Most of us want to excel in our professional careers as fast as possible.
The idea of retiring by 40 seems very tempting and has a universal appeal. We are always looking for a job change, whether for increased pay, perks, or location; changing jobs is always at the back of our heads.
However, you must have a good resume to land a good job. It makes you stand out in the eyes of the company.
Word of mouth can only take you so far in the professional world, especially in modern times. It is necessary to jot down your experience, skills, aspirations, and achievements and present them in an appealing way.
In this post, I’ll show you how to use ChatGPT for resume creation. We’ll uncover 6 key tips for it.
Benefits of an Effective Resume
Simply put, a resume is your ad. Here is why a good resume changes the game for you:
#1 First Impressions Matter
The best way to get to know someone is by talking to them, which occurs in the interview stage. However, to get to the interview stage, you must qualify first. Your resume is an employer’s first impression of you, so it must be comprehensive and impressive to get you to stage 2 of the hiring process.
First impressions aren’t everything; a book cannot be judged by its cover. However, if you’re a reader like myself, there have been times you purchased a book solely based on the cover and its synopsis. That is what a resume is for you: a synopsis of your professional career.
#2 Jot Down Your Skills and Achievements
When asked the question, “Tell me about yourself,” most individuals tend to stumble around a bit before answering it. It is not an easy question, after all.
It takes time to recall everything you have accomplished in your career, all you hope to achieve, your educational qualifications, and all your relevant skills and ambitions paired with other essential data like personal information.
That is what a resume does. It is a way to present yourself and what you offer to the recruiter. That way, they can easily analyze it and make the judgment call of whether or not your skills and ambitions match up with the goals of the company/job you are applying for.
ChatGPT and Resumes
ChatGPT has become a go-to tool for numerous tasks, and why wouldn’t it? Not using AI’s capabilities to their fullest potential is a waste.
It is like having an assistant with more knowledge than you can ever truly need. Wherever you may stand in the debate of whether or not AI should enter the workplace, it has undeniably already become a part of our professional and even personal lives nowadays. And it seems like it’s here to stay.
We all might be familiar with how ChatGPT works. It is a generative AI developed by OpenAI that uses natural language processing.
It can generate any kind of text you request, and it can provide you with any information you ask (provided that piece of information was available in the database it was trained with for the free version of ChatGPT, at least).
The natural language processing makes ChatGPT respond and speak like an ordinary person.
Simply put, ChatGPT can respond to most questions you ask and provide you with whatever information you may request.
With the help of this AI assistant, you can write a solid resume.
“But why should I use it”?
It will save you time. Which means more time for more important things. Different jobs require a different type of resume. The relevant information, the way it is displayed, should be moved around as per the requirement for the job profile and company you are applying to.
Using ChatGPT to write your resume will add a touch of refinement, professionalism, and creativity to your resume. With its generative capabilities, you can write a new resume often, fast, and without losing out on quality. The question is, why shouldn’t you?
The ethical dilemma stays, but you can use it as a tool, as an assistant or a teacher. Let me provide you with some key tips on how to use ChatGPT to create a resume.
Provide it With Relevant Information
ChatGPT is a natural language processing AI, which is a fancy way of saying you can talk to it like a person.
If you’re asking a person to help you create a resume, you must provide them with all the relevant information that you can utilize to make the best, most comprehensive resume possible.
Since we’re dealing with an AI, dealing with high degrees of information will not be very tough. It can process all of it, considering it before generating any results.
Any resume would include basic information about the individual to whom it belongs, their qualifications, previous job experience, skills, achievements, goals, hobbies, and ambitions; all of it should be factored in.
So, include all that information in the prompt and provide it to ChatGPT. Every result from there on would be based on this piece of information.
From there, you can get onto the job description. Information about your job and the company you are applying to is all useful.
ChatGPT will provide you with the best practices, analyze your skills and experience, compare them to the skills required for this job, and suggest what’s missing and how best to fill these gaps.
You can further ask ChatGPT to add these skills to your resume and fill in the gaps.
Ask it to Come Up with a Sample Resume
So, now that you have provided ChatGPT with all the relevant information about your professional career and the job you are applying to, you can ask it to write a sample resume.
This sample resume can be fairly usable in itself. However, it is recommended not to use works created completely by AI. AI’s writing language, when completely stretched out, sounds not very human-like, and some people can pick up on it.
There also exist tools that can detect AI writing along with picking up on plagiarism, which the AI tends to do sometimes. Also, the AI might get something incorrect and create points out of thin air to fit a narrative.
That said, a sample resume will tremendously help anyone looking to create a resume for themselves. It serves as a great inspiration.
We all take inspiration from other resumes, and ChatGPT can create one that is personally curated using the information you provide. This should help you break writer’s block and get inspired.
Be Your Guide
If you have no idea where to start, you can ask ChatGPT to break down the entire resume-making process and assist you through it all.
While AI can be used in ways that essentially just let it do most of the heavy lifting, it can be used on a microscale and provide support every step of the way.
It is essentially a guide you through each process of building a resume. It will provide you with all the required information and where to utilize it. Having the entire plan in front of you can be super convenient for a novice or those who are used to building resumes.
Proofreading and Editing
If you like the resume you created for yourself, that’s awesome. You can give it some polishing by prompting ChatGPT to proofread it. It will analyze the text for any grammatical errors, any phrasing it believes can be corrected, improve tone, and for alternative words to choose.
The way ChatGPT offers suggestions is pretty comprehensive. The advice is useful, but you can always choose not to incorporate it. You can be as specific with your prompts as you like.
If you ask ChatGPT to perform a task specifically, it will. That way, if you’d only like input on better word choices or checking for grammatical errors, it will only do that.
You can even have ChatGPT write your text in a certain tone or compress the overall message into such a size that it fits under the limitation of a word limit.
Moreover, you can provide ChatGPT with a job description of the role you plan on applying for and have it update your resume in a way that suits it best. You can further ask the tool to add skills to your resume it believes you might benefit from.
Creating a Cover Letter
Seems we are fairly divided on cover letters as a society. For some, it is a must, but unnecessary for others. It can be a hit or miss.
Regardless of your opinion, some recruits and jobs undeniably encourage a cover letter as it allows you to stand out from the crowd and offers a personal insight into you and how you would address that specific company and job profile. Not all resumes are created for a specific job, but all cover letters target a particular job/company.
For those applying to jobs very often, it can be challenging to always come up with exciting cover letters. Create a prompt with the necessary information like your basics, job description, professional introduction, current job title, etc.
Things to Remember When Using ChatGPT for Resumes:
It is necessary to keep in mind the limitations of AI and work around them. 3 things to keep in mind while using ChatGPT to write a resume are:
#1 Prompts are Key 🔑
The utilization of the right prompts on ChatGPT is a must. Thankfully, when using ChatGPT to assist in writing a resume, most information we need to provide can be very straightforward and factual.
So, keeping your prompts simple and direct is the best thing you can do. However, remember, the possibilities are endless with the prompt generation on ChatGPT, so feel free to experiment and have fun with it.
PRO TIP: Check out PromptVibes to generate effective prompts instantly.
#2 Fact-Check Everything 🔎
ChatGPT can proofread a piece of written work, but it is important to note that it is still an AI tool. I recommended practicing your logical and emotional thinking and analyzing the final draft of the resume or cover letter yourself.
AI can sometimes hallucinate and get incorrect things, so you must watch for errors. Also, since it lacks real understanding and emotions, it may fail to emulate a certain emotion that you may be trying to invoke, so the final edit must be done by a human brain.
#3 Limited Data 📁
ChatGPT 3.5, the free version, has been trained with data only until January 2022. What that means is that it is not familiar with anything posted after that.
The resources it may pull, for example, a company policy, may be outdated, so it is essential to watch out for any data that is time-sensitive and cross-check all the facts and numbers, along with ensuring there are no regulations or policy violations.
Closing Thoughts
You must leverage every tool available in your arsenal, and ChatGPT can be one of the best additions to your collection. Its ability to help you generate a high-quality resume and make it quickly is tremendous, especially when switching jobs is fairly common.
However, remember that the optimal way to use ChatGPT is to use it as a guide and a research tool. This should be in addition to your own creative and rational thinking, not as a replacement for human ingenuity.