For most, searching for a new job is an overwhelming and onerous endeavor. Updating your resume and regularly poring through posting on jobsites can easily consume hours per week. After all that effort, my research shows that only 2-5% of applicants are invited to interview and on average 5 candidates are invited to interview. Using these average conversion rates, most candidates need to apply to 100 to 250 job postings in order to secure one job offer. And, if that is not a job offer you want then you need to apply to even more jobs. I've heard many of my job seeking friends make statements akin to: "Searching for a new job is a full time job in and of itself." My analysis certainly support their assessment.
I have recently used several artificial intelligence services to find and apply to new job opportunities. These services are still relatively new and have plenty of room for improvement. My artificial intelligence services honor roll blog post scores this category at an unimpressive B-, however I still think they are worth a try to improve efficiency in the process. In this post, I will review the services that I have used and others that I am interested in trying.
Overview: The company claims it can land your dream job more efficiently. Offered.ai claims its ai auto-apply tools can dramatically reduce the time you spend applying for jobs (by 3X). They also offer additional services such like 1:1 coaching with career coaches who can help you practice for job interview and optimize your LinkedIn profile, which Offered.ai claims improves their customers' success rates in securing a job offer by 20 percent.
Pros: I was very impressed with Offered.ai's technology. It's the best I have seen so far. Their ai solution makes custom optimizations to your resume in order to make it most relevant to each job you apply to. They claim this ai resume customization improves candidate success by 3X. Additionally, Offered.ai applies for you directly on company's websites. Some recrutiers favor applications that come directly through their website (versus a job board) because they believe the candidate is more serious in the interest in the role. Offered.ai also sources jobs from some of today's most desireable employers such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Spotify.
Cons: This service is pricey, starting at $300 for 6 months of service. Given their high success rate statistics, this is well worth it if you land a dream job that you couldn't secure otherwise. That said, I have struggled to find roles in my field of marketing at the more senior levels. Unfortunately, I did not understand this before shelling out the $300 and am not questioning my investment. However, if they have good job inventory that meets your criteria I certainly think the value of their offering justifies the price. Offered.ai is also only about 1.5 years old (founded in December of 2022) and so I expect their offering to continue improving over the coming months.
Overview: This company matches job listings with your profile and automatically applies for jobs it deems to be a fit with your background and interests. The platform sources its inventory from popular job boards including LinkedIn, Indeed, and Dice.
Pros: Bulkapply.ai is great for a volume play as it will apply to 30 jobs per day for you. This is important given the competitiveness of today's job market. Bulkapply.ai is the most "set it and forget it" of the ai job application services I have used. The service is also relatively affordable at $12-$20/month (billed every 3 months). You can save up to 50% if you sign up for a full year (perhaps worth it if you're planning on a long job search process). Bulkapply.ai also offers a short free trial period so you can take it for a spin before you financially commit.
Cons: In my experience, the ai algorithm can go a bit wild in applying to roles that do not align to your experience or preferences. For example, it applied to a few Chief Financial Officer roles for me. While I have worked in the financial services industry, I've never worked in a finance role and am not qualified for those roles. Additionally, I have not found a way to give the Bulkapply.ai algorithm this feedback so that it can fine tune to better match my experience and preferences. Services like Offered.ai, TheLadders.com, and Sonara.ai (RIP - they have suspended their service for now) all require more user engagement. While this takes a bit more time and effort (still much more efficient than searching for a job without the help of ai) it also seems to improve the relevance of the jobs it applies to on your behalf.
Overview: This legacy player (founded in 2003) offers a reasonable alternative to a more full-blown ai job application service. The company touts itself as the best destination to find $100K+ jobs (side note: They haven't changed their $100K positioning in decades, and we've experienced quite a bit of inflation during the last 20 years). Users of it's Apply4Me service can upload their resume, complete responses to all the standard application questions (e.g. the applicants demographic information) and set a fairly robust set of job preferences (e.g. desired salary, location, job function). When reviewing jobs that meet their search criteria, users can easily apply with a click or two. TheLadders claims that their Apply4Me services saves its users an average of 18 minutes per job application submitted.
Pros: TheLadders is most relevant to high income job seekers. The model ensures the user is the decider of which jobs he or she applies to. The pricing for this service is reasonable at just under $100 per 3 month period.
Cons: TheLadders does not make good use of recent advancements in ai. Additionally, they enable you to import your Google and LinkedIn contacts which seems like it could be useful for job networking and referral purposes, however after uploading all my contacts I have yet to see any of this data used in the service they've offered to me.
There are a myriad of other job services I am hoping to try including Jobscan, Pymetrics, aiApply, and JobHire.ai. As I learn more about these solutions I will update you here. Have you tried these services or others? If so please share your experience in the comments.
Happy job hunting!
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