Experts offer advice to applicants who may be applying for multiple positions at the same company in the fierce job market, Business Insider reports. 

With industry layoffs, some experts want applicants to be aware of the growing job market, which could result in numerous positions being open at the same company and how this could affect their chances of being hired. Executive coach, speaker, and founder of Embrace Change Cynthia Pong said there is no harm in applying but only “if there’s genuine alignment between the position and your skills, background, and interests.”

However, it is important to consider how an applicant may look when applying for numerous positions. Some employers may perceive it as desperate, particularly if the role doesn’t match skill sets. Recruiters may also wonder why other companies haven’t hired yet. Denise McKelvey, human resources executive with JPMorgan Chase’s Delaware operations, points out the concern that grows for an employer when a candidate applies for a job outside of their career track. “I would wonder why someone with IT skills would be applying to be a customer service representative,” McKelvy said, according to Delaware Online. 

Career coach and strategist Farah Sharghi shared similar thoughts, adding, “Applying to too many roles can make you seem unsure about what you’re seeking, and most recruiters work on roles that are similar to one another.” The former tech recruiter recommends limiting the number of applications that are submitted to a single employer to only two or three qualifying positions. 

Career trends expert at Indeed, Gabby Davis, suggests customizing each application based on the role if the target has multiple internal roles. “When applying for any job, but particularly multiple roles within a company, it’s crucial to have updated and tailored résumé and cover letters specific to each role,” Davis said.

Sharghi mentioned that applicants shouldn’t be surprised if a recruiter already knows of other applications during an interview. If that happens, she suggests pushing the narrative to demonstrate a strong interest in the company’s mission and values, even providing a script. “Yes, I’ve applied to a few positions here because I’m genuinely excited about the company’s mission and culture,” Sharghi suggests. 

“Each role I’ve applied for aligns with my skills and career goals in different ways. For this specific position, I’m particularly interested because …” 
Pong says that with any job application, applicants should always “emphasize your genuine fit and enthusiasm” for the position. Rachel Coppola of the University of Delaware’s Career Services Center also suggests researching what the company is looking for, aligning with skill sets, and whether they would be a good match.

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Although there is no consensus on whether credit repair companies are worth the money they charge (Experian, one of the foremost credit monitoring services, says they are not), they remain one option for people who are trying to repair their credit. To that end, as Black News reported, The Credit Bros, run by Christopher Watson and Aaron Steede, is emerging as a popular and trusted choice for Black people who are looking to utilize professional help.

Watson and Steele prefer to focus on factual disputing, which, according to the Federal Trade Commission, involves contacting both the business that reported information on your credit report and the credit bureau to inform them that you want to dispute information contained on your report.

In addition to this approach, the pair looks to educate their customers on tenets of personal finance, like budgeting strategies or financial planning.

According to their website, they are focused on helping their customers improve their credit scores so they can have access to homeownership, a path to building wealth that has historically been denied to Black Americans.

They also differentiate themselves from their competitors by offering a flat $100 monthly fee, which also comes with a 90-day guarantee.

Effectively, if a customer spends $300 and doesn’t get the results they are looking for, they can get their money back.

According to CNBC, credit scores, which are necessary to provide access to homeownership, are not necessarily race-neutral but can be affected by structural racism.

Black people, on average, are more likely to report having a low or no credit score.

A representative survey conducted in 2023 indicated that 50% of Black Americans reported having low or no credit scores at all, compared to 37% of white Americans.

According to Frederick Wherry, the Director of the Dignity and Debt Network, a credit score is “your passport to everything that you need to do as an adult.”

However, Aaron Klein, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institute, said that they are not without tinges of racial bias.

“Credit scores are based on past performance,” Klein told CNBC. “The further we go back in history, the deeper the structural racism in the United States was.”

Sally Taylor, the Vice President and General Manager at FICO, acknowledged that although credit scores didn’t create economic disparities, they do, however, offer a measure of them.

“It’s important to note that credit scores didn’t create some of the social and economic disparities. They simply reflect the social economic disparities that are out there. The conversation should focus on addressing the root cause of these differences.”

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Have you ever been hired for a position only to find yourself performing tasks that aren’t in your job description? You are not alone. In a survey of 2,900 workers conducted by Greenhouse, 53% of the participants said they experienced “bait-and-switch” tactics. Participants said their job responsibilities listed in the job descriptions “differed significantly” from their actual duties.

Alexis Byrd, an HR professional, said that she accepted a remote position. After accepting the job, Byrd learned she was expected to come into the office three times per week. 

Additionally, Byrd was required to visit two of the company’s other locations twice weekly. When Byrd approached her former manager to clarify her role, the 29-year-old was told that the company made some modifications.

“She had said, ‘Sometimes things change, and you need to be flexible,’” Byrd said in an interview with CNBC’s Make It. “It was kind of a brush-off.” 

Although she liked her co-workers and saw growth opportunities, she could not overlook what she perceived as misleading hiring practices; she resigned after two months.

“I was deceived in taking this opportunity, especially when I was transparent upfront” about needing flexible work,” Byrd told the outlet. 

The survey also found that 42% of job seekers say the advertised salary changed after they interviewed for a job.

Experts say that there are many reasons why some employers may appear to lack transparency. 

Job Stross, president and co-founder of Greenhouse, says that sometimes employers use past job descriptions to advertise for new, evolving roles. Career coach Alex Bryant suggests that companies may adjust job responsibilities because of budget, location, or management changes.

“New budget constraints can impact what they can now offer, “ Bryant told Indeed. Budget constraints can arise from losing a key client or account, experiencing rapid changes in the market, or other causes,“ he said. 

Bryant says that employees should be proactive when they encounter changes in their pay or job duties. He advises workers to address it with their employer directly.

“Just because they offer you a lower salary doesn’t mean you have to accept it. You can always try to get closer to your desired salary by negotiating. If they won’t budge on base salary, you can negotiate other aspects of the compensation package like bonuses, PTO, or remote work options.”  Bryant said.

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LinkedIn recently launched a new AI tool for taxing tasks that recruiters loathe, Tech Crunch reports. 

The Hiring Assistant is designed to assist with recruitment tasks such as turning scrap notes into more detailed job descriptions that source candidates and begin conversations with them. The tool is live for certain customers like large enterprises such as AMD, Canva, Siemens, and Zurich Insurance, while the mass rollout will occur between the end of 2024 and 2025. 

The social platform, used to connect professionals, develop skills, and apply for jobs, labeled Hiring Assistant a “milestone” in its work with AI — calling it the first “AI agent” — on top of targeting the Microsoft-owned company’s top consumer — recruiters. “It’s designed to take on a recruiter’s most repetitive task so they can spend more time on the most impactful part of their jobs,” Hari Srinivasan, LinkedIn’s VP of Product, said. 

LinkedIn has leaned on Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, creating effective client tools like learning coaches, marketing campaign assistants, candidate sorters, profile refreshers, and writing and job-hunting helpers. 

It also makes work easier for recruiters. With the ability to upload fuller job descriptions, the Hiring Assistant sends a full list of desired qualifications, resulting in a pipeline of candidates from algorithms to search for distinctive skills over tedious indicators like location and education. “It’s telling you this person might be a top fit,” Srinivasan said, according to Fast Company. 

“This person might be a fit.”

Testing shows that AI is working well for LinkedIn. Hiring employers who use AI-assisted messages receive a 44% higher acceptance rate, and their outreach messages are accepted 11% faster than those who don’t use the tool to draft messages. Assisted search sessions also see higher message acceptance rates, at 18% over manual ones. 

Srinivasan says the AI technology helps employers focus more on working with promising candidates in hopes that they will turn into new hires, but “they’re spending more of their time on the much more repetitive and tedious tasks.” LinkedIn’s head of career products, Rohan Rajiv, shares similar thoughts. “Quantity actually wastes everybody’s time,” Rajiv said. 

“Job seekers send hundreds of applicant applications to jobs where they are underfit and won’t hear back, and in doing so, hirers actually struggle to get back to qualified candidates.” 

Hiring Assistant is the key to LinkedIn’s overall push to heighten the quality of business-to-candidate matching in an era where online job searching can incentivize job seekers and recruiters to curate the right fit.

As Black Cosmopolitan previously reported, older Americans are still in the workforce, working longer than they have in previous years because many cannot afford to retire.

According to Visual Capitalist, 22% of retirement-age workers nationwide are still employed; however, the number of self-employed workers is 25%.

There are, of course, some states where retirement-age workers far outpace those averages.

In New Jersey, 33.8% of the workforce is composed of retirement-age workers, followed by North Dakota (32.8%), Maryland (31.2%), New Hampshire (30.9%), and Connecticut (30.3%). According to the Federal Reserve, only 51% of American adults between 65 and 74 had a retirement account.

For adults who are 75 and older, that number drops to 42%.

According to HR Dive, for Black retirement-age adults, those numbers are lower.

According to The New York Times, 67% of single Black retirees have incomes below the Elder Index, a University of Massachusetts Boston data set that measures whether or not older people can afford their basic living expenses. In contrast, for white Americans, that figure drops to 50%.

According to Kilolo Kijakazi, a fellow at the Urban Institute who focuses on income, wealth, and race, the disparities are related to the racism present in the labor market that extends back to the enslavement of Black people.

“We have a history of discrimination in hiring, pay, promotions and benefits. Discrimination in hiring also contributes to occupational segregation. White people dealt in human trafficking of people of African descent to create wealth for white people, but Black people did not benefit from the wealth of their labor,” Kijakazi told the outlet.

Kijakazi concluded, “After Emancipation, we had laws and regulations designed to maintain that effect and even strip Black people of wealth they were able to create for themselves in the face of these odds.”

As Darrick Hamilton, an economist and the executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University, told the Times, a head start for white Americans in wealth creation puts Black people behind the everyday eight ball.

“The way that wealth is generally created for most Americans is that wealth begets more wealth,” Hamilton said. “Having access to a capital foundation that puts you into assets that will passively appreciate over your life — that’s how most Americans generate wealth.”

Social Security, the entitlement program that pays out retirement benefits, does incentivize working longer. However, a majority of Black workers work in industries that make it more difficult for them to work until they reach the age they receive their full retirement benefits at 70 years of age.

Social Security Works, a progressive organization seeking to reform Social Security so that it works for the modern worker, has proposed a simple change that they surmise would benefit Black and other workers of color as they retire.

Under their proposals, workers who reach the age of 62 would receive 85% of their full retirement benefit, which would rise to 100% once they hit the full retirement age of 70.

According to a 2023 joint study from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and the Urban Institute, making the United States government’s retirement benefits formula more favorable to low-income workers would benefit Black workers, but not as much as simply paying them more for their labor.

According to the study, “Although many of the benefit adjustments we model would disproportionately help Black and Hispanic beneficiaries and narrow gaps in Social Security benefits, none would come close to eliminating those disparities.”

The study concludes, “Achieving equity in Social Security benefits for Black and Hispanic adults would require substantial progress toward equality in labor market outcomes. Although mortality and marriage also shape Social Security benefits by determining how long people will collect benefits and whether they have access to spouse and survivor benefits, lifetime earnings are the primary driver of benefits. This leaves Black and Hispanic workers at a disadvantage because they receive lower hourly wages and work fewer years, on average, than white workers. Our recent analysis of the structural factors responsible for the shortfall in Social Security benefits for Black adults found that improving Black workers’ lifetime earnings could most improve their retirement security.”

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Statistics reveal that many job seekers exaggerate or misrepresent details on their resumes, and an increasing number of hiring managers are frowning upon those who use AI in job applications.

A new survey by the CV Genius research team revealed that 80% of hiring managers dislike AI-generated cover letters and resumes, with 74% saying they can spot when AI has been used in a job application. Instead of AI, hiring managers prefer human-written applications and believe candidates who use AI come across as repetitive, generic, and lazy.

The survey of 625 hiring managers found that over half (57%) are far less likely to hire an applicant who used AI in their application and may disqualify the candidate altogether if they suspect AI has been used.

“Job seekers must learn how to use AI as an asset and not as a shortcut.” Ethan David Lee, career expert at CV Genius, says. “Hiring managers don’t mind AI in applications, but when it’s used carelessly, the result feels impersonal and fails to stand out.”

“In an AI world, it’s more important than ever that applicants show their human side,” Lee added. “It doesn’t mean that job seekers shouldn’t use AI, but they need to use it mindfully if they want it to help their chances.”

In response to the growing number of job seekers resorting to AI in their job search, CV Genius released a Guide to Using AI for Job Applications, offering insights on how to use AI to enhance applications without raising red flags to hiring managers. Emphasizing that AI can be beneficial when used thoughtfully, the guide provides six tips to help job seekers effectively leverage AI to enhance their applications.

Avoid Relying Solely on AI

AI should support, not substitute, your job application efforts. While using AI as a writing aid is fine, ensure each application is customized for the specific role and company.

Review for Exaggerations or Inaccuracies

AI’s tendency to exaggerate or fabricate accomplishments and experiences can harm you during the interview process. Always fact-check your AI-generated CV and cover letter to ensure accuracy. If you secure an interview, be ready to support every claim made in your application.

Incorporate Personal Experiences and Specific Examples

AI frequently employs generic phrases, resulting in CVs and cover letters that may sound polished but lack concrete evidence. Recruiters recommend avoiding this mistake by adding personal touches an AI Autobot cannot generate.

Avoid Using Common AI Writing Patterns

AI-generated content frequently exhibits consistent patterns, including a straightforward, formal writing style and repetitive phrases. When utilizing AI to draft your CV and cover letter, it’s essential to review and edit the generated content and replace any words or phrases that appear repeatedly or seem out of context.

Ensure Consistency In Verbiage/Vocabulary of Your CV, Cover Letter, and Interview

Another sign of AI-generated content is a mismatch in writing tone between the CV and cover letter, which can make matching the persona of an AI-generated application during a real-world interview difficult.

Use AI Checkers to Review Your CV and Cover Letter

To prevent your applications from being discarded, run them through multiple AI detection tools before submission and revise any flagged sections to ensure they align with your unique voice and style.

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