How To Use ChatGPT to Improve Your CV

Jan. 28, 2023

What you should know about ChatGPT

Before getting started using any AI software to help writing anything it's important to understand a few things about how they work. ChatGPT is interesting as it writes very clear and very human-like text with the help of only a few prompts. Not only can it be mistaken for a human but it can even be mistaken for quite an eloquent one. It's optimized for sounding good and convincing. It almost wants to be liked. It's not optimized to necessarily give you the truth. This is not necessarily bad, but you should keep it in mind. It's very important to not just copy and paste what's the AI spits out but to proofread the results that ChatGPT gives you.

Can chatbot write a resume?

You could just ask chatGPT to write your CV for you from scratch but it won't do a very good job. It will give you a very generic outline of a CV. This will be very easy and quick but it won't help you get a job. It's much better to take it in steps.

Getting started writing your resume with ChatGPT

To write a great CV it is best to start with some sort of template. Although chat GPT could come up with something, there are much better versions online. Have a search for templates and you will find lots of beautiful ones available. In my opinion, using the actual template can be more difficult than just copying the design yourself into a Word document. Often they are very hard to edit but this is up to you.

Once you have your template I would start by filling in all your jobs and experience, university, school etc. This is not the sort of content that chat GPT excels at. It is better to fill it in by hand. So you now should have a beautiful looking CV with all your job history but no bullet points for each job.

Using ChatGPT for your job titles

Now that you have your template and outline clear it's time to start using AI to help with your CV.

Start off with your job titles. This is one of the most important parts of your CV. Employers will often skim CVs just looking at the job titles so it is extremely important to get this right. If possible you should change your job title to identically match the job title of the job that you are applying for. Try typing into ChatGPT alternative job titles to "xxxx". Do any of these sound better but are still applicable to what you did? Make sure that you aren't completely lying as references will need to back up these titles but often the same jobs are called different things in different companies so a very odd job title that is only used in your previous company will do nothing to explain exactly what you did. If you are still not sure, you could even ask ChatGPT: "What are possible job titles for a person doing the following tasks"

How to optimize your curriculum vitae’s bullet points

We have great job titles which is good because that's really what employers first look at. Once they have filtered down the job applications using the candidates job titles they will go in deeper to each candidate's experience by looking at the bullet points. These also can be optimized using chatGPT. Start off with your most recent job. If you don’t already have some bullet points written down from an old CV try to think of your duties in that job. Write them all down. Next try to think of some big achievements that you have achieved. Again right them down and match them to the particular duties that you have. Then ask ChatGPT. Give me bullet point summaries of this to add to a CV. See what you get. Try to fill out with actual numbers. Employers love it if you back up what you are saying with actual numbers. To help you here you could also look at some job adverts. See what sort of skills they are looking for and try to create these skills in your bullet points.

How to how to use the star method on you curriculum vitae’s bullet points

The STAR method is a technique used to structure bullet points on a resume or CV to make them more effective. It stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result.

• Situation: Describe the context in which the experience took place, including any relevant background information.
• Task: Explain the specific task or goal that you were responsible for achieving.
• Action: Describe the actions you took to achieve the task or goal. Be specific and use active verbs.
• Result: Explain the outcome of your actions, including any quantifiable results, such as an increase in sales or a reduction in costs.

Example:

• Situation: As a sales representative for XYZ Company.
• Task: Increase sales in the Northeastern region.
• Action: Conducted market research to identify potential customers and developed targeted sales strategies.
• Result: Achieved a 15% increase in sales in the Northeastern region within six months.

By using the STAR method, you can ensure that your bullet points are clear, concise, and demonstrate your achievements and impact in a specific role. You can use ChatGPT here by asking it directly. “Improve this bullet point using the STAR technique.”

Repeat this process for each job. Now you pretty much have your CV customized. You still have to add your education etc but this is just a manual process. Chat GPT can’t really help you with that.

Customizing your resume for the particular job

The more customized your CV or Resume is to each individual job that you are applying to the better chances you have of being picked for an interview. The downside of this is that it takes a lot of time to make a unique CV for every job that you apply to. Whether or not you do this probably comes down to how many jobs you can really apply to. Some positions are very unique so you can only really apply to a handful of jobs so it is worth your while really putting in the effort for each individual application. Also, not all jobs are created equal. There are always a few jobs that you are really interested in and you should spend longer on those applications.

Again you can use ChatGPT to help customize your CV for that particular job. Ask it directly. “How would you improve this CV for this job application?”

Summary

ChatGPT is optimized to sound good and convincing, but it is not necessarily optimized to give the truth. Therefore, it is important to proofread the results that ChatGPT gives you.

• Start with a template for the CV and fill in all the job and experience information by hand.
• Use ChatGPT to help with job titles and bullet points, by giving it specific tasks and asking it to give bullet point summaries,
• Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, and Result) to structure the bullet points.
• Customize your CV to the specific jobs that you are applying to.