Searching for a new job has never been easy, but right now it can seem especially brutal. Competition is fiercer than ever before; according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, your chance of receiving an offer after applying to as many as 80 roles stands at just 31%. Each one of those applications takes time, so its understandable to do whatever you can to streamline the process, including by employing Big Techs favorite obsession: Artificial intelligence.LinkedIn has obliged, rolling out several AI tools over the past year that help with the application process, helping you compose (or rewrite) everything from your resume and cover letters to original posts and even personalized messages for hiring managers. LinkedIns AI tools are built on, and powered by, OpenAIs ChatGPT. (Microsoft, who owns LinkedIn, has invested nearly $14 billion in OpenAI.)LinkedIns AI-powered job-assessment toolavailable now to premium subscribers and in early 2025 to everyone elseidentifies listings for which youd be a top applicant and marks them with a gold square. The tool works by analyzing keywords in your profile against the job descriptionso the more detailed your profile, the better the results. In an internal LinkedIn survey, more than 90% of premium subscribers found the tool useful. No data is available as to whether the feature leads to a quicker job hunt, unfortunately.Before you tap ChatGPT to cowrite your resume and cover letters, take heed. Errors induced by AI generated text often include fabricated statistics and vague phrases like operational efficiency. The pros are getting better about spotting such text. When I see someones resume and every single metric ends in a zero or a five, I know theyve used AI, says Sam Struan, a Glasgow-based recruiter and resume writer for hire.Struan estimates that about 60% of his clients arrive with AI-assisted resumes and a litany of job woes. Theyre coming to me because theyre not landing interviews, Struan says. Thankfully, the fix often is as simple as stripping away the slop. I usually have to strip it down and remove a lot of the fluff and bring a little bit more of a human element to the writing.Ryan Hunt, a designer based in Chicago, has been seeking a new job for more than a year. He currently works full time at a design studio, a role he took out of necessity after getting laid off from a better-paying job. Balancing the job search while fulfilling his current responsibilities proved draining, so Hunt turned to AI for help with the part of the process he likes the least: writing cover letters. That certainly made applications easier to complete, but it hasnt helped him land a new position.Hunt says he wasnt invited to a single interview for roles he applied to using an AI-assisted cover letterwhile he has received callbacks for roles that didnt require a cover letter, or that he applied to without AIs help. It really just feels like it doesnt matter, Hunt says. And maybe I just need to be applying for things that I feel confident are a good fit.Hunt isnt alone. This past November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the number of people experiencing long-term unemploymentjobless for more than 27 weekshad risen in the year prior, from 1.2 million in November 2023 to 1.7 million. (At the same time, the job market is strong, with an overall unemployment rate of just 4.2%.)If youve ever asked yourself, Will hiring managers spot my AI-drafted resume?, the answer is yes. In fact, hiring managers have taken towhere else?LinkedIn to gripe about AIs outsized and seemingly unstoppable role in todays hiring process. A sameness already suffused most every resume and cover letter, but AI has reduced them to a new level of banality. According to a recent survey conducted by the career platform CV Genius, 80% of hiring managers expressed a distaste for AI-generated contentand 74% claimed to know an AI application when they saw one. (Hint: Avoid using synergize and other such business-speak.)Despite the uproar a few months ago to the revelation that LinkedIn had been using users data without telling them to train its AI model, frequent LinkedIn posters are apparently also pro-AI. According to a recent study first reported in Wired, more than 50% of all longform posts published on LinkedIn are suspected to have included language written by generative AI.LinkedIn says their tools are designed to help job seekers and hiring managers alike to identify quality applicants, rather than game the system or apply to jobs by the hundreds, a strategy colloquially known as spray and pray. While its kind of natural to think volume is your friend, its going to be a more efficient marketplace if people focus on the jobs where theyre a better fit, where their skills are transferable, says LinkedIn spokesperson Suzi Owens. She adds, At the end of the day, people hire humans, not tools. The idea is that [AI] is a helping hand.