We’re in the process of hiring a new Senior Designer at GreenMellen, and resumes have been pouring in with many excellent candidates. We always look at each one by hand, including their portfolio and social media accounts, before deciding on a next step.
For those that we’re choosing to interview, I’ve added a small piece to our process and it’s something that the interviewees should consider for themselves as well — NotebookLM.
If you’re not familiar with NotebookLM, it’s a tool that allows you to upload various sources into a project (such as web links, videos, PDFs, etc) and then you can chat with an AI about that content. However, the killer piece is that you can have it do an “audio overview” of the content, which is essentially a short AI-powered podcast (and it’s shockingly well-done).
Here’s an example of how that works:
In our situation, I’ve added each applicant’s resume and website to a separate project in NotebookLM, and then had it create a short podcast based on that content. Specifically, I tell it:
We’ll be interviewing this person for senior designer role at our agency. Based on their website and resume, what are some questions we should ask to dig into any interesting areas of theirs?
Prior to the interview, I listen to the podcast (usually 5-15 minutes) while digging around a bit more on the website as I work to learn more about them. It’s been great!
You too
It got me thinking that if you’re job hunting you should do the same thing. Toss your resume and website onto NotebookLM and ask it something like “I’m going to be interviewing for xx job soon. What do I need to correct on my website and resume in order to look more prepared for the interview.” I suspect you’d get some good stuff.
Like all AI tools, it’s imperfect and could make up fake info, which is why I also click around to verify what’s saying, but it’s pointed some things that I might have glossed over at first glance and has been a helpful addition to the process.
If you’ve not tried it yet, check it out at notebooklm.google.com.
