It pains me now to look back at it, but I spent unfathomable amounts of hours of my senior year in college applying for internships, training placements and entry-level jobs.
After wall-to-wall rejection letters or, even worse, no response at all, I finally swallowed my pride and visited my on-campus career advisor. They helped me to tweak (okay… completely tear up and rewrite) my resume and cover letter. Within a week, I was invited to an interview.
The Challenge
I started by feeding the job description and employer details into ChatGPT so that it could create a specific resume and covering letter to suit the position and business.
I then copied and pasted all of the details from my existing application documents — together with a few extra key details not currently included — to build a picture of my experience, skills and suitability for the role.
Then I got prompting…
The resume
By their very nature, there isn’t necessarily a wrong or right way to draft a resume. Some people keep it very no-frills and demure, while others go all out with a variety of colors and fonts accompanied by a headshot.
I started by asking ChatGPT which bells and whistles it thinks a resume for this kind of role should include.
The chatbot concluded that headshots generally aren’t recommended for editorial applications, while the appearance should stick to “clean, professional fonts” (e.g. Helvetica, Arial, Calibri, Times New Roman) and, if using color, to do so sparingly and with “a very subtle accent”.
It advised to avoid formatting tricks like large graphics, background colors, borders, or multiple font types and to use bullet points for achievements and impacts.
On that basis, I asked it to:
Prompt: Create a resume for me tailored the role of Tech Reporter at a major global publisher (job description supplied). Consider all of my skills, training, experience and education. Include anything that you think will give me the edge over other applicants. Use your discretion on the length, format and content of the resume
I gave ChatGPT two goes at this. While I appreciate the urge to avoid overly stylized fonts and formatting, the first version it supplied simply looked boring to my eye. So I asked for a second version — in PDF format — that was a bit more eye-catching.
The final result is still quite plain, but uses big, bold headings to draw the eye to the most important information. I also like the way it uses bullets in the ‘Core Beats & Skills’ section to break that up succinctly.
The cover letter
Cover letters are a tricky beast, with so much you have to get across in the space of one side of A4. A large portion is immediately taken up by contact details and formalities before you even get started with the meaty stuff.
The challenge is to express your enthusiasm for the role, while describing all your strengths and ensuring that no stone is left uncovered when it comes to the various key responsibilities and qualifications specified for the position in question.
In addition to the content itself, I sometimes struggle to get the tone right. Naturally, it’s important to sound professional, but I also like to give my potential new manager an idea of my personality. I’ve previously been on the other side of the fence when it comes to hiring, and the resumes that stood out to me were the ones where I could imagine spending eight hours a day with that candidate and how they would fit in to the team.
Prompt: Write a one-page cover letter for the same job, making it clear why I’m a great fit for the role. Be sure to tick off the candidate requirements from the job description. Include the necessary contact details.
I thought the cover letter ChatGPT produced more or less nails the tone and content I was hoping for — although maybe it could give a slightly better impression of what I’d bring to the team outside of the work alone.
I appreciate that it goes above and beyond the personal specification set out by the job description, squeezing in extra ‘sells’ around mentorship and relationship building.
It all suggests a candidate who doesn’t just fulfil the job requirements, but surpasses them.
The LinkedIn Summary
I have to admit that, although I understand its value, I’m still somewhat allergic to LinkedIn, so I was more than happy to delegate things over to ChatGPT to handle.
Having already given it my resume to work from, the prompt didn’t take a massive amount of thought from my side.
Prompt: Based on what you’ve learned about my skills, expertise and experience, write a LinkedIn Profile Summary. Consider what makes an attractive, eye-catching summary — in terms of content, tone and length. Make it professional, but personable.
I would call the results serviceable, rather than spectacular. Despite asking for it to be personable and it describing me as a ‘storyteller’ in the first breath, it reads a little flatly and — like the cover letter — I would have added a bit more personality had I written it myself.
In its summary, ChatGPT explained that it was focussing on “brevity and readability”, walking the tightrope between enough detail to show my experience, but still being scannable in 1-2 minutes.
I also hadn’t legislated for the fact it would need to cater to keywords and search, too, so that I’m as visible as possible to recruiters. It specifically added keywords such as ‘big tech’, ‘consumer hardware’, ‘digital business’ and ‘editorial leadership’ that I inevitably would have left out if left to my own devices.
But it’s not me who’s judging it on this occasion, it’s Google Gemini…
The verdict – does Gemini think I’ll get the job?
I felt surprisingly nervous as I waited (very briefly) for Gemini to ingest the job description, resume, cover letter and LinkedIn profile and consider its verdict.
Thankfully, it had good news for me:
“You are an exceptionally strong candidate on paper, particularly because of the unique way your legal background intersects with current tech news.“
It then gave me an overall verdict of 8.5 out of 10, saying that I have “a very high probability of landing an interview”.
Phew!
Not wishing to pump up my tyres too much however, Gemini went on to explain why it doesn’t see me as a 10 out of 10 candidate based on the documents it had read.
Gemini thought that ChatGPT had been too ‘tech-first’ with its documentation, rather than ‘finance-first’, explaining that the prospective employer views tech through the lens of market impact, valuations, and profitability.
Naturally, it then offered to polish my resume and cover letter accordingly.
I like that it concluded with some tips for if I get through to interview — I’m delighted that it has such confidence in me!
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