Using ChatGPT to find a job: What to do and what not to do

Equipped with GPT-4o, the free version of ChatGPT can now access the internet and trawl through job listings, Business Insider wrote.

How to make ChatGPT, your personal recruiter

Here’s how to get ChatGPT to act as your personal recruiter, according to the Business Insider article.

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1. Be exact and give ChatGPT a persona

Telling ChatGPT what persona to take on has been shown to improve results.

Jason Gulya, an AI council chair at Berkeley College, previously told Business Insider that the bot works best when you assign it a persona, such as a specific job role.

Beginning prompts with instructions such as “act as a professor” or “act as a marketing professional” followed by a description of the desired outcome improves its responses, according to the article.

2. Share your CV

It’s important to share your qualifications with the bot so it can cross-reference your experience with the job requirements.

Including your CV in the first prompt, highlighting your most relevant experience, while also specifying that ChatGPT should only send job roles you are qualified for, is essential, according to the article.

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3. Ask for clarification

Like any product that uses AI, ChatGPT can still hallucinate.

Hallucinations happen when AI-powered bots convincingly present factual errors as truth. Experts warn that this phenomenon could spread misinformation.

If you notice something amiss, it’s worth asking the bot to check its own answers, and also to share links, so you can verify it on your own.

4. Advice for next steps

After finding a job, ChatGPT can also help job seekers through the application process.

Not only can the bot help with cover letters and tailoring a CV, it can also identify relevant people to contact about the role and draft a message.

The chatbot can also help manage expectations by analyzing job seekers’ qualifications for various roles.

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The caveat

While ChatGPT is great for hunting jobs, experts believe relying on it too much, especially for the application process can be disadvantageous.

Shoshana Davis, a Gen Z career expert and founder of the career consultancy Fairy Job Mother, told CNBC Make It in an interview that Gen Z (Those born between 1996 and 2012) have become too reliant on AI tools like ChatGPT to generate cover letters and job application answers.

Davis explained that “employers are getting hundreds of the exact same cover letters word for word,” or answers to job application questions that are the same, and suspect that ChatGPT use is in play, the article read.

Michelle Reisdorf, district director at recruitment firm Robert Half, shared a similar view with CNBC Make It previously and said that AI is great for “proofreading and enhancing what you’ve already written but it’s not a one-stop shop to generate the perfect resume.”

“Recruiters will be able to tell if you’re not including specific details from your past jobs or writing in a personal, human voice,” she added.

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So how can you actually use it?

Davis said she uses ChatGPT to help her structure documents, brainstorm ideas, and produce drafts but “I never just type in a question and then copy and paste my responses.”

“In my opinion, you can use ChatGPT in the job search process but it should be used as a tool, not a replacement,” Davis warned.