How to utilize ChatGPT to succeed in your job applications
The year 2022 is really tough. Many tech companies decided to lay off their employees. According to layoff.fyi, in 2022 alone, there are around 153,110 employees who lost their job in the world.
On the other hand, ChatGPT, a special chatbot developed by OpenAI, recently mesmerizes the world. Let me clearly explain what ChatGPT is by asking directly to ChatGPT itself as shown below.
Many have played with this AI product. For example, Volodarsky mentioned there are at least 10 wonderful tasks that can be executed by ChatGPT:
- Generating codes
- Tracking fitness
- Debugging codes
- Serving as a personal assistant
- Creating a marketing plan
- Creating a virtual machine
- Creating creative works
- Developing plugins
- Developing game
- Suggesting medical aids
Really cool, isn’t it?
Okay. I think that ChatGPT can also assist me in doing the common tasks of a job seeker, such as writing a resume and cover letter and proofreading them, helping me learn a technical test and user interviews, providing a mock-up interview, etc. And below are what I can do to utilize ChatGPT in doing the job.
Improving my existing resume
I split my resume into several sections, each of which is inputted into the ChatGPT prompt. This is because I always experience connection errors every time I instruct ChatGPT to improve my resume all at once.
For example, in the images below, I asked ChatGPT to improve the work experience section, proofread it, and rewrite it. I also asked it to use British English.
And the ChatGPT’s response is shown below. It knows what “PIC” stands for. It combines two bullets into a single bullet point. But, unfortunately, it uses the word “analyze” which is indeed not a British English style.
Improving my profile summary
I also asked ChatGPT to improve my profile summary. We can see in the image below that it nicely improves my profile summary. It knows properly how to use English grammar.
Writing a cover letter
Sometimes, when applying for vacancies, you have to write a cover letter dedicated to a certain vacancy. Previously, I used to have a template for my cover letter. Based on the template, I would write a dedicated cover letter for a certain vacancy. Occasionally, this routine is exhausting.
But, now, by using ChatGPT, you just input an instruction which includes what you want (i.e. to write a cover letter), the job descriptions and requirements, and your resume. In the image below, I used the character “>>>” in order for ChatGPT to easily understand what my instruction is.
And the ChatGPT’s response is shown below. You can see that ChatGPT sweetly design your dedicated cover letter for the vacancy. If you still don’t satisfy with the response, you could generate another response or improve the result yourself.
Helping learn the technical test questions
Usually, in recruiting tech talents, employers will assess the technical knowledge of candidates in a technical test. Often time, the test is a coding test. It could be a take-home assignment, an online coding test, or a live coding test with a proctor. For online coding tests, you can learn the questions on HackerRank, Mettl, Codility, Coderbyte, etc. They provide numerous questions you can learn from.
I tried to use ChatGPT to solve the coding question from one of the websites above. I started with an easy problem and ChatGPT can solve the question.
Subsequently, I continued with a hard problem as shown below. Anyway, even I spent much time solving the problem by myself lol. In the first generation, ChatGPT’s solution was completely wrong, and then I clicked the “regenerate response” button. Just in the second generation, ChatGPT is able to deliver a proper solution. Wonderful!
ChatGPT can help you learn how to solve difficult questions. It also provides you with some explanations of how it comes to the solution. During your learning time to master a number of examples of technical questions, ChatGPT can be your partner in quickly understanding the problem context.
But, ensure that you UNDERSTAND what ChatGPT suggests on its solution and are ABLE TO REPRODUCE the solution using your own ‘sentence’ since you must use your own capability in the real technical test.
Giving suggestions in technical user interviews
In a user interview, you can expect many technical questions will be asked. Therefore, it is always a good idea to anticipate to any technical and non-technical questions. Luckily, ChatGPT knows this :)
Let’s elaborate on each question that ChatGPT suggested.
And below is my own question. I was once asked this question during a user interview. Let’s see what it will answer.
And below are the less technical questions.
ChatGPT is indeed awesome. It can answer all interview questions perfectly. If we want more details, just give it a prompt, I’m sure it will give another precise answer.
However, there are funny some question-answer pairs. ChatGPT confidently answers like it experienced the event itself. It is really confident even though it is wrong and makes up a story or answer.
Providing a mock-up interview
In addition to giving us some examples of user interview questions, ChatGPT can also act as an interviewer so that we can learn how to give good answers in an interview. Just instruct it clearly what we want and it will turn itself into a professional interviewer.
But, there’s one thing really bothering me. Since on the ChatGPT webpage we have to type to input our prompts, I’m sure it feels annoying and slow if we have to type every time we answer the question ChatGPT asks. Fortunately, there is an open-source Chrome extension that can help us to use speech recognition in communicating with ChatGPT. Just simply follow the instructions in the GitHub repo below to install the extension.
After the extension has been installed, just use it on the ChatGPT page as shown below, then start talking. But, as the extension is just a fun, open-source project, you can’t expect a sophisticated tool. Regardless of I’m not a native speaker, the tool often wrongly captures what I said. However, for a learning tool, this is more than enough.
Conclusions
Although massive layoff is occurring in the world due to unstable global macroeconomics, we must survive and strive to obtain a new home. We have discussed how we can utilize ChatGPT in order to assist us in seeking job vacancies.
At least, ChatGPT is able to help us with the tasks below:
- Improving an existing resume
- Improving a profile summary
- Writing a cover letter
- Helping learn the technical test questions
- Giving suggestions in technical user interviews
- Providing a mock-up interview
If you have any other use cases in which ChatGPT helps you get your dream job, please let me know in the comment below :)
On the other hand, there are some concerns, however, where we are not allowed to use ChatGPT’s response innocently. ChatGPT is awesome, but it is still a prototype. We can’t trust its prompt results without double check. For example, it still doesn’t know the difference between American and British English (I’m completely sure Grammarly is much more expert in this issue); we have to cross-check its coding results; it sometimes makes up an answer or story with high-degree confidence; and so on.
Nevertheless, I’m 100% optimistic about the future of ChatGPT. It will assist us, humans, in our everyday lives.
About the Author
Reza is an engineer specializing in data-driven analysis. Previously, he worked as Senior Data Scientist at Tokopedia. In his spare time, he likes to write articles on Medium, learn something new, or create side projects.
