I got laid off from my position of 4.5 years due to company reorganization. With a PhD in Biochemistry, a degree in Cosmetology, as a business owner of intuitive life coaching company, and over two decades as scientist, both in academia and in biotech, I am equipped with lots of technical and life experience. While I’m confident that I will contribute and shine in anything I take on next, the excitement is mixed with the daunting prospect of a job hunt in an aggressive market.
For a while now, I’ve been aspiring to pivot from my scientist role to something more communicative. I keep saying something more communicative, because I don’t truly know what that next role could look like. My major aim is to have something flexible that includes learning new things, traveling, meeting people, participating in conferences, networking, giving presentations, training and mentoring others. I would like to adopt a role of a subject matter expert and find a position where I can convey scientific information to audiences in a way that builds rapport and trust.
After so many years working in the lab, I don’t feel excited about experiments, troubleshooting, and data analysis anymore. None of it feels inspiring or even challenging. I have become complacent, and started to feel that being a scientist represents a restricted version of what I could offer. And as my values and desires evolve, I want my career to represent that as well.
I’m not saying that there have not been communicative aspects in the roles that I’ve held. I have always communicated between departments, levels, and expertise areas, finding myself advocating for others, leading without official authority, and developing solutions and better ways of doing things while mentoring my peers. But now I want something more communicative, and that means that I want to see these aspects reflected in the job description as well.
The hard part of pivoting is that you want to do something new, expand your skillset, challenge yourself and gain experience in something you haven’t done before as an official part of your job. Finding a new role that deviates from the one you’ve held for years can feel like an insurmountable task, especially within a tough employment landscape. And because it has been almost five years since my previous hiring process, I am now trying to figure out the best way to approach the job hunt I’m on. Which methods might work, and which are outdated? To use AI, or not to use AI?
Five years ago, this wasn’t a concern.
Currently, we can see the increase in AI use in all industries. The AI-assisted writing is embedded in many platforms. We can use AI to help us draft our introductions and cover letters on LinkedIn, and a variety of AI-powered tools can help us in content creation. Many companies are encouraging their employees to use AI as an aid in written communications and that’s how I got acquainted with it myself.
To me, the process of using AI is fascinating. How fun it is to tell the machine to do something for you, and then keep on editing, adjusting, and finetuning the material with new prompts! I have used AI in my LinkedIn posts to highlight my skills and bring forth my aspirations. However, recently I noticed an increase in posts criticizing the use of AI in job search. While there are a lot of people supporting it, some say that AI generated text is easy to recognize, lengthy sentences hard to read, and that other AI programs will distinguish the content from person’s original voice. One article was criticizing the way AI inflates person’s attributes and compromises the trust in the applicant.
For any of us humbler candidates, for all the superwomen (or men/people) out there, who are shy at telling how they excel in something just because they don’t have tens of years of experience in that specific topic, AI is heaven-sent. When I read some of the AI-edited summaries of myself, I started feeling way more confident about my skills and abilities. It gave me renewed inspiration for my job search, as I felt that I could finally state more clearly what I was offering: all those sought-after but many times obscure transferable skills! Anyone who’s ever read a bunch of resumes knows that the whole point is to portray oneself in the most positive light? I don’t see AI bringing anything new to this. We are meant to puff up our talents to get noticed! And as a triple air Gemini, I like to use a lot of words. ‘Concise’ is my favorite command to my chatbot. Allowing AI to do some of the work for me has been refreshing and has taken the thesaurus search off my plate.
On a technical side, if our material is screened from a pool of hundreds using AI bots, wouldn’t it be an asset to use AI generated material to apply for open positions? Are companies now screening AI users out while themselves using it, or is it interpreted as a sign of a candidate willing to apply the latest and the greatest for their own and their future employers’ benefit? At minimum, the use of AI should indicate some time management adeptness, for in principle, it makes editing and modifying one’s resume and cover letter for each application much faster than the manual process.
Coming back to the criticism of AI: What made me sad was that the person criticizing the use of AI for inflating one’s skills was a woman. While that on its own doesn’t need to mean anything dramatic, it reminded me of receiving a well-meaning advice for my job search from another female professional. Her suggestion was to take more than half of my work history out of my resume, hide all the dates of my graduations, and do all this for my LinkedIn profile too before applying for any jobs. Quote: “Because ageism is real”.
I am sure she is right, and I understand that this advice was given with good intentions. We all have our own unique experiences that create our truth. But I want you to think about these two instances for a moment. When women advice other women not to use a tool which, God forbid, may “inflate” your skills, or, when they ask you to ignore most of your work history in the attempt of hiding your age, how are women going to advance their careers and become the leaders we’re meant to become?! With these well-meaning suggestions, we end up keeping up the status quo. We become pawns in the game of “let’s play small”. For the benefit of men, who historically are way more comfortable at singing their own praises than women. How plausible is it for me to be taken as a serious candidate for any leadership position by pretending I only have few years of work history under my belt? Not to mention the fact that anyone who talks to me will quickly realize that I’m in my forties just by looking at me. I may look great, but let’s not kid anyone, I’m not twenty-something anymore! With age comes experience, acceptance, and wisdom, and those are attributes I wear proudly.
Many groups, like STEM women’s advocacy group Athena here in San Diego, campaign strongly for women in tech careers. They encourage us to advocate for ourselves more aggressively while working on attracting male allies to speak up for us women as well. One of Athena’s missions is to try to narrow the gap of number of females compared to males in STEM careers, especially in leadership positions. The struggle is real if we still think that we need to change ourselves to be acceptable. If women don’t believe in other women, how are men going to believe in us?
To me, AI is a wonderful tool to confidently present myself on social media. Especially with career-centered posts. However, I don’t lie in my applications and certainly will not fraudulently represent myself, no matter how polished the words may look. To me, the use of AI itself is not something that skews the candidate’s presentation of themselves. Anyone can do it with their own words just as well. What one does with AI is up to the integrity and honesty of the person themselves.
I once worked with a person who outright lied in their resume and interview and still got the job. They performed totally fine in their position too… the red flags were noted but decided to put aside due to the immediate need for hands in the lab. About a year in the job, he admitted having lied during the hiring process, didn’t feel proud of it, but knew that sharing the whole truth may have led to rejection. This to me, was a sign of courage, or maybe foolish risk-taking. Yes, totally disgraceful, but worth it since we ended up appreciating his contribution within the team. We have all been young once. And invincible. And maybe arrogant. And, while I would not have had the cojones to pull off something like that, I admired the sticking it to the man and living on the edge -aspects of their emboldened approach.
So, back to my AI question: Is there a right answer? Am I shooting myself in the foot by not using AI, as I enter the competitive arena of the modern wave of job-hunters and bots? Or am I now devilishly using crooked methods to bolster my expertise, therefore losing opportunities for the lack of authenticity in my self-presentation?
Since I don’t have the answers yet, I just may try both ways. For anyone who does not like AI, you’ll enjoy knowing that this piece was not written with AI but with my own words. But of course, you already knew that since your AI-flagging software let this one be. The ones who would rather read AI-generated text may have to grit their teeth while reading my expression as it came out. For the rest of the folk who wander somewhere in between, let’s keep the conversation going. And to all job hunters out there: Use whatever makes your life easier or makes you feel good about yourself.
There are hardly going to be any fast and hard rules about AI at this point. Just lots of opinions, so thank you for indulging in some of mine.
