[K-Women Talk]A Self-Introduction Letter Written Too Well... You Are Eliminated

HR Managers Can Tell If You Used AI
You Need to Use Your Own Living Words

While reading my son's self-introduction letter for a private company internship, I was astonished by how well-written it was. Unlike his usual writing, there were hardly any typos, the sentences flowed smoothly, and impressive words like "rigor" and "innovation" appeared one after another. I wondered, "Is this really my son?" but as I suspected, the true author of the letter was generative AI. To be precise, my son provided the material and drafted the initial version, while the AI handled the proofreading and polishing.

In reality, generative AI is highly proficient at writing, editing, and proofreading. The sentences are clean, it excels at generating keywords, and, most of all, the results seem convincing. The problem is that every job seeker is now submitting similarly polished self-introduction letters. Imagine being a recruiter—after reading so many similar letters, wouldn't you want to firmly declare, in the voice of Chef An Sungjae, "Rejected"? It's no wonder HR managers are voicing skepticism about self-introduction letters, saying, "They're all alike" and "They lack a human touch."

Regardless of these circumstances, the ability to leverage AI is becoming increasingly important in the job market. Meta has announced that it will allow AI collaboration for some developer recruitment processes, and consulting firm McKinsey reportedly assigned graduate students in pilot interviews the task of analyzing cases with an AI chatbot and then supplementing or revising the conclusions. Korean companies that introduced "AI competency tests" during the COVID-19 era are now emphasizing "AI natives" and are increasingly seeking to assess AI utilization skills in practical evaluations or interviews.

So, how can you write a self-introduction letter that reflects your own personality while using AI? Experts offer three main tips. First, use AI to solve the parts of the self-introduction letter that are most challenging for you. Job seekers often don't know how their experiences will be evaluated in terms of competencies, so they should fully utilize AI's conceptualization skills. For example, if you ask, "Connect my supermarket part-time job experience to marketing KPIs (key performance indicators)," the AI will organize your experience using business terms such as "relationship between product display and sales" or "customer service and teamwork capabilities." Understanding how your experiences will be evaluated by companies can be an important clue when writing your letter.

Second, if the sentences AI helps you with become overly polished or the sentence length and tone are excessively uniform, you must rewrite them in your own voice. To replace the "textbook language" that AI often uses with "your living language," it can be helpful to allow some awkward or ungrammatical sentences. One HR manager commented, "Many self-introduction letters show traces of generative AI, but I'm more drawn to those that are simple and honest, like something written by a middle or high school student." Experts especially warn against stereotypical sentences that appear out of context. For example, avoid phrases like, "Through this experience, I was able to develop XX competency," or "I believe I can contribute quickly to your company."

Third, while most job seekers feed their personal information and questions into AI to have it draft an initial version, try reversing this process. Write the draft yourself and then ask the AI to polish it or reduce the word count. However, even then, it's important to set strict guidelines so that the AI doesn't insert generic buzzwords. The key is to ensure your "living words" come through in your self-introduction letter.

In any case, here's what I should tell my son: "It's okay if it's not perfect—try writing it again in your own words."

Lee Sookeun, Publisher of The Framework of Employment

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.