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Hmmm, that’s interesting.

I have a relative who talks about a “Gen Z coworker” who is very self-focused. To the point of being flaky and inconsistent in the job.

But, my company isn’t heavy on Gen Z folks yet, and my department is in line for an AI wipeout anyway, so suppose we’ll see.

I think it definitely depends on the talent pool.  My company targets interns from and graduates of the top MBA schools.  Typically Ivy league, Stanford, Northwestern, Chicago, Michigan, UVA, and of course the University of Texas.  

I'm hereby making this a "No Stupid Questions about AI" topic. 

Agentic tasks is one thing I don't much understand as far as the workflow.  It makes sense how I could use Copilot to do things within MS applications.  I don't understand how an external agent like Claude would interact with MS applications (or other programs) to do any agentic tasks. 

You're basically where I was at 3-4 months ago. For me, going from 0 -> 1 was to stop trying to figure out how AI was going to build what I needed. Instead, do this: open Claude, type "How can I use Claude Cowork to create agentic tasks in MS Excel?" That should give you a basic understanding, then you can move on to working on your first specific task / project.

A couple more things:
1) Don't jump straight into Cowork or other tools to try to build automations. Work with the chat tool to build what you want to accomplish, then then ask the chat how to automate what you just built.
2) Don't try to one-shot your prompt by adding in a ton of context up front. Instead, tell it what you want to accomplish and then tell it to ask clarifying questions before executing anything.

We don't ask for a cover letter when we advertise jobs.

Nope.

What we do is ask the candidates to write us a summary of their interview, and how they could help us and how we could help them.

How would you feel if they AIed that?

One thing I’m curious about is where the line ends up about what we care about. Like, no one is precious about someone making a slide deck. Cover letters are a gray area. But like, will people enjoy AI written books? 

If they did an AI follow-up, they would not get an offer.

We make them sign an attest that AI was not used for their resume or follow-up.

The resume too? Interesting. 

There's probably a bit of hypocrisy involved with some employers, especially the big ones.  They might not want AI used when people apply, but all the big companies use AI to filter out most resumes before they ever even lay eyes on one.  

If they can use AI in the hiring process without giving a resume a fair shake and a personal assessment.....it's kinda lame to dock applicants for using AI to help get through the process, or just make things easier on themselves, which is exactly what the employers are doing.  

You might think it's more justified for an employer to help them sift through the garbage, but employment screening AIs are notoriously biased.  Well, I mean, all models are biased one way or another.  But they are notorious for being biased in ways that nobody intended.  

So if Amazon keeps me at arms length for a position with AI, well then, here, have my AI resume, jerks.

At this point, I might be a little disappointed if a candidate didn't have a working knowledge of how to use AI to improve their practice. That might include taking a crack at a letter, even if it is just proof reading it.

Also, quick reminder to all you out there, your AI prompts aren't legally privileged, even if you're asking AI for legal advice. Having the opposition produce their client's AI logs is a promising area for discovery in litigation...

I haven't needed AI yet