AI and Your Job Search
Love it or hate it, AI is now a part of our lives.
Our team has been testing ChatGPT and other AI tools to figure out how it can best be utilized to help our clients and work streams. Clients have also shared how they've been using it, including documents generated with AI prompts. First I'll cover the more successful contexts we've discovered and then the less powerful ones.
THUMBS UP
Finding Strategic Ideas. I've found ChatGPT useful for giving me strategic ideas, e.g., people to invite on the podcast or ways to improve marketing. I was able to adjust prompts to be more specific or point out mistakes to improve the output.
Drafting Job Descriptions. We've had clients use ChatGPT to draft a current job description or future job description if one isn't available yet for the job to which they're applying. These turn out pretty well.
Identifying New Career Paths & Job Titles. If you want to explore what other careers may be a good fit for your skills, or even specific job titles, this works well. By using a prompt that includes your current job title and skills, you can ask it to suggest other possibilities.
PRO TIP: Some of the best ways to begin your prompts and guide the tool to emulate an expert are: "Act as if you are a..." or "You are an expert at..." You'll get much better output!
THUMBS DOWN
Locating Keywords in a Job Description. I tried to prompt ChatGPT to give me the key words and phrases from a job description, and it just reshuffled the words and phrases. And of course it was still up to me to fill in all of the details as to how I've demonstrated those capabilities in my work.
Tailoring a Resume for a Specific Job. When I attempted this, I got a very generic resume draft. I noticed the same issue when a client used it to update their resume with information from their latest job.
Since I experienced the same issue with trying to locate keywords, I came to the conclusion that it may have to do with copying and pasting into the prompts. Perhaps those are some of the kinks still to be worked out.
This weekend, I saw it again in a newsletter by Zain Kahn that I subscribe to about AI. This is the prompt he shared:
Analyze [applicant's details] and construct a winning resume to apply for [job position details]. Step into the shoes of the employer and unveil the key attributes they seek in [job position details] and make the resume stand out and attract the employer.
Applicant's details = "Insert here"
Job position details = "Insert here"
Here's the first line of the summary at the top of the resume that it generated: "Highly effective and detail-oriented Project Manager with a Bachelor's of Science in Computer Science from Royal Holloway."
I'M SCREAMING INSIDE!
Cliche words, a capitalized title, and the degree in the first line. No, no, no. The work experience section it spit out was more of the same - generic language with no creativity or specifics about what the person had done. I would advise against using ChatGPT for this purpose. It feels like it creates more work than simply starting from scratch.
No matter what you decide to use AI tools for, here two key things to remember.
Edit and proofread anything before you submit or send it.
ChatGPT should be used as a supplement, not a replacement.
Photo credit: Ales Nesetril