The recent launch of Google‘s Bard brought another tech giant into the generative artificial intelligence space, alongside Microsoft‘s Bing chat and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
But how many business leaders are currently using AI tech in day-to-day operations or plan to?
Based on new research, a lot. Half of the companies ResumeBuilder surveyed in February said they are using ChatGPT; 30% said they plan to do so. The data included 1,000 responses from the ResumeBuilder’s network of business leaders.
Stacie Haller, chief career advisor at ResumeBuilder, said the data might be the tip of the iceberg. Since the survey was completed, more professionals have started using generative AI.
Age and the economy are influencing AI use
Haller said age and the current state of the economy influenced the results. For example, 85% of respondents were under 44 and younger workers are more likely to adopt new technology.
“If you’re 38, 40 years old, you grew up with technology in your hands,” she said. “This is second nature to you.”
Haller said high adoption also relates to the post-pandemic job market. After expanding during the pandemic, companies are adjusting to a new economy through automation, she said.
“We saw ChatGPT replacing jobs in the HR department first, the people writing job descriptions or responding to applicants,” Haller said. “I don’t know many people that love writing job descriptions, and I’ve been in this world for a long time.”
ResumeBuilder collects hiring data to help applicants build cover letters and CVs during their search.
When businesses automate writing tasks, it leaves money available for more strategic areas of the company. According to the data, half the firms implementing AI said they saved $50,000, and a tenth of companies said they had saved $100,000.
The other area where ChatGPT is having an impact is in coding. Haller said companies were using generative AI to speed up coding tasks and using the time and money they saved toward retraining and hiring.
“If they can generate code well enough to reduce the labor cost, they can take their code budget and pay developers,” she said. “Or better yet, retrain code writers to do the jobs they need to fill.”
She said it is still hard to find senior developers, and every bit counts.
How coders are adding generative AI to their resume
CEO Praveen Ghanta founded Fraction, a professional services startup to help tech companies find senior developers, and said generative AI is part of his firm’s strategy. AI as a skillset is already a resume stand out.
“We saw it first on the demand side,” Ghanta said. “Now we’re seeing it appear on developer resumes as a skill.”
ResumeBuilder found nine out of 10 responding businesses sought potential employees with ChatGPT experience. One version of ChatGPT as a resume skill is what Ghanta called prompt engineering.
“For example, ChatGPT is bad at math,” he said, but candidates could draw on their prompt engineering experience to know what inputs produce the best-generated results. “If you say, ”Let’s do this step by step’ in the prompt, its ability to do math word problems skyrockets,” he said.
Ghanta said the idea for Fraction came when he was recruiting for a previous startup and found talent by hiring part-time developers already working at top tech companies. He found that developers with 12 years of experience and AI prompt skills still needed help getting in front of hiring managers.
“The currency of the day in hiring hasn’t changed, it’s a resume,” Ghanta said. “Hiring managers still want to see that sheet of paper, a PDF, and many developers have really bad resumes.”
They’re not writers, he said, and struggle to represent their work experience clearly. His team uses an AI workflow to combat this. Clients speak about their responsibilities to a transcribing bot like Otter.AI, which ChatGPT summarizes into a working resume. With prompt know-how, Ghanta said using AI has become a toolset companies seek.
More hiring firms using AI, expecting job candidates to do so
With the correct instruction, ChatGPT can write applications, build code, and solve complex math problems. Should employees worry about their jobs? Ghanta said as a founder, he looks at new tech as tools to engage with, and new skills are always an advantage for employers or employees.
“I encourage developers to engage and sharpen their skills. These companies make it easy to use their APIs,” he said. “From a company perspective, adoption can be competitive because this is a new skill. Not everybody is doing this yet.”
There has been a growing concern that generative AI could replace jobs, and perhaps not the ones most expected. A recent study found that while telemarketers top the list of jobs “exposed” to generative AI, roles like professors and sociologists are also at risk.
On the hiring side, 82% of respondents said they had used generative AI for hiring in a recent ResumeBuilder update. Among respondents, 63% said candidates using ChatGPT were more qualified.
“When Photoshop came out, people thought it would replace everything and that they couldn’t trust pictures anymore,'” Haller said. “Since the Industrial Revolution, new technology has changed how we work. This is just the next step.”
