900 Applicants Wanted a Startup Internship. First, They Had to Meet a Surprising Old-School Requirement.

It’s become easier than ever to use AI like Claude and ChatGPT to write cover letters and resumes. The only problem is that companies are finding it difficult to distinguish among candidates who all sound alike on paper. They are increasingly turning to out-of-the-box methods of differentiating between applicants — like handwritten cover letters. 

Dumb.co, a startup selling $20 flip phones aimed at users who are trying to spend less time online, is one company that has adopted that novel approach. The startup wanted interns who shared its unplugged ethos. 

However, as applications rolled in, the company kept encountering AI-written cover letters that felt overly polished and devoid of personality. 

The letters weren’t “connecting with our mission and our greater goal,” Marlee Pelton-Fuentes, customer success manager and head of the company’s internship program at Dumb.co, recently told Business Insider. 

She raised the issue with Dumb.co CEO Danny Hogenkamp and the rest of the team. A few days after posting the roles, they changed the application process: Candidates would now have to submit cover letters written by hand, a way to separate more genuine applicants from the mass of generic submissions.

Applicants were receptive to the change

Dumb.co received nearly 900 applications for four internship openings posted on the Handshake job board: marketing, business and operations, customer success and technology. 

About 70% of applicants submitted photos of handwritten letters explaining their interest in “dumb living,” why they wanted to join the startup and if they already used a dumb phone.

About 200 to 300 candidates sent their materials through the mail, including handwritten letters, according to Afreka Ebanks, Dumb.co’s director of brand and communications. The company ultimately selected 10 interns after reviewing submissions and conducting interviews with about 60 applicants.

One successful applicant, Ian-Karlo Krockel, joined Dumb.co in July as a marketing intern. The recent Boston University graduate had no success scoring internships until he came across the Dumb.co application. He hand-wrote a letter about owning multiple flip phones then scanned and submitted it.

The current job market is ‘basically AI selecting AI’

According to Business Insider, job-seekers are exhausted by the pressure to submit enough applications to warrant consideration, while recruiters are struggling to manage the resulting flood of applicants. 

AI has become a shortcut for both parties. Candidates use it to generate or polish cover letters, and employers are increasingly looking to automated tools to sort through applications more efficiently. 

That has diminished the value of the traditional cover letter. Recruiters say AI can produce polished, job-specific letters in seconds, making it difficult to discern a candidate’s actual qualifications. 

Judd Kessler, a professor of business economics and public policy at Wharton, told Business Insider that the current job market is “basically AI selecting AI to elevate to humans for review.”

“Anything that can break that equilibrium, that can inject more of real people showing their real selves to actually help employers find the right fit” is worth it, he said.