By Richard Eisenberg
An AI tool can be of great help if you don’t forget to add a human touch
You’ve seen the scary headlines about artificial intelligence (AI) and its super hot chatbot known as ChatGPT (generative AI algorithm): The planet may be doomed. Millions of jobs could be eliminated.
Whether these predictions will come true, no one knows. But after talking to job experts, watching webinars and reading the latest research, I know this much is clear: AI and ChatGPT, the fastest-adopting technology tool in history, can help you find and work without a pension . (In a future column, I’ll tell you how artificial intelligence will increasingly be able to help you manage your money in retirement.)
At a recent South by Southwest webinar, futurist and Wired magazine founder, executive editor Kevin Kelly called generative AI “the universal personal trainer.”
That way, he said, “it can do work that people don’t want or can’t do.” And it can make them super fast. “ChatGPT is better at synthesis than we are,” Kelly said.
Read: Retirees’ Most Common Financial Regrets and How to Avoid Them
ChatGPT, resumes and cover letters
Now AI and ChatGPT can quickly and brilliantly improve your resume and cover letters – if you remember to add your own human approach.
David Fano, CEO of personal career growth platform Teal, is a big proponent of using AI to find jobs.
“I feel like if there’s a tool that can help us do something, we should use it,” he told me. “I’m sure someone thought the wheel was a bad idea. Someone thought the typewriter was a bad idea. The printing press was a bad idea. It’s just going to happen.”
But for people who want to work after retirement, Fano said, “any technology that helps you perform better and be more efficient — you’d be a little foolish not to use it.”
Read: With housing prices so high, boomers may want to become renters
AI helps people get hired
It turns out that there are many job seekers. A ResumeBuilder.com survey of over 1,000 current and recent job seekers found that 46% reported using ChatGPT to write resumes or cover letters, or both. Approximately 70% of them received a higher response rate from employers; 59% are appointed.
A January 2023 National Bureau of Economic Research study by three MIT professors found that job seekers who used “algorithmic writing assistance” had an 8 percent increase in the likelihood of being hired. The AI tool made intelligent suggestions to correct errors and clean up the job seeker’s writing.
Using AI to find the right job
The first way to use ChatGPT (for simplicity’s sake, I’ll use ChatGPT throughout this piece when I talk about generative AI; there’s also Bing, Bard, and others) for nonretirement job hunting, Fano said, is to understand the type what job you want and how to position yourself in the labor market.
“Go find five job descriptions that you’re really excited about. Put them all on ChatGPT and ask, “What do these five have in common?” Fano said.
You can also ask ChatGPT to show the top companies with specific jobs in your state and then check their job sites.
Career transition coach John Tarnoff wrote on LinkedIn that a key rule of thumb for using ChatGPT in your job search: Ask “Do you understand?” at the end of every inquiry. This will give you a summary and then you can correct the bot if it’s a little off.
Personalize your resume with a bot
Once you’ve found potential jobs, you can have ChatGPT tailor your resume accordingly. (By the way, don’t worry if you’ve heard that ChatGPT’s knowledge stops in 2021. That’s true in terms of news events, but if you include your work history since then, he knows how to use it.)
After signing up for the service, give the bot relevant information about your work history and the type of job you want (don’t include your phone number or address; this will plug that information into ChatGPT’s brain for everyone to choose from). The more specific you can be, the better results you will get.
Seconds after giving the AI tool what you want, it will spit out a version of your resume with the necessary keywords that your future employer’s applicant tracking service will want to see, as well as a professional resume (if you request one) .
ChatGPT will also help you brag about yourself by using words and phrases that showcase your accomplishments. “People don’t feel comfortable doing that and articulating successes and accomplishments in short, clear ways,” Fano said. “Computers are very good at this.
You could say to ChatGPT, “Draft X accomplishments in the resume from my resume.”
You can also ask ChatGPT to write a mock resume for the type of job you want, and then use the template as a template to fill in with your own work history.
Another idea: Ask ChatGPT to tell you the skills that are typically required for the type of job you want. You can then make sure your resume notes these skills, or you can spend some time acquiring the skills.
Add the human touch
But you’d be making a big mistake if you carelessly sent an employer a resume created by ChatGPT for you.
“ChatGPT is a great tool to get you 50% of the way there,” said Carmen Bryant, vice president of marketing at Wizehire, which helps small businesses find workers. “It can provide a draft, but it won’t be able to provide your unique perspective.”
AI is also prone to making mistakes; what technicians call “hallucinations”. So you’ll want to carefully review the resume you receive to make sure there are no mistakes.
You can also give ChatGPT your resume plus a job posting you’re interested in and ask them how well your work history and skills match the job description. With this information, you can modify the summary accordingly.
You can also use ChatGPT to do similar work to enhance your LinkedIn profile, as this is one way many employers and recruiters screen potential hires.
ChatGPT and cover letters
Once you have your ChatGPT-enhanced resume, you can turn to the bot for help with your cover letters. Here again, the more specific you are, the better results you will get.
Recruiter Lexie Garcia wrote on Viget.com that she found after playing around with ChatGPT, “even the simple use of ChatGPT is ‘better’ than many generic cover letters we’ve seen in the past.” He drafted cover letters , which were clear, appropriately conversational, spelled correctly and with salutations and signatures, she noted.
Give ChatGPT your resume and desired job description and ask them to prepare a suitable cover letter. It will probably get the job done quickly and come up with a shorter and better version than what you would do yourself.
Teal’s Alli Tunell recommends using ChatGPT prompts like these: “Write a conversational cover letter for a job application as [position] at [company] using your CV below as a reference.” Or: “Compose a persuasive cover letter in 150 words or less highlighting my qualifications and enthusiasm for [position] at [company] using my resume below.”
ChatGPT for job research and interviews
ChatGPT can also help you research a potential medium or large employer and come up with questions to ask in a job interview, as well as questions you might be asked.
Fano recommends giving ChatGPT the LinkedIn profile of the person who will be interviewing you and asking the bot what you can talk about together. Or give ChatGPT the job description and ask for five interview questions you might be asked.
My experience using ChatGPT
I’ve been using ChatGPT for some non-retired gigs recently and found it to be very useful in some cases and a complete failure in others.
I was asked to use ChatGPT to make a teacher’s guide for a financial literacy course for high school students.
Phil Terry, founder and CEO of CEO community Collaborative Gain, wanted to use some of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder letters as an educational tool. He made up questions based on the information in the letters. My job was to give ChatGPT Buffett’s letters and specific questions about the terms and concepts in them and have the AI give me the answers that I would put in the teacher’s guide for the instructors.
In most cases, ChatGPT was extremely fast, writing full paragraph responses that were spot on. In some cases, however, it was just wrong. I then had to do my own research to come up with the right answers.
So, to accomplish this task, I had to spend a lot of time ensuring accuracy and correcting ChatGPT errors.
Overall, though, I’d give ChatGPT a B+.
Book Launcher
Debbie Weil, Stonington, Maine, author, marketing strategist and host of [B]OLDER podcast and Substack newsletter on reinventing life and work and making the most of aging is considering using ChatGPT to help her craft [B]OLDER book.
“After the publication of 100 [podcast] episodes, I asked ChatGPT how I could organize such a book,” she told me. “The response, within seconds, was consistent, detailed, and empowering! Now I have an outline to start from. I can add my own spin.”
I’m not surprised.
In fact, I’ll end this column with Fano’s generative AI advice for non-retirees: “Play with it. Use technology. Don’t be afraid of her. Don’t reject her.’
– Richard Eisenberg
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07-11-23 0550ET
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