As a career coach, I am always on the lookout for new, time-efficient ways in which I can help my clients get new jobs faster, while spending less time on the crafting of CVs and cover letters. From checking and writing emails to brainstorming ideas and writing essays, the use of AI is rapidly taking over, but how can you, as a job hunter, use it effectively? Let's dive in.
Attention points
Before we jump in, I want to take you through a couple of attention points that could be counter-intuitive to your goals during your job search:
1. Use AI for what it is - a tool
Never just copy and paste anything that AI writes without checking it critically. Use it as a tool to help you do the work, not as a tool that does all of the work for you.
2. Be mindful of your privacy
When writing a CV or a cover letter, or anything else for that matter, I would suggest being mindful of the data or personal information that you include in it.
3. Always provide additional context
Have a chat with ChatGPT; the more information you provide, the better results you will get. Play with it and do not stop with the first answer. You should also clarify the tone you want ChatGPT to use: should it be professional, conversational, or something else?
4. Use AI prompts
Depending what you want to ask the AI to do, you can use different prompts to help you in your job search. The "Act As" prompt generates relevant answers, as if they were really coming from someone in a specific profession.
For example, you can type into the search bar "Act as a recruiter for the HR Assistant function". ChatGPT will then give you information sourced from real recruiters' data found on the internet.
5. Be mindful of flowery words
I don't know about you, but I already know when I see words such as "tapestry", "delve" or "embark" that the text was most probably not written by a human. When you are sending documents and communicating with recruiters, be careful with overtly flowery language that you wouldn't usually use.
Using AI during a job search
Let's have a look at how you can use AI across different parts of the job search process, starting with the application phase:
CV creation
For a long time, there have been various AI tools that offer to create your CV for you. The old, traditional way of just manually typing out your CV is also great. However, you can enhance your CV writing by asking ChatGPT to review a job offer for you and to highlight what are the most important elements of the job. You can also go ahead and copy and paste a draft of your current CV into ChatGPT and ask what the key experiences you need to highlight for this job are.
Ideas of prompts to use when making a CV are:
- Prompt 1: Act as a resume writer and highlight my achievements as a project manager with experience in leading cross-functional teams to deliver projects on time and under budget.
- Prompt 2: Review and rewrite the summary section of my CV for this specific role [Copy and paste job description].
As mentioned above, using AI to help you with your job search is a back-and-forth process, and it often does not stop with the first answers you get from ChatGPT.
Cover letter creation
The best way that you can use AI to help you with your cover letter is again to help you review and come up with different examples. Similar to writing your CV, I would suggest starting with analysing the job description.
You can ask ChatGPT to review the given role together with your CV, and to write three bullet points for a cover letter. Those bullet points would need to cover the most important responsibilities and how they match with your skills and expertise.
When creating a cover letter, you can use prompts such as the following:
- Prompt 1: Review the given role, along with my CV, and highlight three bullet points for my cover letter [Copy and paste CV and job description].
- Prompt 2: Review my cover letter and suggest any improvements or edits [Copy and paste cover letter].
Obviously, you can also ask AI to review your already-written cover letter to correct grammar and spelling mistakes. But make sure that you do not, by any means, copy and paste the AI-generated cover letter on its own into your job application.
Interview preparation
This is actually one of my favourite ways in which AI can help applicants when they are preparing for job interviews. So how can you use AI before an interview? First, you can ask ChatGPT to act as a recruiter and to come up with interview questions specifically for the job you are interviewing for. Then, you can copy and paste your CV and ask it to help you to prepare answers based on those questions.
Some prompts you can use specifically for interview prep are:
- Prompt 1: Act as a hiring manager, give me a list of behaviour-based questions for this role [copy paste the role description].
- Prompt 2: Prepare me for a technical interview for a data scientist position, including questions on statistical modelling, machine learning and data visualisation.
- Prompt 3: Help me prepare for a case study interview for a management consulting role, including structuring my analysis and presenting my findings.
Doing this can help you to prepare for the actual interview and help you to feel more comfortable and confident when the time comes.
LinkedIn profile optimisation
Last but not least, AI can also help you to optimise your LinkedIn profile. It can help you to write a great headline and, of course, a description for the "About" section. First, ask ChatGPT to review a couple of job descriptions that you are interested in and then ask it to come up with the list of keywords. Then you can ask it to optimise your LinkedIn Profile based on those keywords.
For instance, you can type into ChatGPT:
- Prompt 1: Create a list of keywords based on these job descriptions and divide them in the following: hard skills, soft skills, verbs and other requirements [Copy and paste the job descriptions].
- Prompt 2: Optimise my LinkedIn "About" section with the keywords found in cybersecurity expert roles with responsibilities including threat analysis and prevention.
AI as a tool
As you can see, there are endless possibilities as to what AI can do for you not only in your daily life, but also during the job search process. Again, do not stop with the first answer that ChatGPT gives you. At the end of the day, AI is a powerful tool but you remain the master of it.
Good luck with your job search and let us know in the comments how you use AI in your life!