Using AI in Your Job Search: What You Need to Know
Episode 520 | Host: Emilie Aries | Guest: Marlo Lyons
Employers now use AI throughout the hiring process—why shouldn’t job seekers leverage this technology too?
A lot of you are planning for or in the thick of the job search right now. When you combine that with the ever-increasing involvement of AI in the hiring process, it’s no wonder so many women today are feeling anxious and concerned about their prospects. But here’s some good news: what employers want hasn’t changed— it’s just how they go about finding it.
To get some expert advice on this one, I sat down with Marlo Lyons, an executive career and team coach with two decades of leadership experience as a lawyer, media executive, and HR representative. She’s an author, a writer for HBR and CNN, and the host of the Work Unscripted podcast. Who better to give us the low-down on how to tackle this new job search frontier?
Managing the robotic gatekeepers
One big piece of advice Marlo gives to folks delving into the modern job search is to “identify your AI-resistant capabilities.” We all have hard skills: programming, writing, crunching numbers. It’s the soft skills like communication, management, and teamwork that are really going to set you apart. Even better, these are the transferable skills that serve you in every career, no matter how much of a 180 you might choose to make.
In a world where AI scans your resume, sets up your first call, and even conducts the initial interview, it’s easy to believe human interaction is moot. Marlo explains that the opposite is actually true—networking is more important now than ever! Not the icky “sell sell sell yourself” version, but the building of organic connections (even before you need a job) so that all the well-connected people who like you are eager to help when your need arises.
You won’t get a job just by applying online, Marlo says. You need to connect early and have your pitch ready: who are you, what do you bring, and what exactly are you looking for?
What AI can’t do: define your values for you
That last bit is a sticker for a lot of people. Marlo describes the deer-in-the-headlights look she gets from clients when she asks them what they want to do. How can you find a job that you love if you don’t even know where to begin?
Start with your values. Unfortunately, AI can’t tell you what those are, so you have to do this part on your own. The first step is naming them—you want flexibility from your job, let’s say. But don’t stop there. Flexibility means something different to everyone, so really dig into what each term means for you.
What AI can do: help you figure out your next move
Now you can tag in your LLM (large language model) job search coach. You’ve got your list of specific values. Pop that into ChatGPT and ask it to list jobs that align with the principles most meaningful to you. Then, dig deeper into the results that interest you and, most importantly, go chat with people who are already doing those jobs, because the TV version rarely looks anything like real life.
Resume writing in the age of AI
In a recent article, Marlo reported that 80% of companies are using AI screeners for resumes. Her advice for getting to the top of the pile is to maintain your personality—avoid the temptation to dump a list of accomplishments into ChatGPT and get the program to build a resume for you. Instead, leverage AI to generate a list of keywords related to that job description or position and make sure you use them in your resume. You can always throw your draft into a prompt near the end to really polish it up.
Marlo also reminds job seekers to look forward with their resumes, not backward. You should be highlighting the skills and values you bring to this job you haven’t done yet, not listing out the details of every job you’ve ever had. Keep this in mind: if it’s not relevant to your target audience, it doesn’t go in your resume!
A note for the non-writers out there: If your temptation to rely heavily on AI comes from lacking confidence in your writing skills, Marlo says you can ask ChatGPT to write your resume for you, but make sure it doesn’t wash out all your unique energy and personality. It can help to include in your prompt not only your projects and results, but also why you were excited about them. The LLM should translate that enthusiasm.
Dealing with AI interviewers
In episode 519, How to Ace the Interview with an AI Agent, I offered some tips for remaining engaging when your interviewer is a robot, and I was eager to get Marlo’s take on this phenomenon.
Her tips are wonderfully practical: your AI interviewer doesn’t understand sarcasm or jokes, so try to keep those to a minimum. Depending on your personality, that could make it tricky to still come across as enthusiastic. Marlo suggests that when you need to explain a project or result, imagine you’re telling the story to a friend in a bar—just skip over the “OMG, you’ll never believe…”. And be sure to wrap it all up in a nice little bow when you’re done, since AI isn’t great at arriving at the conclusion you want it to without explicit direction.
Marlo foresees positives and negatives to the ever-growing AI evolution, and I’m inclined to agree. AI can make some things easier and more efficient, but it has already begun to make authentic connections and real thought leadership harder to come by. But here’s one way to look at it: as hiring and work become more robotic, hanging onto your vibrant personality will make you even more unique and desirable.
I want to get your take on AI in the workplace! If you’re a job seeker, drop me a line or hop into our Courage Community on Facebook or our LinkedIn group to share how you’re leveraging LLMs in your search or how AI on the employer side has impacted you.
Related links from today’s episode:
HBR, How to Get Hired When AI Does the Screening
The New York Times, Trump vs. the U.S. Economy by Ezra Klein
Episode 519, How to Ace the Interview with an AI Agent
HIRED: a job search accelerator video course
Get HIRED! This program’s packed with tricks for the job search and tools to help you shine in your interviews:
-
[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 520. Today we are talking all about AI and the job search. So if you are one of the many women who told me in this year's Bossed Up Community Survey that you are on the job hunt, today's episode is perfect for you.
[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]
I'm sitting down with Marlo Lyons, a globally recognized executive, career, and team coach who empowers leaders to lead with purpose. With more than two decades of experience across law, media, and HR, Marlo brings a rare 360 degree perspective to coaching. She's a certified HR executive, award winning author, and trusted voice in the Harvard Business Review, CNN, and Business Insider.
She's also the host of her very own podcast, the Work Unscripted Podcast where she cuts through corporate noise with truth, intuition, and a passion for unlocking human potential at the highest levels of business. Marlo was just in HBR earlier this year talking about AI for job seekers and I'm so excited to bring her in for today's conversation. Marlo, welcome to the Bossed Up podcast.
MARLO: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
EMILIE: I'm excited to be chatting with someone like you who knows so much about the job search, about career reevaluation, and about how AI is changing the game.
MARLO: It's changing everything, absolutely everything.
EMILIE: It really is and it feels like it's such a moving target. So we are speaking in late August just to sort of level set in case the whole world changes again before this comes out. And I want to just jump right in to talk about a topic you address in your books. Wanted: My First Career and specifically, Wanted: A New Career for the job changer, the career transformation person. In this age of AI, you say that it's so important to really lean into your humanity and quote, “identify your AI resistant capabilities”. What do you mean by that and why is it so important?
MARLO: Yeah, you know, everybody can be a programmer, right? Anybody has the hard skills, the things that you need to do your job. But the AI resistant capabilities are not the hard skills. They are the soft skills. They are the communication, the stakeholder alignment, the stakeholder management, how you work with other people, cross functional alignment, all the things that will, the how, right, the how. There's the what and the how. And the what is what you do and the how is how you get it done. And I can promise you, those who master the how are the ones who will stay employed, more so than those who have mastered the what. Because anybody can do the what. Anybody can learn the what.
EMILIE: And it's so interesting because you're like a living testament to that, right? You've transformed your career. Tell us a little bit about your journey to date.
MARLO: Yeah, my background's a little crazy. I started as a TV news reporter. I did that for about 12 years. The internet started and I realized, wow, nobody's going to watch TV news anymore. So let me ask you, do you watch TV news?
EMILIE: No. [LAUGHTER]
MARLO: Yeah, exactly my point, right? So I went to law school at night in my last job, and I moved to California, took the California Bar, and I thought for sure Law and Order needed me as a writer, which they didn't. So I wound up working in reality shows as a lawyer, and I wound up doing production risk. So I've read all of your background checks, your psych, and your medical exams on all your favorite reality show participants,...
EMILIE: Oh my god.
MARLO: …from your Teen Moms at Viacom to your Real Housewives at NBC. I worked at both. And I ran the production risk team at Viacom. And then I actually got bored. I know it sounds crazy because I was running everything from immigration and foreign travel and child labor and safety and security and those background checks, psych, medical, anytime there's a problem on set, we were dealing it. So you'd think that would be really exciting. It was great for cocktail parties. I got a little bored toward the end there. About 12 years into that, and I decided to move into HR.
And I thought, you know, this makes sense. I like working with people. And so I went and got certified in coaching, and I got certified in executive coaching and then team coaching, and I loved it. And I worked at Roku, where I was coaching five C suite leaders, the head of advertising, head of players, the CMO, CFO, and general counsel and their teams. And I loved every aspect of it.
And then I moved to Intuitive Surgical. So I went from entertainment, to tech, to med tech. Talk about a shift, right? Like, I felt like I was in a different universe when I got there. It was completely different. Different industry, different everything. And I still loved the coaching part, but I didn't love all the other HR stuff, you know, the performance management and all that stuff. So, I decided to go out on my own. I had a side hustle for about 10 years coaching people on the side. And I just went out on my own about two years ago. And it's been amazing ever since.
EMILIE: I didn’t realize it's only been two years. I would never.
MARLO: It's only been two years. I mean, I've been coaching for well over, you know, 15 years, but you know, two years ago, I actually went out on my own and left my corporate job.
EMILIE: Well congratulations. That's so exciting. And it really is an example here of your subject matter expertise is not what you took with you from role to role, right?
MARLO: No, it is not. I mean, you have to transition in each job. You know, how do you go from TV news to entertainment lawyer? Okay, great. I got a degree. Guess what? Everybody has a degree. [LAUGHTER] Everybody can be an entertainment lawyer. Anybody who's especially graduated from a school in Los Angeles wants to be an entertainment lawyer. I did not graduate from a school in Los Angeles. I graduated from a school in Oklahoma City, right? Like, so you have to be able to translate your skills and this and the soft skills that you have into the next job.
And then I went from lawyer to HR. You may think that that's an easy leap, but it wasn't. And I had to convince every hiring manager that I was interviewing with that, hey, I understand people, priorities and budgets. Like, I understand all that because I've been on the business side, but I also understand how to be an HR leader, right? And you have to do that through again, those soft skills. And I had the coaching certification. I had obviously upskilled. Upskilling is also very important.
EMILIE: Right. But that human to human persuasion is so a part of career transformation. What do job seekers do now that there's so many robotic sort of gatekeepers between the human to human interaction? You know? Like, it becomes much more complex to try to demonstrate your transferable skills when you're running up against AI bots and ATS systems, right?
MARLO: Everything is networking. It's 100% networking. I know everybody hates the word networking. They absolutely hate it. But it's not just like, networking, I need something from you or help me get a job. It's networking of what can I do for you, what value can I bring to you? And also it's building those connections before you need the job. Or if you need a job, just build the connection. And what I tell my clients, the biggest thing they need to do is they need to get out of their house. Nobody's, it's like dating, nobody's coming to knock on your door and ask you out for a date, right? Like, you got to get out of your house. I don't care if you go sit in a Starbucks and talk to the guy next to you.
Go volunteer. People who volunteer all have professional jobs, or at least many of them do. That's how you network. You make it organic so that people then like, you as a human. And when they like you as a human, they want to help you. And that's about 90% of it. Because you're not going to get a job just by applying, period. You just will not get a job that way. And especially right now, not in this market.
EMILIE: Totally. And I my background's in political organizing, so I get it, you know, that grassroots campaign for your own next career is a big part of it.
MARLO: And have your pitch, have your pitch ready, right? That pitch of who are you? What value you bring to an organization? And that you're looking exactly what you're looking for. Not like, oh, I'm looking for this, or maybe this, or maybe this. You have to know what you want. You can't build a resume if you don't know what you want. You can't have a conversation if you don't know what you want. You have to know what you want. That's number one.
EMILIE: And that takes some audacity, right?. It takes, like, a willingness to say, I'm going to shoot for the moon, and if I have to land among the stars, so be it. Or as I like to say, aim high, compromise later.
MARLO: Absolutely.
EMILIE: Pivot if you have to, but go for what you really want and give it all you got, right?
MARLO: Absolutely. And most people don't know what they want. Like when I ask clients, do you know what you want to do? Because they hate their job, right? Or they hate their career. And they look at me deer in headlights every single time. I have yet to have anybody say, I know exactly what I want to do.
EMILIE: Yeah. What do you advise the job seeker who's listening to this? Who says, yeah, I have my, you know, deer in the headlights look right now, I'm not sure what's next. I need to pay the bills, I need to feed my kids. You know, like, what do you say to someone who's just so wrapped up in the scarcity of it all?
MARLO: Yeah. And it's not scarcity, right. Yes. The jobs are scarce for sure, right. But there is abundance for those who know what they want, right? And that boils down to your values, what's important to you? And when I say what's important to you, I could say, like, okay, flexibility is important to me. Is flexibility important to you?
EMILIE: Me? Yes.
MARLO: Okay. What does flexibility mean to you?
EMILIE: Probably means not being in an office five days a week for me.
MARLO: Okay. And flexibility for me means that I can get to my kids basketball game. So the value of flexibility means two completely different things to us, right? So you have to define your values. You have to understand what they are. All the things that are important to you, all the things you love, all the things that give you energy. And then you have to define those values. And then once you define them, then you look for jobs that align with those values. That's where AI can absolutely help you.
EMILIE: Yeah, tell me more about that. Because you were, I think it was in the Harvard Business Review article I read of yours, describing that we as job seekers can also use AI because we know that employers are using AI. If we are going to use those large language models like ChatGPT, what kinds of prompts do you recommend job seekers who might be wrestling with this leverage?
MARLO: Perfect. Yeah, I would, number one, understand your values, do that yourself. You can't. A large language model cannot tell you what is important to you. So please figure that out for yourself, right, and define it. Then pop that into ChatGPT and say, what jobs align with my values? Okay. So that's the first thing you can do. Then dig deep on those jobs, right? Go and research those jobs. Go and see do they interest you. Some of them you'll mark off right away, like, yeah, no, I mean, I hate blood. I'm not going to be a doctor, right, or something like that, right.
But those that interest you, dig deep and then most importantly, go talk to people. Because being on TV is very different or being a lawyer is very different than a lawyer on tv. Right. So you have to understand what that career really is. How does that career build? What does that career do? What do you do every day? Am I going to really enjoy this? So that's how you start using AI. And then I always tell people, do not build your resume on AI.
EMILIE: Okay, wait, that was going to be my next question because you wrote in HBR that 83% of companies are using AI screeners for resumes. So what do you feel like are the biggest do's and don'ts for job seekers when it comes to resume writing in this AI era?
MARLO: Yeah. The first thing you need to do is write your resume yourself. Write it yourself, write it as poorly as you write. It doesn't matter. Just write it yourself. So that it has all of the, what I call the star method pieces in it, right? It has, you know, what did you accomplish, what are the main, what is the hard skill, what is the soft skill that you used and what did you accomplish, right, in that bullet point?
Then if you don't like how it's worded, then you can pop it into AI and say, hey, can you make this a little cleaner for me? Can you make this a little tighter for me? Can you make this a little crisper? That's how you use AI. Do not use AI to build, because otherwise you're gonna have a really generic resume. And everybody has that same generic resume. And so you're not gonna get through an applicant tracking system with that really generic resume. You need to have what you did first.
EMILIE: Yeah. And I call that like Anne Lamott's phrasing is your SFD, your s***** first draft.
MARLO: Like give yourself permission. Perfect.
EMILIE: Write your own s***** first draft and then let AI help you make it better.
MARLO: Exactly, exactly. And that will help. And also what you can do is you, if you like your resume the way it is, you can pop it into AI and say, I want to be a business operations leader. What keywords am I missing in my resume, right? Because you need to have all the keywords. Or don't pop your resume in and say business operations leaders, tell me what key are all the keywords that need to be in my resume, right? Because it'll tell you. It'll scan all the business operations jobs out there and it'll tell you basically.
EMILIE: Every I think job is it Jobscan that's been using AI to help people who upload the job description and then upload your resume. And it highlights the keywords that are missing or need additions or there's so.
MARLO: Many, there are so many companies that you can do that with. You can honestly just do it with ChatGPT too for free. So yeah. And that way you at least have all the keywords and then you can fit those in. Now what I do with a lot of my clients now, and some people call it like keyword dumping. I don't think there's a thing called keyword dumping, as I do like a left hand column of their keywords skills, which are keywords, right? And then I do like highlights the top three big things. Again, these are mostly executives, right? So the big, you know, how much revenue they brought in, how much they saved, whatever the case may be.
And then I do very small bullets under the actual jobs. You shouldn't have 40 bullets under a job. You really shouldn't. You're not. Because here's the key. Most people do backward looking resumes, here's everything I've ever done, come hire me because I've done a lot of things. But that is not how you get hired. You get hired with a forward looking resume. That's a resume showing the value you can bring to the job you're applying for, which is different than everything you've ever done.
EMILIE: I always tell my clients, lead with what's relevant, not just with what's recent.
MARLO: What's relevant. I have. One of my biggest accomplishments ever is not on my resume. It is not. And it's not because it's not relevant.
EMILIE: Do you want to tell us what it is? I'm now my curiosity peaked.
MARLO: Oh, sure. Yeah. So back in the day, when I was working on reality shows, I was trying to get Congress to allow reality show participants to appear on camera in the United States without needing an O1 visa. And so I was trying to get them to be able to do it on a visitor's visa. You can do it if you're at a competition show, but you couldn't do it. You couldn't appear on if it wasn't a competition show. So, like, the Bachelor and all that stuff, they can bring in whoever they want. America's Got Talent, whatever. Because a competition show has a like, it's got a carve out, but if you just want to appear on just a talk show or something like that, you need to have a visa. So I was trying to get a carve out for people to appear on reality shows with just. Just a visitor's visa, and I got the language, actually, in the Gang of Eight immigration bill.
EMILIE: Wow.
MARLO: Bill did not pass. I do not control Congress, so the bill did not pass, but I got the language in. And that, to me, was a great accomplishment. I was like, wow. I lobbied and I worked with our lobbyists, and I worked with them, and I worked, flew to Washington and the whole she. So it was, to me, it was, like, really awesome.
EMILIE: That is really awesome. As, I mean, in this show, we always are talking about systemic change and individual change. So that's such a beautiful example of it. Maybe. Maybe it'll be on your resume if you ever run for office.
MARLO: If I run for office, I want to be a political junkie, something like that. But it has no bearing on coaching. It has no bearing on HR, really, you know, so it's never been on my resume.
EMILIE: That’s okay, well, it is a good example of, like, look, the things that are most precious to you don't matter if they're not precious to your target audience, right? And so I think there's a lot of interesting ways. Maybe we can leverage ChatGPT or AI to really understand your target audience.
So let's say my job seekers who are listening have leveraged AI to align their values with a few different kinds of career paths they might be considering. How might they use those large language models and the power of networking with real humans to deeply understand their audience before they start throwing applications out there?
MARLO: Yeah. I would first take the job description and I would pop it into the ChatGPT and say, Tell me more about where this might report, right? If it doesn't say. If it doesn't say. If it says, great, you're already ahead of the game, right? Then you can understand, okay, this reports maybe to a VP of marketing of some sort, right? Or, you know, what level do you think this job is? Because it might say, like, five to eight years, but it doesn't pay well. And you're like hmm, right. Or it might say director, but they're asking you to do a whole bunch of tactical stuff hmm, right? So you want to kind of understand, like, the level it is. Is it something you're interested in? If it doesn't have the salary, you know, how much do they think that would pay based on the description, that type of thing. And that way you can figure out, like, is this a job I want to apply for, right?
You can also take that, pop in your resume and say, what am I missing in my resume? That's in the job description that I, you know, or what are the top three themes of this job description? And those better be highlighted over, and over, and over again in your resume. Because remember, algorithms work where the more you have it, the higher you rise. So you don't just have it once at the same time. Hold on, caveat, at the same time, you don't want to say in every single thing, you know, I helped customers with their problems, right? You want to show, you want to show elevation, right? That I, you know, managed people who then help customers with their problems. I led teams that then, you know, helped customers, you know, strategize their problems, right? You want to show that you're growing.
EMILIE: Right. And I do think that's where some people can get in trouble with keyword dumping, which in my opinion, I've heard of, like, folks putting a whole bunch of keywords in, turning them white so they blend into the background.
MARLO: No, don't do that.
EMILIE: Right? And then just putting them in as though they're not there just to mess with the AI’s. Like, ATS systems are hip to that kind of thing now, right?
MARLO: They are. Yes, they are. Just don't do that, though, I've never done that on any client ever, in more than a decade, ever. I've never put in fake keywords.
EMILIE: So, if we, like, are leveraging those large language models to really understand what we need to emphasize, are you having clients, are you seeing job seekers use that to not only write their resumes or help with resume writing, but also cover letter writing. What does that look like?
MARLO: Definitely seeing it in cover letter writing, for sure. Again, it's going to be very generic. Nobody really reads cover letters. I'll be honest with you. They usually don't even get sent to the hiring managers. So I don't think I've ever, I've ever seen, even when I was hiring, I never saw cover letters come through. It was very rare. I had to hunt for them, and most people don't have the time to hunt for them. So I'm just letting you know they're probably not being ready.
That being said, if it asks for one, you should write one. Especially if you're transitioning careers. Why are you moving into this new career? And what have you done to prepare for that, right? On resumes, I do think you can use large language models for resumes, just not to write the whole thing because it's not going to sound like you. You want it to sound like you, and you want to share those real stories and not generic ones. And you want to amplify the clarity. You can use it to amplify the clarity, right? And, you know, use it for professionalism, that kind of thing. But you really want to make sure you keep that voice print intact. That's kind of the key, that voice print. Otherwise, again, it's going to sound really generic. And on the flip side, the Applicant Tracking System AI programs which are now attached to it, they'll screen it out.
EMILIE: Say more about the voice print. How does someone find their voice print? Or what does that mean, really?
MARLO: Yeah, it's like who you are and how you write, like, right? Like you don't want to write dude in your resume. [LAUGHTER] So let's not write dude or YOLO or anything like that…
EMILIE: Or we'll beg to differ.
MARLO: …skibidi riz according to our Gen Z population, right? Or whatever that is. But really it's like, who are you and how do you write, right? Like, you want to make sure that you have your, your natural, authentic voice in there and that personal authenticity of who you are versus just this generically perfect sentence. Right? Because I will always make this generically perfect sentence. And watch out for the, the things in AI. Like, I did this not just because I did A, but because I did B. Like, that's what AI does. It always says not because of one, but because of another. It also has, of course, the M dashes, which everybody's talking about those M dashes. You shouldn't really have em M dashes in your resume. I mean, your sentence is too long if you're doing that.
EMILIE: That is funny. It is such a tell the emojis that ChatGPT spits out too. You're like, okay, I better clean up these emojis.
MARLO: The rocket. Got to love the rocket in your social media, right? [LAUGHTER]
EMILIE: Well, I mean, so I'm hearing what you're saying, and I think the resume writer who's most likely to lean on large language models is the person who is not innately a writer, right? You and I have written books, so we can write. We have our voice print down. But what do you say to the technical leader, to the programmer, to the scientist, to the technical expert who's here because she's a math whiz, not because she's a writer. Like, how does she lean into her voice print when it's really hard for her to find the language to do so?
MARLO: Great question. Start with the result. What was your result? Okay, how did you get there? What did you do? What did you actually do to get there? And make sure you include, when I say do, I mean the hard and the soft skills. Okay, so for example, right? I align stakeholders. I, you know, created a presentation I presented to the board, and that resulted in X, right?
So you start with the results, all the things that you did, and then if you need AI to turn that into a nice clear sentence for you, that's fine. Just make sure it doesn't pull out all that personal stuff that you have in there, right? You want to make sure you keep that in there because that's what's important. And maybe even write down. Here's why I was really excited about this, because if you do that, like, here's what I'm really excited about, about this accomplishment. AI can maybe take that and incorporate a little bit of that in there too.
EMILIE: Totally. I always tell people to like, let their geek show.
MARLO: Yes, let your geek show.
EMILIE: People want to hire geeks. People want to know what, like, what gets you excited. So like, don't try to play it cool.
MARLO: Don't play cool. Energy is big. Energy matters, especially in the interview. Definitely. I mean, look, we all. I get so nervous during interviews. I haven't interviewed in a long time, but I used to get so nervous. I'd get stiff, really stiff, and I'd get like very formal. And it happens, right and no matter what, I would try, like, I couldn't get rid of that formal and that stiffness. You got to practice, practice, practice, practice. You're going to have times, you're going to stumble, you're going to be stiff, you're going to be formal, you're going to, you're going to stutter, you're going to all that's fine, laugh it off, right? Try to be a little bit more.
What I tell my clients is, quite frankly, I say practice like you're talking to your friend in a bar. That's what I tell them. Talk to your friend in a bar. Hey, tell me about a time when you solved a problem. Oh my god, you're not going to believe what happened. Just leave out the oh my god, you're not going to believe what happened. And then tell the story. No cursing, but just say, there was this time when, right, like you're telling this crazy story in a bar, right? You're going to have all that energy, show that energy, because the stiffer you are, they don't know that they want to have lunch with you so.
EMILIE: Totally. What do you say to the folks who are now talking to an AI agent in their first interview?
MARLO: Oh my gosh, I hate the AI agents because you, you have to be really careful because it can misinterpret. Like it doesn't understand sarcasm, it doesn't understand jokes. It's not going to connect the dots for you. You have to connect the dots, right? You're telling a story for a reason. Connect the dots in the end with a takeaway of why I'm telling you the story and how it relates to the job. So, you know, AI bots and they don't react to you, which just stinks because you can't see, like, are they getting it? Are they getting, did they get it? Do they understand what I'm trying to say? Did they translate my words correctly?
So, you know, they stink. They're, they're here, unfortunately, they're here especially for entry level jobs. They are here to stay. So my best, the best thing you could do is again, write down answers to the most obvious questions. Write them down so that you've thought them through in the Star Method situation, you know, task, action, result, and then add a T for takeaways. So you note that you can, you know, bring it back to the job. And at the end you say, and that's why I want to work for your company, because you're looking for somebody who can do A, B and C. And as you can tell, I've done that, right? Even if you just say that.
So, you know, definitely connect the dots at the end and show a little personality. They're, the very first question they're always going to ask you is, tell me about yourself. They just do that to see what you say. You need to have a story that relates to the job. So, I will say, though, the only time I would do a personal story is if it really matters. So I had a client who, recently had brain surgery. Unbelievable, right? And he was wearing a hat because he didn't want to show the scar. So I said, that's your, tell me about yourself. That I, look, I had brain surgery and I actually sat once in a class and my teacher would not change my presentation when I had to go through chemo. So I sat there in chemo with medicine pumping through my veins while giving the presentation, and I got an A. That's the kind of person you're going to get in this job.
That's the only time I would make it personal. Otherwise I would not bring up anything that is medical, or personal, or anything like that. I would make it more about. I mean, yes, personal, but more about the job. So, for example, you know, I am an avid reader and I love to read. And I have read every book from A, B, C, D and E, which are all completely different, right? Because I love to learn and I see in this job, this is a learning and development job, and I want to help other people find their love of learning the way I have a love of learning. Because we all have to be curious and continue to develop and grow in our jobs.
EMILIE: Right. It's got to directly tie back to the job.
MARLO: Tie it back to the job, whatever it is. A person in business operations, I am the person who makes, you know, calm out of chaos. And I've been doing that since I was a kid, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And then relate it to business operations. So that's what you do is you find the personal that relates to the business.
EMILIE: I love that you've given us so many great tactics and strategies already. I want to end with, like a big picture philosophical question, which is are you generally hopeful or fearful about AI, particularly as it relates to job replacement, like human substitution. Ezra Klein just had a really interesting interview on his podcast with Natasha Sarin from the Yale Budget Center. And they kind of talk about this, like the great transition that we are in, where we are in the before, we know that the after is coming, but there's a middle murkiness there, which is going to be painful. And it was interesting because Ezra's feeling very cynical about it, and Natasha, his guest, was feeling very optimistic about our efficiency and the potential of AI to make our lives better. Where do you fall on that spectrum?
MARLO: I fall in the, I think it's going to make things quicker and easier, for sure. It already has, right? In some ways. I also think, though, that there's just such a lack of connection with people, and I think it's just going to add to that disconnection, right? You know, the phones came in, the Internet came in. Now we've got AI. I just think things are going to get more generic. I don't think we're going to see as much thought leadership. I don't think we're going to see it, right? Because I think people are taking AI and using it for thought leadership. I don't. When I write an HBR article, I don't touch AI because I don't want it. My editor will edit me. I'm no problem with that, right? But I don't want AI giving me what everybody else has said. I want to come up with that thought leadership. And I think we're going to lose a lot of thought leadership. That's my fear. I think as far as jobs, we are going to lose jobs.
EMILIE: I can see the opportunity in that too, which is like the people who use their own brains. As someone on Instagram was like, I like my own prompting. I prompt my brain with my thoughts and my questions, like, there you go. I like my own large language model. Yeah, we're.
MARLO: Yeah we’re, stop, we're not thinking anymore. Right. Like, we're not. We're not using it for. For the things we should be using it for, which is, you know, help me refine this. Or, oh I need four things and I only have three. What else do you think would go with this? Give me five ideas and you can choose one and then expand on it yourself, right?
EMILIE: As like a thought partner.
MARLO: Yeah, thought partner. Just like you would in the office, right. Where you'd sit and you'd create something from scratch and you'd have a thought partner in the room and you guys would work on it together. That's how you should use it. It is going to take jobs for sure. But if people learn how to prompt and learn how AI is going to impact their job, that they get ahead of the game and then they will be, they will be the ones who will keep their job because they'll be able to morph into the next iteration of what, whatever their job is going to be.
EMILIE: And those of us who continue to bring original thought to the table hopefully will stand out even more. But it does feel,...
MARLO: Hopefully.
EMILIE: …a little dystopian. I don't know where I fall on the spectrum myself some, it depends on the day.
MARLO: Yeah. I mean, some days I'm like, wow, this is great. Thank you, ChatGPT You just saved me four hours, right? And on the flip side, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is blah, you know, and there's nothing in here that's good. I'm gonna start from scratch.
EMILIE: Well, Marlo, there's so much good in here in these two books that you've got and in all the work that you're doing. Where can my listeners keep up with you and get their hands on their own copy?
MARLO: Absolutely. You can get the books on Amazon. Wanted: My First Career is for college students, and new graduates. And Wanted: A New Career is obviously for that 30, 40, 50 year old. You hate your job, you hate your career. You don't want to do it anymore. How to transition careers. As you know, I've done it numerous times and I've helped my clients do it. Pretty dramatic changes. So you can find those on Amazon and anywhere else books are sold. They're also on Apple and other places. And you can find me at marlolyonscoaching.com and you can find my podcast Work Unscripted, podcasts are so fun, you can hear everybody's voice. And I might have to have you back in reverse.
EMILIE: Yeah, anytime. I'm happy to join. Marlo, thank you so much for being here.
MARLO: Thank you for having me.
EMILIE: For lots of links to everything Marlo and I just discussed, including her books and her website and lots of related Bossed Up podcasts that cover similar topics that some of the things that we talked about here today. Head to bossedup.org/episode520. That's bossedup.org/episode520. You'll also find a fully written out transcript of today's conversation, if that's your thing.
And now I want to hear from you. As always, let's keep the conversation going after the episode in the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook or in the Bossed up Group on LinkedIn. If you're a job seeker, how is AI intersecting with your search? How have you been leveraging large language models? Or how have you been running into AI agents in your job search thus far? I'm dying to hear from you because I'm always sourcing news stories from listeners like you.
[OUTRO MUSIC IN]
So let's keep the conversation going and know that my inbox is always open at emilie@bossedup.org until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose, and together let's lift as we climb.
[OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]
