​HR Can Spot Your AI Cover Letter in 5 Seconds! | 03/11/2026 | Stephen Says Column

Dear Stephen,

I’m an HR professional. Specifically, I’m the senior recruiter in the HR department at one of the major manufacturers in the Midwest. I am the internal recruiting lead on most of our outside sales positions. I have several recruiters who report into me, and I have a counterpart that handles operations positions, factory positions, and so on. I recruit for the field sales positions.

The first thing we do is post our jobs on the careers section of our website. And then, like all major manufacturing companies, we post jobs on LinkedIn, outside job boards like Indeed, and in doing so we receive a lot of resumes. One of the purposes of my department is to build and keep a strong internal candidate database so as openings happen, we have an immediate group of candidates we can source. We also like to avoid having to use outside recruiters like you… and by having this department, I think our company saves a lot of money on recruiting fees.

Here is a new phenomenon that I’m beginning to see more of as an internal recruiter. I wonder if you see it in your role as an outsider as well – candidates these days love to send an AI generated cover letter. I hate it. The letter literally reads like someone put our job description in Chat GPT and then copy and pasted whatever the AI spit out. It’s called Artificial Intelligence for a reason because the letters to me look artificial. . . inauthentic, too many bullet points, numericals. . . It’s like the AI is trying to sound profound and the whole thing just lands as totally benign.

My department is called Human Resources. The whole point of our job is to try to determine what the human who is applying to our job is actually like.

Here’s the thing – as part of our HR department, we, of course, use AI like everyone else. We respect it. We understand it. We know it’s the future. But we’re recruiting salespeople here! We want to understand their personality, we want to understand their voice, and we want to know if they have the gravitas that we’re looking for in our salespeople and leadership.

Recently, while evaluating a candidate to move on to the next steps, we found the cover letter so distracting because it was obviously written by AI and it completely took away from this candidate’s excellent resume and interview. In other words, people we would normally be putting forward we are now second guessing or passing on altogether because of their AI cover letters.

My question is, do you notice more candidates today using AI for their cover letters (and follow up thank you correspondence)? And, if so, should we be judging it or not? Because after all, there is always the possibility that we’re mistaking someone’s writing style with an AI letter. We never know for sure.


Signed,
HR Pro, AI No!

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Dear HR Pro,

Over the years, before AI, I heard from HR professionals like yourself who couldn’t stand getting follow up letters from candidates with typos on them. Or their name would be misspelled. For years, I saw in my own business candidates lose jobs over poorly written follow up letters, or worse, forgetting to send one altogether.  

It’s a given today that candidates feel there is a benefit to running their introduction letters and follow up thank you letters through AI. The issue with that is they feed the actual job description into AI to help them craft a cover letter, like you said. You’re right - it’s too perfect and non-descript. Let me be clear – AI should never write the letter for you. You should write your own letter authentically but then let AI edit for you. So theoretically it’s still not your genuine letter but it’s all about the prompts you give AI. I’m an advocate of this.  

I don’t exactly agree with you about using AI, because there is a place for it. It just should not write the letter for you. So, write the letter yourself first and then ask AI to edit the letter for your specific goals. AI is not the problem. Generic or not, using the right prompts is the problem. Think of AI like a copy editor and not a ghost writer.

Beyond that, you can’t really even help but to use it these days considering every search engine is now using it. However, I tell people to take a course on AI, learn how to work the AI that they are using, so that it creates their own voice to help their letters become more authentic. You can do that by entering samples of your own writing to let the AI get an idea of your voice. It’s better than just spell check and can help create a nuanced message.

For example, you can ask AI to edit the letter (remember AI should never write the letter!) with a certain tone which can give you ideas for words you could be using in the letter that you write yourself. Being that their “brain” is the internet, they may remember a super delicious word that you might have forgotten that totally gets at what you’re saying. But you have to be mindful of the diction to make sure it is believable. That’s another place where AI use becomes obvious. For example, you have to keep in mind the AI has never lived as a human. So, it doesn’t understand certain social cues and it has no grasp on what it means to connect authentically human to human. Think about it this way – AI doesn’t get embarrassed so, it will say whatever. It doesn’t care if it’s uncomfortable or odd.

I decided to research through AI how to ask AI to edit a letter that would achieve my goals without looking like it was written by AI since it was not, I simply want the edits. These are the instructions that it gave me:

So, first, write the letter and then put it in AI but tell the AI “edit for me this cover letter for a sales position” – if you prompt just that you will get a perfectly polished, completely forgettable letter. This is what we do not want to do. If you want an AI edited letter to sound like you, you must give AI instructions that force specificity, personality, and imperfection. Here is what a candidate should tell AI:

“Write this in my voice – direct, concise, and slightly conversational” because otherwise AI always defaults to overly formal, overly polished, and overly enthusiastic. You need to tell AI: “Do not sound corporate.” “Avoid cliches.” “Avoid phrases like ‘I’m thrilled to apply.’” “Keep the tone confident but natural.”

If you’re in sales, you should give specific sales numbers from your career, write it out yourself. Talk in your voice. Remove any generic closing paragraphs; AI loves to say things like “thank you for considering my application, I look forward to the opportunity to discuss…” HR people like you and I see this 200 times a day. Instead, instruct the AI to end with a simple direct closing.

Here is one of the biggest tips I’ve learned from studying AI. Tell AI to avoid certain words like “dynamic,” “leverage,” “synergy,” “passion,” “strategic,” and “excited.” You’ll immediately remove 80% of AI’s fingertips. Here’s another tip – make one sentence imperfect. Real people vary sentence length. AI writes evenly balanced prose. You need to tell AI to “vary my sentence length.” Include one shorter sentence, one longer sentence.

Finally, reference something specific about the company you’re applying to. AI letters look generic because the prompts are generic. Tell the AI after you’ve studied the website and researched the company, what’s in your heart about why you want to work there, so that comes through, too, in the edit.  

So, HR Pro, AI is something we need to learn to work with. I get your point about the generic looking AI letters. But over the ages there is always something new that comes along technologically that people reject at first. The television, the electric typewriter, the laptop, the smartphone. Now it’s AI. We’re all learning and fumbling with it at the same time. It creates a lot of different opinions, but it is here to stay. Personally, I’m going to learn to work with it.

Signed,
Stephen

Stephen Viscusi is the founder of www.viscusigroup.com , an executive search firm that specializes in the interior furnishings industry. Hires made through The Viscusi Group are guaranteed a one-year free replacement.
Please share your story or comment on this article and send your workplace questions to stephen@viscusigroup.com .
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