How to Get a Job with ChatGPT
Learn how to get personalized career guidance and expert advice with ChatGPT. From crafting impressive resumes and cover letters to honing your skills, ChatGPT offers valuable insights to help you succeed in your job search and career development.
Created by Avinash Chauhan (Project Support Intern, '23)
What exactly is ChatGPT?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a field of computer science that aims to create intelligent machines that can mimic human-like cognitive abilities. These machines are designed to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, understanding natural language, and recognizing patterns.
This is why you can command ChatGPT with prompts to get specific responses. You can’t ask Google to write you an email or create a workout plan for you, but ChatGPT can understand and respond to you.
Be Cautious Using ChatGPT
Ethically using ChatGPT in academics involves acknowledging it as an AI tool and properly using it as a supplementary resource to augment learning and creativity. Always avoid plagiarism or over-reliance on the model's responses. Unethical use involves submitting entirely ChatGPT-generated content as original work or misrepresenting the AI's role in the academic process, which undermines academic integrity and honesty. Do NOT use ChatGPT to submit academic work- you will get flagged for plagiarism by sites such as TurnItIn and Canvas.
Misinformation
Since ChatGPT generates responses based on patterns in the data, it can produce false or misleading information, or potentially nonsensical responses.
ChatGPT is horrible at math; it often makes very simple arithmetic mistakes
Plagiarism
Since ChatGPT generates text based on existing data, there exists a risk of unintentionally reproducing content from sources without proper attribution.
You will get flagged for plagiarism by sites such as TurnItIn and Canvas.
Knowledge Limitation
ChatGPT's knowledge is based on the data it was trained on, which only goes up to September 2021. It may not have the most up-to-date information.
Try asking ChatGPT “what happens in the Barbie movie released in 2023”
1. Brainstorm 3 Experiences
An experience does NOT have to be a job.
We are going to fill out this sample resume. Make a copy and let's start with the experience section.
Experiences are not limited to jobs alone; they can also include hobbies, extracurricular activities, or even one-time events. The main objective of these diverse experiences is to highlight one's character and demonstrate valuable skill attributes that can be effectively utilized by potential employers.
Common Experiences: Babysitting, Boys and Girls Club, Cashier, Construction, Content Creation, Food Distribution, Graphic Design/Art, Sports, Woodcraft Rangers, etc.
2. Describe the experience
Answer the following questions:
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What kind of work did you do there and what were your responsibilities?
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Did you use any equipment during your work and/or learn any specific skills?
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Is there anything you're proud of accomplishing during your time there?
Tip: Answer these questions out loud, as if you were talking to your best friend about your experiences. Be casual and descriptive. I’d recommend you record yourself talking. After this, play your recording and type what you are saying into a new document (ie Google Docs)
You should end up with a response like this:
“Yeah, so I had this construction job, and it was pretty cool. I was part of the team that built stuff, like houses and buildings. It was hard work, but I learned a lot. I had to carry heavy materials, like bricks and lumber, and help with setting up the foundation.
Sometimes, I got to use power tools, which was awesome! I learned how to use a hammer, a drill, and even some heavy-duty equipment. Safety was a big deal on the site, so we always had to wear helmets and follow the rules.
I also had to do some digging and leveling the ground. It was challenging, but seeing the progress we made was so satisfying. I worked with some really experienced guys who taught me some cool tricks of the trade.
The best part was probably the teamwork. We all had to work together to get the job done. It was like a big puzzle, and we each had a piece to fit in. Plus, the guys on the team were really fun to be around.
Overall, it was a pretty awesome experience. I got to be part of building something real, and that's something I'll always be proud of!”
Pretend you're casually describing the job to your friend
Type out what you said out loud.
3. Generate your bullet points
If you look at the resume template, you will see that each experience comes with three bullet points. We are now going to generate those bullet points.
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Copy and paste your response into Chat GPT.
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Now click “shift-enter” three times (this will add more lines to your prompt)
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Under the description, type the following: Based on this experience, write 3 total bullet points that I can write on my resume.
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This will generate 3 bullet points for your resume.
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Pro Tip: ask for 6 total bullet points, and choose your favorite 3.
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Now, paste this into the experience section of the resume template. Fill out the rest of that experience (ex. the title, timeline, etc)
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Repeat this process for two more experiences. Look at the list of examples from before to help you brainstorm.
Three Rules of ChatGPT Resume Creation:
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More words is NOT always better. You do not want to bore your reader.
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Do not assume everything is true. Read through what ChatGPT gives you to ensure everything is accurate.
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By clicking the shift and enter keys together, you will generate a new empty line. Use this to separate the informal description from the command.
4. Fill out the Summary Section
Look back to your resume. We are going to fill out the top part, labeled Summary. We will use what you filled out in the experience section to create this section.
This will take three commands in one prompt. Look at the image on the right for visual clarification.
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Type "Here are my experiences" and copy/paste the experiences that you've put on your resume.
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Type "Here is an example summary section" and copy/paste the summary from the resume template.
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Type "Rewrite the summary section based on my experiences"
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If the response is too long, type "Make it shorter" to generate a shorter response.
Three Rules of ChatGPT Resume Creation:
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More words is NOT always better. You do not want to bore your reader.
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Do not assume everything is true. Read through what ChatGPT gives you to ensure everything is accurate.
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By clicking the shift and enter keys together, you will generate a new empty line. Use this to separate the informal description from the command.
Let's apply the Three Rules here. Notice that it says "high school senior in its response"- make sure that you are actually a high school senior! See how not reading through the entire response can lead to mistakes and inaccurate information. Use ChatGPT as a tool but you need to constantly be checking it! Also, see how the initial response is way too long?? We can simply tell ChatGPT to make it shorter.
5. Fill out the rest of the resume
There are three sections left. Let's go through each of them:
Education:
All you have to do here is fill out the information. Copy and paste the high school details if you went to two high schools. For Activities, you can rewrite activities that you wrote for your experiences, but just remember that everything you write has to be related to school (club, sport, etc).
Common Activities: Sports, Clubs, Unique Classes or Organizations
Awards:
We all have awards or honors that may not be so intuitive. Here are some common awards for teenagers:
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Employee of the Month
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Honor Roll (usually above 3.0 GPA)
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Perfect Attendance
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Sports-Related Award
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Academic Competition Award
Skills/Certifications:
These are abilities or skills that you want your employer to know that you possess. This can be as simple as using Google Docs/Sheets or editing YouTube videos. Be creative here.
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Pro Tip: If you are having issues thinking of skills, copy and paste your experiences into ChatGPT and tell it to generate some skills for you.
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Type "Here are my experiences" and copy/paste your experiences from your resume
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Now click “shift-enter” three times (this will add more lines to your prompt)
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Type "Based on my experiences, generate some skills that I can put in the skills section on my resume"
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Three Rules of ChatGPT Resume Creation:
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More words is NOT always better. You do not want to bore your reader.
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Do not assume everything is true. Read through what ChatGPT gives you to ensure everything is accurate.
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By clicking the shift and enter keys together, you will generate a new empty line. Use this to separate the informal description from the command.
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Let's use Rule 1 here: see how ChatGPT gives you the skill AND a description for the skill? Well, we clearly don't need the description- just the skill. Copy and paste the skill only into the skills section of the resume.