6 Ways to Use ChatGPT for Job Searching
Today's task for you: explore how Generative AI can help your job search
Joel Levesque, founder of Job Search with AI—a newsletter that can help you navigate the many tools and tricks of Generative AI—joined us to share his favorite tips and tricks.
Note that the tips below are included in the $20 per month paid version of ChatGPT and we recommend you use it for a month to access all the features listed below. There are many other AI tools out there (Copilot, Gemini, Claude) that can all do similar things.
The free version of ChatGPT will let you access some of the functionality listed below but won’t allow you to create projects with remembered instructions, attach files, or remember previous input.
Learn More GenAI Tips on Tuesday
Rishan Mohamed, founder of Hiring Coach AI, gave you an overview of the best Generative AI tools to use in your career pivot. He walked you through how to use GenAI to:
Decide what you're good at doing.
Find transferable skills to the private sector.
Customize your cover letter and resume.
Practice for conversations and interviews
Spoiler alert: He says it's way easier than you think, and I agree. So does Joel. Read on to see how you can use Generative AI today!
1. Train Your Dragon (GenAI tool)
Set up a Project in ChatGPT labeled “job search” or something similar (anything you want). Add as many relevant files as you have including your long CV/resume, other versions of your resume. You can add relevant documents as needed. Think about this like you are training a new assistant, what would you need them to know?
In the Instructions section, give clear and specific instructions to help it work for you. AI tools are typically designed to tell you what you want to hear, so include phrases like “be objectively truthful”, “realistic”, or “harsh” to keep it from only telling you positive and encouraging things it thinks you want to hear.
Tell it “do not make anything up”, “do not embellish”, “don’t oversell my skills or experience”. Tell it to “act like a coach and a recruiter”.
You can also lower the “temperature” of your model. It’s a score from 0-1 that marks the amount of creativity your model will use. 1 - is super creative, 0.1 is the most determinative. In this case we do not want creative writing, we want a truthful accurate model. So let’s type in “change the temperature down to 0.1” and press enter. It should confirm the change.
You may need to adjust or further refine instructions based on how good its responses and feedback are.
Complete the following prompts in your instructions:
My goals are:
My values are:
My considerations are: (ie where you are based, whether you are willing to relocate, what role you want, what sectors you want, etc)
My strengths are (If you don’t feel you know what your strengths are, or would like some help, then read the next section)
2. Use GenAI for Input and Feedback
Once you have input as much relevant detail as you have and added specific instructions, ask ChatGPT “What are my transferable skills?” (and similar questions) Remind it to “Be honest, realistic, and provide succinct bullets”.
When you feel like the output is accurate, you can tell it to “Remember this” to add that information to its memory and allow ChatGPT to build a history around you that it can refer back to in the future.
This also works for things you don’t like it doing. So for example, if it uses the term “change agent” to describe you and you don’t like that word, you can say “don’t use the words “change agent” to describe me. Update your memory to remember this” and it will do so.
Once you’ve found a job you want to consider, copy and paste the job description or attach it as a file, tell it you are interested in the job and ask:
“Is this a realistic option given my strengths and experiences?”
“What are the strengths I have and how does my experience align with what they are asking for?”
“Where am I missing skills or experience needed?”
You can also use ChatGPT to pull out the relevant terms from job descriptions that you should be incorporating into your resume, cover letter, and LinkedIn profile , which is a process called “keyword mining.”
3. Use GenAI for Research
You can use AI to help you conduct market research. Tell it what roles and sectors you are interested in and ask it:
“Based on everything you know about me and my goals, what sector or roles should I think about that I might enjoy or be good at it?”
“Based on my resume, what transferable skills do I have?”
“What roles use those skills?”
“What companies need those skills?”
“Based on my resume, which organizations should I be looking at?”
“What are some unusual organizations or roles I may not have considered?”
“Who are individuals that are considered connectors or networkers in this field?”
“Who are some of the leading voices in this field?”
4. Use GenAI to Edit Your Resume
While ChatGPT is not ideal for writing a resume from scratch, you can copy in your resume and ask it to suggest changes. This will help you know how to improve and edit it yourself rather than relying on the tool to do it directly where errors are more common.
You can also prompt it to “edit in Canvas” and it will bring up the document and highlight specific sections at a time to edit or improve. Include language like “keep as much of the wording as possible and only change what is necessary”, “do not make anything up or embellish”, “be realistic and truthful”.
Coupling this approach with turning the temperature down provides much more accurate outputs.
5. Use AI to Edit Your Cover Letter
ChatGPT can be useful for creating a first draft of your cover letter but you want to treat it like a junior assistant, not your principal writer, and rewrite the content in your own voice and tone.
You can be prescriptive about the cover letter structure and if you give it samples of your writing, you can even ask it to mimic your style. Include terms like “use evidence”, “show don’t tell”, and “be realistic and honest”.
After you have a version of your cover letter that you like, ask it to verify the content compared to your resume and ensure it is “accurate and without mistakes”. Be sure to review it yourself before using any content or documents that were AI generated.
If the answers are consistently off, oftentimes it is better to just start the conversation again in a new chat. Somewhere the model has placed importance on certain information that isn’t helpful and It can be easier to restart than to try to fix incorrect information it has learned.
Why does it do this? One of the reasons is that AI is biased toward its own answers (as a way of saving computing power), it means that you often cannot rescue a conversation that has gone off the rails. Just start again.
6. Use GenAI to Prep for Interviews
You can even use ChatGPT to prepare for interviews. Input a job description and ask for the ten most likely interview questions based on the job ad. Write in your answers to each question and then ask it to critique or improve your answer based on the info in your resume.
There are someChatGPT options that can help you do that even more effectively. You can also download the app on your phone and talk to it out loud like a real interview to more closely simulate the interview environment (and add some pressure to yourself to perform well).
You can use the exact same instructions to set up the scenario by Audibly talking through it. You can then add all the elements you want it to test, like “ask challenging questions” or “act like an interviewer who has already done 5 of these today and would rather be somewhere else.”
You can also get it to coach you through prompts like “What could I have done better?” or “What would have been a better answer, given my context.” It can all help you so you feel prepared when you go to the real one.
Next Steps
Get started today with using ChatGPT to conduct market research, edit your cover letter and resume, and when ready, prep for interviews. You can also follow Joel’s blog for more instructions.
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