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In the past year, Ive worked with job seekers, HR teams, and tech leaders, navigating everything from résumé optimization to the ethics of AI in hiring. And Ive seen a clear pattern emerge: Candidates are using AI more than ever, and sometimes in ways that backfire. The tools are smarter. The competition is fiercer. Used well, AI can be your most powerful copilot. Used poorly, it can quietly disqualify you before a human ever sees your name. Here are five of the most common AI-related job search mistakes I see, along with one bonus pitfall you may not realize you’re making. Mistake 1: Relying on AI to Write Your Entire Résumé or Cover Letter AI résumé and cover letter generators promise to help you create professional documents quickly. But these tools often generate generic content based on keywords, which can make your application blend in with the rest. Yes, with a single ChatGPT prompt, you can have a résumé draft in 30 seconds. But if you stop there, youre hurting your chances. Remember: AI-generated résumés read like they were written by a robot, because they were. Why its a problem: AI can help you with structure and grammar, but it cannot capture the nuances of your personal brand or unique career story. Worse yet, you also risk having a nearly identical résumé as another applicant because you are all asking for the same keywords/skills. Solution: Use AI to improve rather than replace your writing processfor example, to check for grammar errors, suggest keywords, or guide you to quantify your impact further. But make sure to personalize the content with specific examples from your own career. Your résumé should reflect your unique journey, not just a collection of skills and accomplishments with AI-generated words in between. Mistake 2: Using AI to Apply for Jobs on Your Behalf Without Customizing Your Application AI tools like job application bots can now apply for thousands of jobs on your behalf, filling out applications and submitting résumés for you. While this may save you time, it can also lead to oversaturation and missed opportunities. Why its a problem: These AI tools are good at mass applications but are not great at tailoring your application to each job and company. Customization is key when it comes to standing out in this crowded job market. An AI application will often lack the personalized touch that hiring managers value, and it wont allow you to highlight specific aspects of your experience that align with the companys culture and needs. Solution: Use AI to help identify relevant job openings, but take the time to customize your applications. Craft a personalized cover letter and tweak your résumé to reflect the most relevant skills and experiences for each job. Even a few tailored adjustments can make a huge difference in catching a hiring managers eye. Mistake 3: Letting AI or Deepfakes Do the Interview for You Yes, weve entered that chapter. Some candidates are now using AI tools to generate real-time answers during live chat interviews and in extreme cases, deploying deepfakes to complete asynchronous video screenings. Even if you make it through the first round or get hired, consider this: What will you do on the job? Why its a problem: AI-driven interviews and deepfakes can make it easier for candidates to present themselves in an overly polished or dishonest way. While you might pass the screening, the real challenge comes once you’re on the job. Most companies now prohibit pasting confidential or company-specific info into public AI tools like ChatGPT. So even if youre AI-savvy, the tools you used to land the role may not be available on the job. If you oversell your capabilities or rely on tools you wont have access to later, you risk being fired or flagged early in onboarding. Solution: While it might be tempting to rely on AI to enhance your interview performance, remember that authenticity is now paramount. Use AI to prep, not perform. Practice interview questions, refine your examples, and improve how you tell your story using AI, but never fake it. The risk isnt just not getting the job. Its losing your reputation. Mistake 4: Overinflating Your Experience with AI Polish AI tools can help you highlight your accomplishments and frame your experiences more effectively, but theres a danger in overinflating your role or contributions. While its tempting to use AI to embellish your résumé or cover letter, its important to remember that overstatement will be quickly exposed, not only in interviews, but also through informal back-channel checks. Why its a problem: Hiring managers often reach out to former colleagues, managers, or industry connections to gather informal insights about candidates. Even if theyre not conducting formal reference checks, these casual conversations can reveal discrepancies between your résumé and the reality of your work experience. If your claims dont match the reality of how you were perceived in previous roles, it could harm your credibility and disqualify you immediately. Solution: Focus on being authentic and accurate when detailing your experience. Use AI to help articulate or reframe your achievements but ensure that everything you list is something you can back up with real examples. Honesty and transparency go a long way in establishing trust with hiring managers. Mistake 5: Underestimating the Power (and Liability) of Your Digital Presence AI tools may help you land interviews, but they can also scan your LinkedIn profile or social media accounts as part of the screening process. Its not enough to just have a résumé. Your online presence is increasingly scrutinized by employers. Why its a problem: If your LinkedIn profile doesnt match your résumé, at minimum, it can confuse hiring managers. AI wont just look at your résumé. Now its scanning your digital presence on all platforms. If you have once posted something negative about your potential employer as a customer, it can be flagged and prevent you from landing an interview. Solution: Ensure that your LinkedIn profile is up to date, fully aligned with your résumé, and clearly highlights your relevant skills and accomplishments. Create a compelling headline and summary that clearly state what you do and what youre looking for. Share posts that demonstrate your expertise and thought leadership. Clean up any social media posts that might paint an inaccurate or outdated picture of the current you. Remember, your LinkedIn is an extension of your résumé and should reflect your personal brand authentically. Bonus Mistake: Ignoring the Human Side of the Job Search Heres the reality: Many jobs arent filled through cold applications. Some jobs are never even listed on job boards. Theyre filled through referrals and networking. AI cant replace genuine relationship building, and it shouldnt. You should use AI to help you research target companies, suggest outreach messages on LinkedIn, or prep for networking calls and coffee chats. Then, go out there and attend events. On LinkedIn, you can comment thoughtfully on industry conversations and start building relationships with those who might someday become the hiring manager of your dream job. Remember, networking is expanding who you know and having a strong personal brand online expands who knows you. Both will enhance your chance of getting hired in this market. Final Thoughts: Stay Human and Stay Authentic My advice as an AI expert? Embrace AI as a tool to enhance your job search but always maintain authenticity and integrity. Let it help you shine brighter, not become a distorted version of yourself. Your skills, experience, and passion are what will ultimately land you the right job. Don’t let AI derail that by turning you into someone you’re not.
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E-Commerce
Moments after Daniris Espinal walked into her new apartment in Brooklyn, she prayed. In ensuing nights, she would awaken and touch the walls for reassurancefinding in them a relief that turned to tears over her morning coffee.Those walls were possible through a federal program that pays rent for some 60,000 families and individuals fleeing homelessness or domestic violence. Espinal was fleeing both.But the program, Emergency Housing Vouchers, is running out of moneyand quickly.Funding is expected to be used up by the end of next year, according to a letter from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and obtained by The Associated Press. That would leave tens of thousands across the country scrambling to pay their rent.It would be among the largest one-time losses of rental assistance in the U.S., analysts say, and the ensuing evictions could churn these peopleafter several years of rebuilding their livesback onto the street or back into abusive relationships.“To have it stop would completely upend all the progress that they’ve made,” said Sonya Acosta, policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which researches housing assistance.“And then you multiply that by 59,000 households,” she said.The program, launched in 2021 by then-President Joe Biden as part of the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan Act, was allocated $5 billion to help pull people out of homelessness, domestic violence and human trafficking.People from San Francisco to Dallas to Tallahassee, Florida, were enrolledamong them children, seniors and veteranswith the expectation that funding would last until the end of the decade.But with the ballooning cost of rent, that $5 billion will end far faster.Last month, HUD sent letters to groups dispersing the money, advising them to “manage your EHV program with the expectation that no additional funding from HUD will be forthcoming.”The program’s future rests with Congress, which could decide to add money as it crafts the federal budget. But it’s a relatively expensive prospect at a time when Republicans, who control Congress, are dead set on cutting federal spending to afford tax cuts.Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, who championed the program four years ago, is pushing for another $8 billion infusion.But the organizations lobbying Republican and Democratic lawmakers to reup the funding told the AP they aren’t optimistic. Four GOP lawmakers who oversee the budget negotiations did not respond to AP requests for comment.“We’ve been told it’s very much going to be an uphill fight,” said Kim Johnson, the public policy manager at the National Low Income Housing Coalition.Espinal and her two daughters, aged 4 and 19, are living on one of those vouchers in a three-bedroom apartment with an over $3,000 monthly rentan amount extremely difficult to cover without the voucher.Four years ago, Espinal fought her way out of a marriage where her husband controlled her decisions, from seeing her family and friends to leaving the apartment to go shopping.When she spoke up, her husband said she was wrong, or in the wrong or crazy.Isolated and in the haze of postpartum depression, she didn’t know what to believe. “Every day, little by little, I started to feel not like myself,” she said. “It felt like my mind wasn’t mine.”When notices arrived in March 2021 seeking about $12,000 in back rent, it was a shock. Espinal had quit her job at her husband’s urging and he had promised to cover family expenses.Police reports documenting her husband’s bursts of anger were enough for a judge to give her custody of their daughter in 2022, Espinal said.But her future was precarious: She was alone, owed thousands of dollars in back rent and had no income to pay it or support her newborn and teenage daughters.Financial aid to prevent evictions during the pandemic kept Espinal afloat, paying her back rent and keeping the family out of shelters. But it had an expiration date.Around that time, the Emergency Housing Vouchers program was rolled out, targeting people in Espinal’s situation.A “leading cause of family homelessness is domestic violence” in New York City, said Gina Cappuccitti, director of housing access and stability services at New Destiny Housing, a nonprofit that has connected 700 domestic violence survivors to the voucher program.Espinal was one of those 700, and moved into her Brooklyn apartment in 2023.The relief went beyond finding a secure place to live, she said. “I gained my worth, my sense of peace, and I was able to rebuild my identity.”Now, she said, she’s putting aside money in case of the worst. Because, “that’s my fear, losing control of everything that I’ve worked so hard for.” Jesse Bedayn Associated Press/Report for America
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E-Commerce
The death of a pope sets in motion a series of carefully orchestrated rites and rituals well before the conclave to elect his successor begins. They involve the certification of death and public display of his body for the faithful to pay their respects, followed by the funeral and burial.Pope Francis, who died on Monday, revised various rites last year, simplifying the funeral rituals to emphasize his role as a mere bishop and allowing for burial outside the Vatican in keeping with his wishes. But the core elements remain, including the three key moments that must be observed between the death of a pope and his burial.The reforms are incorporated into the slim red volume “Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis,” Latin for “Rite of Burial for Roman Pontiffs.” Why were changes to the funeral rites necessary? While popes often tinker with the rules regulating the conclave that elects their successor, a revision of the papal funeral rites hadn’t been undertaken since 2000.The changes became necessary after Francis expressed his own wishes, and after Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI died on December 31, 2022. For Benedict, the Vatican had to work out the novelty of a funeral for the first retired pope in 600 years.A few months later, Francis revealed he was working with the Vatican’s master of liturgical ceremonies, Archbishop Diego Ravelli, to overhaul the entire book of rites to simplify them.In explaining the reforms, Ravelli said the changes aimed “to emphasize even more that the Roman Pontiff’s funeral is that of a pastor and disciple of Christ and not of a powerful man of this world.” The declaration of death The three main stations, or moments, occur first in his home, then in St. Peter’s Basilica, and then in the place of burial.The reform allows for the formal confirmation of death to occur in Francis’ personal chapel rather than his bedroom. It is unclear why, the change may be more practical than anything since Francis chose to live in a small suite in the Vatican’s Santa Marta hotel rather than the Apostolic Palace. He has a personal chapel at Santa Marta.Upon the pope’s death, the head of the Vatican health service examines the body, ascertains the cause of death and writes a report. The body is dressed in white.The body rests in the pope’s personal chapel for the ritual pronouncement of death, presided over by the camerlengo, the Vatican official who runs the Holy See administration between the death or resignation of one pope and the election of another. The camerlengo is American Cardinal Kevin Farrell, one of Francis’ most trusted aides.In a change from the past, the rite no longer requires the body to be placed in the traditional three coffins made of cypress, lead and oak. Now, the pope’s body is placed in a wooden coffin, with a zinc coffin inside. The pope is dressed in red liturgical vestments, his miterthe traditional headdress of bishopsand the pallium woolen stole, a kind of scarf. The Pasqual candle, a large, decorated candle used at Easter, is placed nearby. The camerlengo drafts the formal declaration of death, attaching the certificate that had been prepared by the health service chief. The master of liturgical celebrations, Ravelli, then decides when other faithful can pay their respects before the coffin is moved to St. Peter’s Basilica for public viewing. Once in the basilica When the body is brought into the basilica, the Litany of Saints chant is sung. The camerlengo leads the procession.In another change, the pope’s body is no longer placed on an elevated bier. Rather, the simplified wooden coffin is placed facing the pews, with the Pasqual candle nearby. The sealing of the coffin The night before the funeral, the camerlengo presides over the closing and sealing of the coffin, in the presence of other senior cardinals. A white cloth is placed over the pope’s face. A bag containing coins minted during his papacy is placed in the coffin along with a one-page written account of his papacyknown in Italian as a “rogito,” a word indicating an official deed. It is read aloud by the master of liturgical ceremonies and then rolled up and slipped inside a cylindrical tube that is placed inside the coffin. Another copy is kept in the Vatican archives. The covers of both the zinc coffin and the wooden one bear a cross and the papal coat of arms.Francis’ coat of arms, which he kept from when he was bishop, features a shield and the monogram of his Jesuit order, with the words “Miserando atque eligendo,” Latin for “Having had mercy, he called him.” It comes from an episode in the Gospel where Christ picks a seemingly unworthy person to follow him. The funeral and burial The funeral is presided over by the dean of the College of Cardinals or, if that is not possible, by the vice dean or another senior cardinal. The current dean is Italian Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, 91. The vice dean is Argentine Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, 81. Francis earlier this year extended both of their five-year terms rather than appoint new ones.Francis’ reform allows for burial outside the Vatican, with the camerlengo presiding. Various seals are impressed on the coffin, and it is placed inside the tomb.Francis has said he wants to be buried not in St. Peter’s Basilica or its grottoes, where most popes are buried, but in the St. Mary Major Basilica across town. His choice reflects his veneration of an icon of the Virgin Mary that is located there, the Salus Populi Romani (Salvation of the people of Rome).After every foreign trip, Francis would go to the basilica to pray before the Byzantine-style painting that features an image of Mary, draped in a blue robe, holding the infant Jesus who in turn holds a jeweled golden book.“It’s my great devotion,” Francis told Mexico’s N+ in revealing his future burial plans. “The place is already prepared.”With the burial, the Catholic Church begins nine days of official mourning, known as the “novemdiales” and the conclave begins. Nicole Winfield, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
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