S2E2
· 33:15
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to season 2 of Work It, a co op and career exploration podcast. This is the show where we chat with amazing UVic alumni, as well as our career educators at the University of Victoria to answer all your career related questions. I'm your host, Emma, a graduate of UVic in humanities, who's now back for a second degree in restoration of natural systems.
Emma Ulveland:And a fun fact about me is that technology kind of eludes me. This is something that I've been working on and trying to learn more about, which I'm really excited for today's episode because we're diving into a really interesting topic that's super timely in the news and in all aspects of our lives right now, and that is AI. So before we dive into our episode today, I'd like to also introduce my co host, Katy.
Katy DeCoste:Hi, everybody. I'm Katy. I work in communications here at UVic. I moonlight as a poet and writer about town. And a fun fact about me is I recently got really into plain yogurt. Before we dive in today's into today's conversation, I want to acknowledge that we're recording at the University of Victoria, which is located on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen peoples. We want to extend our gratitude for being here on this land today. And we want to acknowledge with our respect the Songhees, Esquimalt, and Wesanec peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.
Katy DeCoste:I am a transplant here. I came here for school and continue to work, play, and live here. And it is such an honor and a privilege to live on this land, which has been stewarded by the Songhees Esquimalt and WSANEC people since time immemorial. I feel extremely grateful and a profound sense of responsibility.
Emma Ulveland:Absolutely. It's a real privilege to get to spend time here in this incredible and beautiful place. And I'm really excited to dive into our episode today where we're asking an expert on one of the most interesting and upcoming topics that are going to affect everyone in both the academic sphere and in the workplace. So today, we're super excited to have Karae White on our show. And Karae has over 2 decades of experience as a career educator and is deeply invested in helping students identify their abilities, enabling them to thrive in their career journeys.
Emma Ulveland:Professional landscapes are changing due to generative AI and machine learning. Karae is equipping individuals with the knowledge and skills to understand AI advancements and to thrive in an ever changing job market. Thank you so much for joining us on the show. We're so excited to talk about AI with you and the future of work.
Karae White:Thank you very much for having me. I am also a colonial settler and feel very privileged to be here in this beautiful place that we live in.
Katy DeCoste:So, Karae, you are currently a career educator here at UVic, specifically serving students in engineering and computer science. Do you mind telling me a bit about what a career educator does and just the context of that here at the university?
Karae White:I've been doing some version of this job for, like, 25 years. And if you could see me, you'd know that I've earned all of my gray hairs. Nonetheless, as a career educator, I help to educate people about careers. That involves things like resume writing and job search skills and practicing interviewing, anything I can to just get the message out so that people can get work because what's the point of doing the degree? I mean, yes, it's very cool to socialize and dig deeply into knowledge.
Karae White:We're always better at what we do with those two things. But for me, the point is to help people get jobs.
Emma Ulveland:That's awesome. And your work is so important and so helpful for all of our students here, so we really appreciate what you do. And to build on that, I really wanna know where your interest in AI stemmed from.
Karae White:Thanks very much for that. I spent a long time working in the public with people doing career changes, and they were miserable. And a lot of it stemmed back to the degree that they did because somebody thought it was a good idea. Not because it had anything to do with what their purpose was in this world or what their heart called for. So I get kinda hung up on people understanding who they are and what it is that they're all about because I want them to prosper.
Karae White:It's kind of my way of contributing to good mental health. I've heard that 50% of the people that work in the world hate their jobs. And to me, that just is so scary.
Katy DeCoste:50%? Yeah. Like, is that overwhelming? That's wild.
Karae White:I do get kind of insanely passionate about people being really aligned with what they're doing. The thing that's gonna kinda interrupt that in a weird way is AI. And so I really want people to know about it. I don't want it to hit them from behind their back. I want them to be able to look at it head on and make some choices.
Karae White:I want people to be able to drive their own bus.
Katy DeCoste:I really love that. I mean, especially for me as a person who writes and is creative, both at work and in other capacities, There's a lot of fear, a lot of misinformation, and a lot of misgivings circulating about generative AI as it's in the media. It's making a big come up even though it's something that has, in some form, existed for quite a long time. I'm wondering if you can share a little bit about how AI works, what you're thinking of when you talk about AI as it relates to our job search, what can AI do, what can it not do, just a sort of general summary about what we're grappling with here. Here.
Karae White:Okay. That's such a great place to start. So we have AI everywhere. Like, every time you go to text and a suggestion comes up, so they call that predictive text, that's AI. It is literally everywhere.
Karae White:In terms of our careers and our job search, we can use it to make things go a little bit faster, which is nice. The best way I know to explain it is with this example that I have. So the very first time I tried using ChatGPT, which is probably the most common AI tool that we're gonna use, It's a generative AI tool. It means it's gonna scrape the web for a whole bunch of information and theoretically come up with a new answer. So I had a guy sitting in my office who's 2nd year bachelor software engineering, worked at McDonald's for 5 years and had volunteered for 5 years as a boy scout.
Karae White:And at first, you kinda go, oh, those are all very different. And he's like, what kind of a job can I get? What can I do? And I'm like, well, let's put it into our chat GPT, plugged that in, and I said, what are his transferable skills? And it went, which is a technical term.
Karae White:It listed off in, like, seconds flat all of his transferable skills and also explained why they were his transferable skills and where they came from. And literally, you could take a lot of that and just copy and paste that into a resume or potentially into a cover letter. And then I said, based on those transferable skills, what would be some career ideas that would be a good fit? And again, it went, and you're done. Mhmm.
Karae White:I picked one of those career ideas. In this case, it was an IT support specialist. And I said, what are entry level jobs? And again, we have a list. I had only used about maybe 10 minutes of his 45 minute appointment, and we had lots of time to talk about and look for jobs in that area, to figure out how to change his resume, whip up a cover letter.
Karae White:And so for me, I felt like I could be a different kind of productive. Normally, I would take 45 minutes to brainstorm with that student what their transferable skills were. And then I'm not always sure at the end of that 45 minute appointment that they understand why we needed to do that. It allows me to have a whole lot more creative energy. The trick with ChatGPT is that it does what's called hallucinations.
Karae White:Basically, what it is is a lie. So the AI is built to please us. And so it comes up with an answer, whether it has one or not. And so you really have to be careful and verify whatever it says.
Karae White:The most recent example that I know of is Air Canada has a chatbot. And a gentleman went on the chatbot because someone in his family had died, and so he needed to race off for a funeral. So he asked the chatbot because that was the fastest, easiest way to get an answer, how the bereavement policy work. Could he just buy a full fare ticket upfront? And then when he came back and had more time to think, get a refund.
Karae White:And the chatbot said yes and created a whole new policy that was different from the actual existing bereavement policy.
Katy DeCoste:No way. That's so crazy. Truly the ultimate people pleaser.
Karae White:So the poor guy comes back from the funeral and then asks for his refund. And Air Canada is like, what do you mean a refund? So then he, of course, relays the story, and they're like, too bad. It's not gonna happen. And so he took them to court as he should have.
Karae White:And my favorite part is that the lawyers representing Air Canada said, well, the chatbot doesn't actually work for us, so therefore, we're not responsible for its behavior.
Emma Ulveland:Oh, of course. Classic get out of jail free card right there.
Karae White:Absolutely. So they believe the judge didn't fall for that. But it is an example of a level of hallucinations that could get us all in trouble. I have a colleague here on campus. She's working on doing her master's, and she was just telling me the story the other day that she's exhausted and wanted some help.
Karae White:And so she went to chat GPT and said, here's the parameters of the activity assignment that I have to do and make sure you cite everything. And so it did, and every citation was incorrect, wrong, inaccurate. Every single one for the entire paper.
Emma Ulveland:Oh, no. Yeah. That could definitely get you into some trouble.
Katy DeCoste:Yeah. This is something that I've heard about that it not only might be citing things wrong, but also just conjuring citations out of thin air that have no association with any actual published researcher study. I think that that is such a good way of encapsulating this, like, point that we wanna drive home that these things can be useful tools for achieving certain outcomes or helping us with our work, but they can't necessarily replace the knowledge and the rigor that human people have, whether it's that's in the job search or on the job or elsewhere. There's lots of stuff buzzing around about generative AI. It's very sexy in the media right now, I think, to talk about.
Katy DeCoste:I'm wondering if you could address some misconceptions that people have about AI, maybe especially that students you work with might have about AI.
Karae White:Absolutely. It's very obvious to tell when a cover letter has been written by an AI tool, and that's not gonna impress an employer at all. So back to what you said, Katie, you do really need the foundational knowledge to be able to assess critically if what AI produced for you is any good or not. And so I think there's gonna be this really interesting backlash back to foundational skills and identifying what are foundational skills. Because if you don't have those, you can't assess critically.
Karae White:It's kind of the same thing. I tried using Dali , which is the graphic tool, and I tried to make a picture, but I don't have enough knowledge about how to produce a graphic design to get what I want. So I spent hours giving it prompts, trying this, description trying that, and none of it looked good. But equally, at the end of the day, I also don't think that I have enough knowledge to decide what was a good picture or image and what wasn't. So I think people get afraid, to answer your question, that AI is gonna come and take their jobs.
Karae White:Or there won't be any jobs left maybe by the time you're ready to graduate. And it's really not true. I think some of the work we're gonna do is gonna be a little bit different.
Emma Ulveland:I'm really glad that you brought that up because I do think that's a major fear that a lot of people are starting to have, and that's being perpetuated on a lot of places online. And it's generating a lot of concerns and mixed feelings about using these tools. So it's nice to kind of lift the veil a little bit on what we can actually use this tool for and how far it can actually go. What it sounds like to me is that we need to shift our focus a little bit on learning how to assess digital content and be really conscious of what is real or what is correct or factual and how to actually determine if something is accurate sounds pretty important. So would you mind telling us a little bit about where you might guide a student if they came in and wanted to use AI or were already dealing with, AI generated resume cover letter, whatever it is, and they ask you how to make sure that everything is correct, what would you tell them?
Karae White:In terms of everything being correct, I think the most important thing when you write a resume or a cover letter is that you tailor it to the company. I have an example that I like to use. I said to this girl, I said, hey. You have red hair. I like red hair.
Karae White:You wanna go on a date? And she shuddered, like, physically was like, oh, gross. Right? So then I said to her, hey, I saw that work that you did on that project. I was really amazed with, like, the thoughts that you had.
Karae White:Is there any way you'd go for a cup of coffee so we could talk more about it? And she immediately perked up and smiled, and I was no longer this creepy stalker kind of person.
Katy DeCoste:This is also a dating advice show, I think.
Karae White:Absolutely. Welcome
Emma Ulveland:to Work It, careers and dating podcast.
Katy DeCoste:Welcome to Work It. That's work with an e.
Karae White:It is like a dating game, and that's the part that everybody forgets. My pet peeve this week is the number of cover letters that I've read that say, please accept this application for blah blah blah position. I have this education and this experience to contribute, and I will be an awesome team member. If you're the employer, you have to imagine reading, I don't know, 100 of those. And you're like, like it you just go to sleep.
Karae White:That's the kind of cover letter that's gonna come out of a generative AI. Generative AI is based on the data that we gave it. So everything it's scraped off of the web. And so garbage in garbage out is the saying that we have. If we have only lousy cover letters online, then that's what that generative AI is gonna produce.
Karae White:It's gonna follow that model. So really, you need to figure out how to be uniquely you. There is no one else that is like you. What is a unique way that you can put a spin on your cover letter? What is an unusual experience that you have that's maybe different from your classmates?
Karae White:And most importantly, understand when you're applying to that company and you write out the cover letter, what's unique about that company? What's a project that you like that they do? And add that into your opening. I really am fascinated by the project that you started with blah blah blah and its effect on blah blah blah, and so I am applying for this position. Use AI to create the majority of your cover letter, and then you have to put your unique spin and stamp on it.
Karae White:It gives you a base to start with, but then you gotta use your brain and your creativity and all those smarts that got you here to write a letter that's unique.
Emma Ulveland:Amazing advice. Thank you so much.
Katy DeCoste:Yeah. That reminds me of a recent job search. It was pretty soon after these tools had become publicly available, and I remember feeling a little bit cynical about the prospect of using something like chat gbt in my work search. How I ended up using it was I would throw in a job description and just ask what are the most repeated skills in this job description, it gives me this list that lines up with what I'm seeing, doesn't appear to be generated out of nowhere, and that made the process of tailoring my materials much faster even though I was still the one who was writing the little paragraphs and, like, doing my little resume. So I think that really speaks to what you're saying.
Katy DeCoste:No one is you and no one knows your unique experience and no one can tell a story about your experience in the way can. But these tools can make that process a lot less painful. So we know that AI can be a useful tool for folks who are looking for work. On the flip side, some employers use AI in the process of recruiting or screening applicants. Do you mind sharing a little bit about that and why employers are using tools like AI as they're hiring?
Karae White:I think employers wanna do the work that they know how to do. Primarily, they're in a business because they're good at doing that business, whatever makes that business rock. And they have to stop doing that to go ahead and hire. It's why we have HR departments because they don't wanna do the hiring part. Right?
Karae White:So you have to understand, first off, are you applying to a medium to large size company or a small company or a start up company? Small start up companies may use a version of a tool to make things go faster. Same with a large company. What I think is another misconception about AI is it's expensive. So it'll be the large companies that actually can afford to use an AI tool.
Karae White:Smaller, medium sized companies, startups, uh-uh. They're not gonna have the cash behind something like that. You may be thinking about an applicant tracking system, not necessarily an AI tool, but a very common tool that employers use for hiring. So it scans your resume, scans your cover letters. It's looking for the keywords that are in the job posting.
Karae White:And there's some pros and some cons to that. Generally, what happens with an ATS is your resume goes into it and it strips all of the formatting out of your resume, so it can parse the individual pieces of information that it's looking for, the data that it's looking for. In that process, if you have anything in a box, or in a header, or in, columns, that's all gone. So if your name and contact information is in the header of your document, you have a nameless, headless resume, not to paint too crazy of a picture. So I had one student, super capable, great education, great experiences, and every single piece of contact information she has was hyperlinked.
Karae White:And so it'll pull all the hyperlinks out. And because she had just the short URL version of her hyperlink, even her phone number was hyperlinked. They couldn't figure out how to contact her. Fixed her problem in 30 seconds. It was the fastest appointment I've probably ever had at UVic.
Emma Ulveland:Wow. I can't believe it takes out that much information and just scraps it completely because so many people spend so much time really making their resume and their cover letter look beautiful and stand out. And to know that for some companies, they just get rid of all of that. That's a little bit devastating, but changes the way we write our resumes.
Karae White:Yeah. So what I like to do is save the pretty ones for when you're going in person, when you're going to an interview. I did once have this situation where I walked in to an interview and the interviewer said, yeah. Okay. So which one are you?
Karae White:Which one is your resume? Now that's, of course, immediately a red flag. But also listen to myself, always have a couple resumes on you. And it's really nice if you can have the pretty resumes for the in person stuff. But for everything else, you wanna make sure it's basically ATS proofed.
Karae White:What it's taking out is the formatting. And so you can test that yourself if you save it as a plain text. So a dot txt instead of a dot doc. It'll show you what your resume is gonna read. Because here's the other crazy part that I haven't told you about.
Karae White:The ATS gets finished with your resume, and then for some stupid reason, they send it in the unformatted version to the human to read. I'm like, one of my very smart computer science students is gonna come up with a tool that just reverts it back, and they're gonna make millions.
Emma Ulveland:Okay. I kind of wanna put my own resume through one of those now because I've never actually done that. And I'm really glad you mentioned it because I'm really curious to see what on earth is going to happen with my resume now. But wow. So that's really interesting great for people to know.
Emma Ulveland:I was just thinking when
Karae White:you were saying that that I forgot at UVic, we have one other tool that you can use. It's called VMock. If you go onto our website, you can go UVic VMock, and it'll get you there. You can upload your resume, and it'll let you know if it's it's not ATS compliant. It also has really great advice about how to build super strong accomplishment statements, which I really love.
Karae White:It's a tool, and just like all tools, it is far from perfect. So I do not recommend looking at the numbers. It will give you a score to evaluate how well you've done it. And we've had some students make all of the changes and then upload it and not get a better score. So just ignore that part.
Karae White:Take the perfectionist part of you and shelve it temporarily. We're just looking for the advice about how to write the accomplishment statements because it's really valuable. And it's a free tool that the university offers to students.
Katy DeCoste:I think it's really awesome to kind of get that behind the curtain peek at how both the applicant and the employer use different types of AI or other digital tools for different purposes. And I think it's good to know where employers are coming from and what's actually happening so that you can adjust what you're doing accordingly. Things are changing in the world of work, and I think that's something we've been saying for years now, and so maybe change just is the only constant. How can we as young people, students, job seekers be flexible, be adaptive to these new modes of working as these advancements in things like AI crop up? How can we be prepared while quelling that fear that we talked about?
Karae White:So here's the thing. You need to understand what your transverbal skills are. And by transverbal skills, I mean, okay, you have communication skills. Great. How can you describe those communication skills to someone else so it makes sense for their business?
Karae White:So is that your writing communication skills? Is it your 1 on 1 communication skills? Is it your editing communication skills? Is it the way that you add humor communication skills? Is it your presentation communication skills?
Karae White:Is it your capacity to build amazing PowerPoint communication skills? So we have these big words that we like to use, like communication skills, which is a transferable skill. So how is it gonna transfer to that employer? You have to understand what your talents are, what your gifts are, all the things that you've learned in the language of transferable skills, and then break that down so that you can transfer it from one place of work to the other. Those things will not change no matter what AI does.
Katy DeCoste:I love that. I think we so often distinguish between hard skills and soft skills. Hard being something that is, quote, technical and soft being something that is, quote, relational or interpersonal. And in reality, all of those things are equally important and sometimes it's the, quote, soft or relational interpersonal skills like being able to work with a team, being able to manage the expectations of stakeholders that is the most transferable. No matter what field you're looking for work in, be it engineering, be it graphic design, be it running a theater company, it's applicable everywhere.
Karae White:Absolutely. Couldn't agree more.
Emma Ulveland:This has been super helpful to get a good general look at how we can use AI in our career exploration and work search and application process. At this point, I'd really love to ask you if we can just break it down a little bit further and just talk briefly about each of those steps as if I was a student who's going to go and do all of those things. So starting with the career exploration, what would you tell me to do first?
Karae White:Okay. Great question. So for career exploration and using AI as a tool, I like to say, I have this degree. I value these things. I'm passionate about this stuff.
Karae White:What are some career ideas? As an example, I have a son who's a professional ballet dancer, and that's a short lived career. Mama, who's the career counselor, is always planning the next step. So when my son's not in the studio, he's in the bush. He literally sent me a snap the other day from the top of some tree.
Karae White:So I said, well, let's test the AI out at chat gpt. And I said, I'm currently a professional dancer. When I'm not in the dance studio, I'm in the bush. I love doing these kinds of activities. Can you suggest some career ideas?
Karae White:And it did. And they were great ideas. And then the part that I love as the career educator is it explains why those are good ideas. And he agreed. He's like, oh, I could I could do those.
Karae White:Yeah. Those would be good. So there's career exploration.
Katy DeCoste:So the next step usually after we search for jobs is putting together application materials. We've touched a bit on this, but can you dig a bit deeper into how we can use AI when we're putting together our resume and cover letter?
Karae White:So you can say to the chat GPT, how can I make more concise accomplishment statements? How could I add more proof or statistics of my abilities? You have to be really careful with the hallucination because it'll make stuff up. You can ask if there's any suggestions for formatting, wording changes. You can ask if there's skill gaps is actually one of my favorite questions.
Karae White:So if you put in a job posting and your resume and say what fits and where are the skill gaps. Because maybe you go, oh, you're right. I didn't put that in my resume, but I have that experience. I just forgot about articulating it.
Emma Ulveland:Absolutely. And then once we've got a beautiful resume and cover letter and we found some places to apply to, the next step are the dreaded interviews. What is the best way to use AI to help us with our interview step?
Karae White:So you can say, I'm applying for this job. What are the most likely interview questions? Do you have any information on interview questions this company likes to interview for? For this type of a role, what are the interview questions? Questions?
Karae White:One of my biggest rules for AI is I ask the question 3 different ways, and you will get 3 different answers. It's pretty phenomenal, actually. But that way, you've got your basis covered and you can sort things out. And then when you're done using AI, highly recommend that you find your career educator for your faculty because they have some lived experiences about employers here and across the country as do the co op coordinators that might help you take that next step.
Katy DeCoste:This is all such phenomenal advice and definitely goes way beyond me just asking, hey, Chat GPT, what are the skills in this job posting? So we really appreciate it.
Emma Ulveland:Some people have been comparing the rise of AI and our technology changing as the 4th industrial revolution. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Karae White:Yeah. Absolutely. So the 4th industrial revolution involves actually quite a few things. One is the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning. And it's the kind of thing that we really can't conceive of what's gonna happen.
Karae White:So machine learning is where the machine teaches itself. And apparently, it's better at teaching itself than we are at teaching it. I know. It's slightly scary. Right?
Karae White:That's gonna drastically alter the landscape of work. And also pushing up behind that is we have a shortage of workers. So we have less and less kids as the generations go down. And so employers wanna be productive. And as a government, we want those employers to be working and be productive because then they're paying taxes.
Karae White:And then we use our taxes to create our social infrastructures. So we have hospitals and schools and EI programs, and old people like me get to retire eventually. If our employers aren't being productive because they don't have enough workers, we're in trouble. Imagine though, if you're the employer and there aren't enough people for jobs, how are you gonna be productive? Well, you're gonna turn to AI.
Karae White:And so they also feel like that's gonna fuel things. We also are likely gonna have some big changes because of our climate crisis, which is also part of the 4th industrial revolution. As an example of how that might roll out and affect us, 20 years from now, 50% of the jobs that currently exist will no longer exist. So what are you gonna be doing 20 years from now? It's like, well, I don't know.
Karae White:And neither do the people who make predictions about what we're gonna do for work. Overall, if you can watch for any repetitive work. So whenever there's something that's repetitive, it can be replaced by an AI tool. So for me to edit a resume can be replaced by an AI tool. Basically, white collar jobs are gonna get hit the hardest.
Karae White:I work with engineers and computer scientists, so manufacturing, construction, utilities will be the hardest hit in those areas as we go to automate things. So there will be many jobs lost in that side of automating, for example, manufacturing. But equally, there will be other jobs created that we're not even exactly sure about yet. So looking for anything that might be automated is a really good thing to sort of keep on your radar. Considering taking micro credentials, like, as soon as you graduate, right now, the province of BC believes that 80 percent of the people that work in the province need minimum 6 months of post secondary education.
Karae White:And so I don't know you guys, but I can't stop everything and just go back to university. So instead, what we're gonna do is microcredentials. So they're short, quick hit courses usually done asynchronously. And you can find those in the continuing studies departments for most of the universities and the colleges. If it's on a list, the provincial government will pay up to $35100 to cover the cost of the courses.
Katy DeCoste:I love that. For students who are looking to learn more about this, where can we find more information and resources about using AI during a work search or as a tool as we build our careers?
Karae White:You can start by going to the UVic's career services website. Together, a bunch of us pull some information so that students would have some guidelines so you can start there. Every semester, I run a workshop, and there's almost always an AI workshop. Other than that, I like following things like tech journals and newsletters to try and figure out what's going on in tech. Probably my most favorite email is superhuman.
Karae White:I'm sure there are a gazillion other ones out there.
Katy DeCoste:One thing that I would love to add to that, we've got all these awesome resources for using AI during our work search. Some students may have also encountered that UVic has resources about using AI in other parts of our lives, including academics. So UVic's guidelines and regulations around that other side of our lives will also be linked in the show description.
Emma Ulveland:Correia, I'd like to give such a huge thank you for coming on our show today and really making us feel a lot more positive about the future of work and the future of finding work as AI continues to change the way that we live. So thank you very much for your time and your expertise. We loved having you on the show.
Karae White:You are welcome. Anytime, I'd love to talk about making the work work.
Katy DeCoste:Work It is developed and distributed by co op and career services at the University of Victoria and hosted by Emma Ulveland and Katy DeCoste. Today's guest was career educator, Karae White. Our theme music and art were created by Emma Ulveland with audio editing by Emma Ulveland. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to Work It wherever you get your podcasts, and you'll never miss an update. To learn more about career possibilities and resources from UVic, visituvic.cadashcareerdashservices.
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