Streamlining Job Applications Using Generative AI With Vilas Tulachan

In the past, the process of finding a job was often laborious and time-consuming, especially in the tech industry where specific skills were in high demand. However, with the rapid advancements in technology, the landscape has shifted dramatically. Today, job seekers have access to a plethora of online platforms and tools that streamline the search process. But how can we easily navigate or get a job with the use of AI? In today’s episode, I have Vilas Tulachan, Founder of JobsGuru AI. We talked about the challenges of the current job search process and how Jobs Guru AI aims to help address these challenges using artificial intelligence. Moreover, we discussed how the application tracking systems, cognitive biases and how Jobs Guru AI analyzes resumes and job descriptions to determine good job matches, generates customized cover letters and interview questions, to help streamline the job search process and reduce frustration for job seekers. --- Listen to the podcast here: Streamlining Job Applications Using Generative AI With Vilas Tulachan Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. How many of you out there listening has searched for a job lately? And, lately, I mean, since the pandemic, it’s gotten even crazier than it was before. It’s a really tough process and a process that I’ve seen frustrate a lot of people, myself included, as you may have heard about in one of my past episodes. My guest today, Vilas Tulachan, started a company called JobsGuru.ai to help with this process that’s really become frustrating for so many people. --- Vilas, welcome to the program. Thank you, Stephen. Great to be in your podcast. I’m excited to share some of the ideas I have on how to help people get jobs faster with you today. Yeah, so let’s start with where the process is right now. Right now, a lot of people are frustrated by the job search process. What do you think is going on that’s making it so cumbersome, such a hard process when all people really want to do is find a job and then work it? Stephen, great question. It’s amazing. We are living in an amazing time. As Charles Dickens said, the best of times, the worst of times. The best of times, because unemployment rate in the US is the second lowest in the history of 3.7 as of end of last year. Wow. It’s amazing, right? So there’s 1.7 jobs opening for every job seeker. That’s the stats, that’s the economic news. But on the ground level is a different ballgame for job seekers. I’ve talked to job seekers that have applied at 50, 100, 200, 500 job application, they hardly hear anything back. Or they get a good thank kind of response from email back and maybe they’ve gotten maybe two or three interviews and they get ghosted by the employer. It’s been a really weird kind of job market. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And there are a couple of things I see, and the reason I got into this whole idea was as — I met you when you did the startup at Denver a year and a half ago and then I was looking to applying the AI and the ML into helping smaller businesses implement an AI in their businesses. And then I talked to a lot of people who were having issues with jobs, I’m wondering this sounds like a crazy idea, when there are so many jobs and I really did some research and found that a lot of people have a couple of challenges. Number one is called, it’s a cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger effect. So you must have heard about this where people either overestimate or underestimate their skill sets. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it’s strange. So, if you look at the industry stats, about 73 percent of the job application, according to LinkedIn, are rejected right away before even a human sees the resume, and mainly because the resume doesn’t match fully the job requirements. So that’s the first thing. So you only get 30 percent chance of ever getting a resume through this human being. The second thing, which is even worse, is called the application tracking system. Oh, yeah. It’s a software that sits in the background so most people must have seen this when they have to upload their resume, it goes to a software that essentially does a keyword mapping of your job description, what’s on the job description and what’s in your resume, so if you don’t match 70 percent of the keyword, it doesn’t get seen by the human being. And the keyword — I mean, for example, let’s say the job says they want five years of Microsoft Office experience and you say I have seven years of Word, let’s say Excel, it’s not matching, right? Because the way that I asked were two different terms, even though you have the experience. And that’s one of the challenges with this whole thing is that ATS system. And until you pass through the ATS system, you get a score of 70 plus is what I think they look at, depending on the ATS system, you are never seen by a hiring manager or a recruiter. That’s another problem. And the third thing mainly is also we’re human and after doing this for like three months, two months, people give up or they feel rejected, dejected, they don’t hear back after two months of sending out resumes and people tend to get frustrated and lose some kind of enthusiasm for applying and that’s another problem — Of course. Yeah, and that’s a challenge. So these are the three main kind of, there are others, by the way, but these are three challenges that most people I think are facing in this industry based on my experience of talking to a lot of recruiters and job seekers. And so who is it more frustrating for right now? Is it the company looking to hire the right person or the job seeker know it’s frustrating for them on both ends but, yeah, is one of those ends faring worse than the other? I think it’s mostly the job seekers. I mean, both are, right? As job seeker, they need jobs, a lot of people really can’t afford to be out of a job for more than a couple of months, right? So that’s a huge economic pressure. But on the other flip side, the companies are also getting tons of resumes because people are sending on jobs and 90 percent of them are not even qualified, but somebody has to go through them, the ATS system, so for them, it’s a problem on both ends. And they’re not getting enough qualified candidates and they take a long time to respond and so it’s a mess on both ends. So I’m trying to address at least the job seekers at this point. At some point, I may also kind of help the companies, especially small companies that may need some tools to filter out the most qualified applicants. So, yeah, so we identified this problem and what’s a bit about your solution? Because your solution involves using AI to help streamline this process. Yes. So JobsGuru.ai has — focused on like three basic issues. First of all is we’re going to take away the emotion, human emotion, human decision making and the Dunning-Kruger effect out of this entire equation. When you see the data drive, whether you should apply for the job or not. Right? And here’s the really interesting thing. A lot of men tend to — they look at the job description, the top two matches are close enough, company says we want 10 years of experience, let’s say Java programming experience, senior programmer. The guy thinks, I have four years’ experience, I’m good for that job, or they might say, no, they wanted somebody with a presentation skill set, has done C-level kind of presentation to C-level exec, and the person might have, I’ve done presentation quite a few times in my company, I’m good enough, and this is the problem that it takes away those biases out of the equation. You load your job description text file, you load your resume, which mostly is a PDF format, and the first thing he does is simple. It extracts the required job requirement in terms of importance, the key hard skills and the soft skill. That’s the first thing it does is, hey, what is this job requiring? Gets all the requirements out there, and next thing it says, okay, let me then take a look at your resume, it then analyzes the resume and says, hey, how well does it fit? The match. And right now I’ve set it up that if you don’t match at least, based on the criteria, 70, 80 percent It makes a recommendation, apply or don’t apply, based on those data. So the whole idea is do not apply at jobs that you are not — you don’t have much chance of getting a response and don’t be frustrated.Share on X Otherwise, you spend all that time frustrated. And then based on that, you then apply, the next thing is now, the second question is how well does the resume match the word description, the ATS friendly, how it is ATS friendly. So it goes out there and then fix it for you, to be ATS friendly. So it tweaks the resume — Yeah. — in order for it to get through the ATS. Exactly. At this stage, it’s kind of the second thing. General API is great but it also tends to have something, to make up things, and for this reason, you can download all the text file and then you basically have to review it and then kind of make your edit further, if need be. So once you have this, then the next question is, a lot of jobs will ask for cover letter or cover letter optional. And writing a cover letter can be challenging. Yeah, of course. I mean, people spend a lot of time writing those things. Yeah. And a lot of times, you don’t want to sound too boastful. Also, you don’t want to underplay your skill sets, right? Yeah. So this will take the resume and the job description and experience and craft a customized letter that says how you are the best qualified person for this particular job. So, quick question, is there a way to enhance the use of AI, and I guess one of the questions I have is that I think the frustration