:31:50.220]You set boundaries, you establish like, it's weird,
- [00:31:52.830]but you kind of have to have a relationship with it.
- [00:31:54.932]Alright, so today we talked about AI in the job search.
- [00:31:59.340]Slightly scary but fun.
- [00:32:02.490]Enjoyable.
- [00:32:04.558]And need ethical boundaries.
- [00:32:07.440]I mean, yeah, I think that's going to be something
- [00:32:10.680]that we are going to be talking about for a while now.
- [00:32:13.020]It's here, it's not gonna go away.
- [00:32:14.430]It's not the end of the world, it's not the next best thing.
- [00:32:17.070]It's, it's a thing, we just have to figure out how
- [00:32:18.780]to deal with it.
- [00:32:20.927]And that is Not That Kind Of Doctor.
- [00:32:24.270]So we will see you next time.
- [00:32:27.936](gentle music)
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