This year, Career Services launched a new AI tool called Hiration to aid students in career preparation. This AI program is designed to help students build resumes, write cover letters and practice their interview skills.
Career Services says Hiration was introduced due to a larger volume of students coming through their offices. Hiration helps students beyond those initial few steps, like formatting a resume, so that when the student has a meeting with Career Services, they are more prepared for a deeper conversation about goals. For students in Career Prep and Co-Op related courses, Hiration is introduced as a useful tool.
Maria Richart, the director of Career Services and Cooperative Education, is hopeful about the system.
“I really want you all to understand that it’s a lot more than just the resume, but we’re going to use it for those times that we’re not available to get you and help you with those interviews. So if we can focus on those pieces of it, I think it becomes a positive tool that will help enhance all of your interview skills,” Richart said.
This comes as one of the many AI upgrades the school has made this year. RIT introduced the AI Hub back in August 2024 to integrate more AI use on campus. More professors are finding AI tools to aid in teaching as well.
What is Hiration?
Hiration is an AI-powered career platform that can aid with resumes, cover letters, LinkedIn profiles and interview practice. It runs off ChatGPT to provide professional feedback.
The site presents two options for resume building: starting from scratch or uploading a previously made resume. From there, Hiration offers nine similar templates. ChatGPT then gives feedback on the resume in five categories: structure, skill level analysis, contact information, reverse chronology and bullet analysis. Another feature of the resume builder is resume tailoring. Users can upload a job description for something they are applying for, and Hiration will offer a comparison percentage. It then suggests how to tailor one’s resume to better fit the job.
The cover letter section is similar to the resume section, but it depends more on which college the user belongs to. Hiration offers suggestions on how to tailor the cover letter to certain job descriptions. For the LinkedIn feature, students link their accounts to receive feedback on certain criteria.
Lastly, students can practice for interviews with generated questions that relate to the given field. Users video record themselves responding to the questions and get feedback on how they answered, as well as their posture and emotion. Students can share their interview answers to get feedback from their friends and advisor as well.
Hiration is in its trial stage at RIT and is just starting to be used by other universities, so the long-term benefits are unknown.
Student Opinions
AI still continues to be a controversial thing at RIT, and students, regardless of department, have many opinions on its use. Fanny Qian, a second year Management Information Sciences and Accounting major, had a lot to say on the topic. She found the interview section of Hiration to be the most helpful.
“I would say Hiration is a good tool for online interviews, for example, the first part of my interview for Baker Hughes was completely online, with pre-recorded sessions. There were around six questions, with a minute of prep time and a total of three minutes for each question. Hiration trains you well for that, as they have the same features,” said Qian.
However, when it came to creating a cover letter and resume, Qian said it can be controversial. She used the resume and cover letter portion to save time, but ultimately thinks people are better off creating their own.
“AI integration often messes up human writing; people who write things themselves find themselves being ‘accused’ of being AI. If I were to be completely honest, as easy as it is to generate cover letters with Hiration. I’m not sure if we’re taking the right step by encouraging students to use AI in school premises,” Qian stated.
Career Services is hopeful that Hiration will be a useful tool for students, and it is available for interested students on their website. Student feedback will be available at the end of the semester to further assess the outcomes of its use. For others, this sparks discussions about what aspects of life should be left in the hands of AI.
