Authenticity with AI

In a time when artificial intelligence tools can write anyone's personal statement, one Bauer College professor explains that sounding genuine is the key to standing out.

Senior Professor of Practice of Amy Vandaveer Novak has taught personal branding to Bauer students in the Program for Excellence in Selling for decades and was an early adapter of AI in the classroom. While technology can lay down the groundwork of a personal brand, she said it’s crucial for students to incorporate their own voices.

“You can prompt AI to take a résumé and create a robust statement to enhance your LinkedIn, but you have to know who you are,” Novak said. “If you just ask for a good statement, you're going to sound like everybody else. You need to identify what you stand for, your style, your personality and your skills to create an authentic brand voice for you.”

Similar to Excel, Novak said the quality of what is plugged in dictates what comes out.

Students in her class practice using large language models to develop websites, portfolios and LinkedIn content while learning an equally important skill: how to communicate with the technology itself. By crafting detailed prompts, they help the model understand the personality, values and professional strengths they want to project.

“Any prompt that you give AI could yield results that sound good, but that doesn't mean it's effective and accurate,” she said. “It doesn't mean that it will resonate as authentic. Those are things you want to vet for yourself when you're using it as a branding tool.”

Novak also employs the technology on her side of the class, using AI to customize her projects and build specific profiles that students interact with for interview roleplays.

“I use AI to enhance my classroom efficiency, but I'm the one still dictating what I want and what the end result will be,” she said.

Developing these skills now is something Novak believes will benefit students for a professional marketing career.

“I interviewed a Bauer alumna recently who is now a principal at a marketing agency,” she said. “She talked about how AI helps her create unique brand voices for customers by using what she knows about them and then having AI help create messaging. Doing that authentically is what we’re teaching students.”

Several other Program for Excellence in Selling courses incorporate teaching critical uses of AI. Learn more about the program here.