Help your child get through the door of AI hiring

Imagine sending out hundreds of resumes and getting only one automated response back. 

Imagine that before you meet a human for an interview, you have to clear multiple rounds of testing administered by artificial intelligence (AI).

If you are so fortunate to clear the tests, the next stage of the employment process is to do a video interview in which you respond to video cues of standard questions like "Tell me about your prior employment history".

At each stage of the hiring process, no humans are involved, and AI is assessing the human candidate for skills fit and personality suitability.

Welcome to the hiring future of our kids.

Job platforms such as LinkedIn and Indeed have made mass applications for jobs easier and AI has made it easier to generate cover letters en masse.

Human resource (HR) departments are deluged with thousands of job applications and are resorting to AI to help screen applicants.

According to 2024 figures from data reporting and analytics solutions provider DemandSage, 87 per cent of companies in the United States use AI in their recruitment process.

A survey by human resources services firm KellyOCG estimates that 66 per cent of large companies and 35 per cent of small organisations in Singapore rely on AI in their hiring processes.

While the situation is not that acute in Singapore yet, the trend is irrefutable. The future of sending hundreds of CVs without getting a proper response will soon be the norm.

What can parents do to better prepare their children for their impending AI-hiring future?

Do internships

Internships are a great way for young people to explore what they want in their careers.

Rather than relying only on the internship requirements of school, Singapore students are starting to be more proactive.

There are some who report doing up to 10 internships before they graduate from university and settle into their first job. Some students are starting their internships during secondary school to more fully explore what they want in their future careers.

If your child is open to internships, starting him or her early gives the child more time to explore and expand his or her professional network. The more internships one does, the easier it is for one to land other internships.

Employers look at applicants with a strong internship background favourably because it derisks the new hires adjusting to a corporate environment. If the prior internships are in the same domain, it makes onboarding easier.

Tracking internship deadlines and applying early is key. Investment bank Goldman Sachs reportedly gets well over 300,000 applications each year for just over 2,000 internships, and tech giant Google more than 100,000 applications for 1,500 positions.

At such companies, internship selection is a well-oiled machine and, to have a chance, you have to adhere to their timelines and schedules.

These top companies hire primarily out of their internship programmes, so if you want to get a job there after graduation, landing that internship is critical.

Besides being potentially useful in helping your child get his or her first job, internships are being looked at by universities in their admission selection reviews, which means that internships could help get your child into a good university too.

Be interesting

It is only natural that companies hire candidates who fit the group's capability and chemistry profile. It goes without saying that candidates have to stand out and look interesting.

Much of the AI used in hiring today is in the resume-screening part of the employment process. Basic factors such as having the resume be machine-readable, saved in a standard file format, and having work experience in chronological order is a good start.

Profiles that AI systems cannot read go immediately into the reject pile. Candidates should avoid complicated graphics and visual formats in resumes because many AI screening systems have difficulty with them.

Once the basics are done, candidates need to make sure they have used the correct buzzwords and descriptions in their resumes to pass the AI screeners.

Running the resume through websites like Jobscan can help to identify gaps of experience as well as descriptions that need to be improved.

Be indefatigable

In the future world of landing a job, it is important that candidates be indefatigable. As former British prime minister Winston Churchill said during World War II: "Never give in, never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty".

His advice is especially relevant in seeking a job in the new world order of AI hiring, where whether a candidate advances to the next round can boil down to something as simple as having the right file format for the resume.

Candidates cannot take rejections or a lack of response personally. The key is to reflect and learn what can be improved on and implement the learning in future applications.

To enhance one's chances of making it through the hiring process, the age-old advice of network, network, network continues to apply, even when AI does the hiring.

Asking friends, mentors and seniors for recommendations or leads can help get candidates into the right circles, where hiring managers are looking for talent.

Such leads could even unearth jobs that may not have been posted yet, resulting in a smaller competitive pool.

Attending job and career fairs allows candidates to practise their interview and presentation skills before they are invited to an important final interview.

Developing a professional social media presence online with platforms like LinkedIn also helps candidates to build their network in a specific sector of interest, while keeping up-to-date on industry trends.

HR managers often talk about the "interview before the interview", where they look at a candidate's professional social media footprint before they call the person up for an interview or even make a job offer.

Candidates should have online profiles that are consistent with their resumes and be mindful about what they post. A woke rant laced with choice vulgarities could still be searchable years later and turn off HR managers or bots who are screening candidates for jobs.

Brave new world

The world of hiring is rapidly evolving, with AI increasingly screening candidates well before they meet a human hiring manager.

Both my sons completed multiple internships before they entered university.

The internships were critical in helping them understand what they wanted to do in the future in a low-stakes way.

One son even did an internship as a bak chor mee stall assistant because he loves eating the noodles and wanted to better understand how a hawker stall works.

To land the internships, both sons had to put themselves out there, keep pitching themselves to employers and refine the reasons why they should be picked, while dealing with numerous rejections along the way.

Each internship has given them unique insights into what they want to do professionally after they graduate.

The best thing we parents can do to prepare our kids for an AI-hiring future is to support them in their job search journey, and encourage them to keep at it until they find something that they are both passionate about and good at.

Source: The Straits Times