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Beginning this academic year, the College of Arts and Sciences Office of Undergraduate Academic and Career Advising at Syracuse University debuted an initiative using the artificial intelligence software VMock, an online resume review software.

Though VMock has been available to all SU undergraduate students since 2020, this new initiative allows sophomores to choose between using VMock or meeting one-on-one with a career counselor to develop their resume. This initiative only extends to second-year undergraduate students with declared majors in Arts and Sciences or the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, though VMock is a tool available to students in other SU schools and colleges.

SU is not alone in its implementation of VMock as a step in the career advising process. Over 250 higher education institutions in more than 130 countries use VMock’s services, according to its website.

“VMock is intended as a potential, non-required, avenue and tool for all undergraduates as a first pass at their resume,” Steven Schaffling, assistant dean of student success of Arts and Sciences, told The Daily Orange in an email statement.

Sophomore students who have not already met with a career advisor are required to either schedule a 30-minute meeting or upload their resumes to VMock to lift a hold on their MySlice account, which stops students from registering for classes next semester.

If students choose a one-on-one conference, they are still instructed to upload their resumes to VMock prior to the meeting, according to an email sent to Arts and Sciences sophomore students with account holds. The email states that the VMock option takes five minutes.

Sophomores were selected to ensure that students have some version of a resume early on in their academic career, Schaffling wrote. He wrote that the Arts and Science advising office believes starting sophomore year assures that students won’t fall behind in searching for internships or other experiential education opportunities.

“In a post-pandemic age we want to be dynamic and responsive to student needs … allowing fall semester sophomores multiple avenues is the college being responsive to student needs and experience,” Schaffling wrote.

Using VMock, students can receive rapidly-generated, specific feedback, ranging from spell-check to structural issues, by uploading their resume to the VMock website or app.

Hamid Ekbia, a university professor in Maxwell and the director of SU’s Autonomous Systems Policy Institute, said it’s important to keep up human discretion with AI processes like VMock.

“That’s very encouraging to know that the entities, they try to help students, but these are statistical machines and ultimately they find patterns, and patterns are aggregate patterns, they are not individual,” Ekbia said. “As best as we might try to craft a resume that is unique to us, a lot of that might get lost in the process.”

Ekbia is teaching SU’s first AI and Humanity course this fall, listed between the School of Information Studies and Maxwell.

Though VMock’s feedback is unlimited on each resume submission, students can only upload their resumes 10 times per year, according to the SU career services website. VMock also offers community insights about resumes previously uploaded by Syracuse students, from the average number of words to the typical layout.

VMock also includes an option to start a resume from scratch by using community templates from SU’s career services. With formatting pre-determined in the templates, students only have to input their information and experience.

Resumes submitted through VMock are scored based on three categories — impact, presentation and competencies — and receive a score out of 100 points. Impact is worth up to 40 points, while presentation and competencies are both worth up to 30.

Ekbia said filtering software used in hiring practices is designed to find candidates that have similar traits and experiences to what the company is searching for, not what distinguishes candidates. Softwares like VMock can amplify this, which students need to be careful of, he said.

“What matters most when you apply for a job is what makes you different and unique, not what makes you similar to other people,” Ekbia said. “That is the biggest concern that I have with the use of these systems, because they essentially pigeonhole you.”

SU’s College of Engineering and Computer Science has also implemented VMock as part of its career advising process.

ECS Career Services regularly connects with employers to ensure the resume templates used in VMock match up with the industry standards for what a student is pursuing, Sarah Mack, the director of student success and career services for the ECS, wrote in a statement to The Daily Orange.

Dan Pacheco, a professor of practice of magazine, news and digital journalism and the Peter A. Horvitz Endowed Chair in Journalism Innovation at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, said students’ exposure to and familiarity with programs like VMock is a great way to prepare them to be successful in their job and interview searches.

Although he said services like VMock can be “foresightful,” Pacheco said it’s still important to be aware of artificial intelligence’s inherent flaws. Because artificial intelligence is created by humans — who all have their own biases — and is trained on human data, all AI software also has biases, Pacheco said.

“In the United States, that means that cis, white, heterosexual males have an even bigger advantage when applying for the best jobs because they are already in the majority in the white-collar workforce,” Pacheco wrote in a statement to The Daily Orange.

Both Schaffling and Mack shared the view that VMock is capable of addressing the different resume formats dependent upon a student’s post-graduation goals.

“Advisors and VMock both have the ability to help students put their resume into effective templates to increase their success,” Schaffling wrote.

Mack also wrote that students in the beginning stages of resume creation can use VMock so their individual meetings with advisors are more productive. If VMock has already reviewed the resume, students can focus on discussing how to gain additional experience and receive coaching on their job search when they meet with advisors, she told The D.O.

Even though AI usage can present concerns, Pacheco remains optimistic that when used correctly, the opportunities software like VMock can benefit students.

“As long as humans are using the tools in conjunction with keeping themselves in the equation, and they’re using the tools as a way to enhance what they’re able to do or make themselves more efficient, then we all need to be doing more of that,” Pacheco said.

Published on October 5, 2023 at 12:43 am

Contact Claire: charri39@syr.edu