Looking for a job? It’s incredibly tough out there. For young-adult job seekers and college graduates with newly earned degrees across disciplines, speaking to an actual human being during the application process can feel impossible. Reporting for The New York Times, Callie Holtermann describes what members of Gen Z are experiencing and feeling. Isolated, humiliated, and useless, most feel like they’ve thrown their applications into an abyss—and the advice that older generations have given them no longer applies.
Some job-seekers have responded with A.I. strategies of their own. Many write the first draft of their résumés themselves, then ask a chatbot to sprinkle in keywords from the job description. Others direct chatbots to compose their cover letters whole cloth. (Ethical or not, it may be a shrewd move: Research suggests that A.I. résumé screeners rate applications written by A.I. more highly than ones written by humans.)
And then there are the interviews.
Job-seekers described occasionally sitting down for video interviews with A.I. avatars complete with blank stares and too-shiny foreheads. They said they were especially sick of one-way video interviews in which applicants tape themselves answering questions for a hiring manager (or an A.I. system) to assess on their own time.
More stories on Gen Z
A Graveyard Shift with Britain’s Gen Z Undertakers
“Could apprentice undertakers solve youth unemployment?”
It’s Hard Out Here for a 20-Something
“Tales from the lost generation.”
Cringe! How Millennials Became Uncool
“They are mocked by gen Z for everything from their trainer socks to their mom jeans and selfie technique. A maligned millennial asks: how did we get here?”
