How to use ChatGPT to get a job?

On the front line: the cover letter 

If you want to create your own cover letter with ChatGPT, put yourself in the shoes of a recruiter to identify which information is important. We know that a good cover letter is an important part of any recruitment process, and that means you need to know how to write one for it to have interesting and effective content. A good cover letter indeed gives a recruiter a clear and precise view of the candidate's profile. 

What to include?

First of all, it is crucial to define the content of your cover letter. Defining its content will enable ChatGPT to personalize it and thus make it your own.  

• In the first place, indicate your professional situation: whether you are freelance, on a permanent contract, between contracts or unemployed. This information will tell the recruiter where you stand: whether you are actively looking for a job, and if so, whether you are already in talks with other companies.
• Then indicate which job you would like to apply for: developer, consultant, tech lead, or something more functional. This will help them understand your future wishes in terms of assignments.
• Finally, highlight your key experience that may be related to the position for which you are applying. If you have applied for an assignment as a developer, highlight the different programming languages you have used on previous assignments which are also necessary for the job and the current assignment.
• Finally, to follow up on the previous point, explain why you are the perfect candidate for this opportunity. Try to include too in a few words your hard and soft skills, your qualifications, and any other relevant skills for the position.
  
  

Prompt instruction sheet

But why is it necessary for ChatGPT to have all this information? Do not forget that ChatGPT is still an artificial intelligence so, when you write a prompt, you need to provide as much information as possible. This will enable the tool to better understand your profile and therefore better target your objective.  

Lastly, to add value to your cover letter, introduce the job description and ask ChatGPT to find the keywords so that you can integrate them later. This will add coherence and interest, as you will have your cover letter matched with the job in question. Your prompt should have several instructions for a satisfactory result:

• Your role in the letter: indicate that you are a potential candidate.
• The task to be performed: writing a cover letter.
• The purpose to be fulfilled: to convince a recruiter to hire you and show them that you are the perfect candidate.
• The previous context: this point is directly linked to what we discussed in the previous section. Some pieces of information to include are: your professional situation, which job you are applying for, some keywords about your previous professional experience, some of your achievements and any other important pieces of information. You can also add some of the missions requested in the position description to enhance the value of your previous experiences in the face of these challenges.
• The desired tone: tone represents the way the cover letter will be written in, for example, an amusing, convincing or formal tone. Choose one that represents you.
• The format: inform ChatGPT of the desired length and which keywords you want in the piece, as well as the structure you prefer. The first part should be a restatement of the assignment, and then, add a section indicating what you can bring to the company.
  
  

Example time

To give you an idea of a prompt, we show you an example of what you could write:  

You are a candidate for an opportunity at Lacoste as a tech lead on Salesforce commerce cloud. You have seven years of experience as a full-stack developer in SFCC solutions, and you are currently between contracts. You would like to move up to tech lead because it is a logical progression after all these years of experience. You were able to develop your skills while you worked at Louis Vuitton, managing the content of the e-commerce site for three years. This experience enabled you to develop your skills on the tool and to understand how it works from A to Z. Write a cover letter convincingly and with a formal tone, matching Lacoste's missions: [example of mission]. Make it 300 words long.

Back to basics: the CV  

Now we are going to look at the CV part, more specifically, how to make a CV that is tailored to a particular opportunity. A good CV enables a recruiter to collect the pertinent information to hire someone that fits the opportunity in question: the skills you have acquired, the position you hold and the assignments you carried out that match those of the vacancy. You need to include the right keywords when describing your assignments and therefore in the prompt. 

What to include?

To begin with, as with the cover letter, it is important to tell ChatGPT what you want to include in your CV: 

• First of all, you need to indicate the position you held in each of your previous opportunities. Both the position and the status (freelance or permanent) are relevant. If previous experiences were similar to the opportunity you are applying for, it is important to detail it.
• Highlight the assignments that came with the position. A good CV for an opportunity must necessarily have similar assignments to those of the position applied for. In this case, adapt your CV with the keywords from the job description. 
• After each opportunity, add a line, for example, “technical environment”. This will save the recruiter a lot of time, as they will be able to see straight away what environment you have worked in and what programming languages and tools you have used.
• Finally, add a line with the results obtained for each of your assignments. This will enable the recruiter to understand your performance over a given period. 
  
  

Prompt instruction sheet

As with the cover letter, start by sending the job description to ChatGPT and ask them to highlight the keywords. This will make it easier to include them in your job descriptions when you write the prompt, in which you should include: 

• Your role in the document: indicate that you are a potential candidate.
• The task to be performed: to extract keywords to add to missions and profile descriptions.
• The purpose to be fulfilled: to match your profile with the opportunities you are interested in.
• The previous context: indicate the position you held in your previous positions, missions completed, the environment in which you worked and finally the results obtained.
• The desired tone: in this case, you want to describe your tasks simply and concisely.
• The format: just like for the cover letter, you need to instruct ChatGPT to use the relevant keywords it identified before and then include them in the profile and mission description.
  
  

Example time

To help you understand better, I will use the same example as for the cover letter. This is an example of a prompt:  

You are a candidate for an opportunity as a tech lead on Salesforce commerce cloud. You have seven years of experience as a full-stack developer in SFCC solutions, and you are currently between contracts. You would like to move up to tech lead because it is a logical progression after all these years of experience. You were able to develop your skills when you worked at Louis Vuitton, managing the content of the e-commerce site for three years. You want the description of your missions in your CV to match the opportunity of Salesforce: [description of the opportunity]. Your last assignment was at Louis Vuitton as a developer on SFCC, you were in charge of [assignments completed], you worked with [technical environment], and you obtained [results obtained]. You need to write simply and concisely. Write the job description including the following words: [keywords]. 

Preparing for the last step: the interview 

The last part when applying for an opportunity is usually an interview process, and it is equally important to be prepared for it even if you passed the previous filters. Knowing how to show your best assets and advertise yourself as an attractive candidate is incredibly helpful at this stage. Recruiters will ask questions and a confident person who can answer even unexpected ones is bound to be appealing to fill their open position. It is important to remember that, when a candidate attends an interview (in person or remotely), it is mostly a matter of reiterating the key points of their CV and cover letter according to the role and missions you are applying for.  

What to include?

As with the CV and cover letter, it is important to give ChatGPT more information, such as: 

• Introduce yourself. Every interview starts with a presentation pitch. The recruiter will probably ask you to introduce yourself in a few words, so it is important to highlight the most important points about your educational background, your location, your career path and what you are looking for in an opportunity.
• Then give more information about your most recent professional experience. Recruiters will ask you about the most significant experience you had, whether it was your last job or a different one. To tackle the question, tell ChatGPT what you learnt, the results you achieved and the difficulties you encountered including how you managed to overcome them.
• Lastly, you will have to summarize what you have learnt from your professional experience and what makes you the ideal candidate for this position by showing the added value you have to offer.
  
  

Prompt instruction sheet

All this information, which must be concise of course, will show the recruiter that you know how to be structured and to select relevant information. Recruiters do not expect you to do a long monologue; they are looking for the most important key points, just like on a CV or cover letter. In the prompt, it is therefore important to include: 

• Your role in the situation: indicate that you are a potential candidate.
• The task to be performed: to make a pitch to introduce yourself during an interview.
• The purpose to be fulfilled: to be elected for the position by explaining why you are the perfect candidate.
• The previous context: give all the information about yourself. Go into detail about your most significant work experience and end by correlating that with why you would be a good candidate for this opportunity.
• The desired tone: write in a relaxed but professional way (you have to be comfortable talking that way).
• The format: indicate how long you want your pitch to be.
  
  

 Example time

To help you understand better, I will use the same example than for the cover letter and the CV. This is an example of a prompt:  

You are a candidate for an opportunity as a tech lead on Salesforce commerce cloud. Your name is [Name] and you are [age]. You live in [City] and you have seven years of experience as a full stack developer on SFCC solutions, and you are currently between contracts. You are particularly interested in technical challenges. You like solving complex problems and you work on both the back end and the front end. You would like to move up to tech lead because it is a logical progression after all these years of experience.

You were able to develop your skills while you worked at Louis Vuitton, managing the content of the e-commerce site for three years. You were in a team with five other developers coming from different countries and [add more information about this professional experience]. Passionate about new technologies, you have had the opportunity to work on various websites and application development projects during your career, which has also enabled you to acquire solid skills in [hard skills]. During your most recent experience at Louis Vuitton, you learnt to be [soft skills + explanation], and to improve your English because most of the exchanges were in English. In addition, these changes throughout your career have enabled you to learn to adapt to each situation and therefore to each new technology or programming language. Write your pitch in a relaxed but professional way. The pitch should last a maximum of five minutes.