I’m Building a AI-assisted Job Hunter With ChatGPT While My Baby Naps
How I’m crushing the job hunt with the power of AI and no-code tools to land my dream job
Like so many other tech workers at the moment, I know firsthand how overwhelming, stressful, time-consuming, and frustrating the job-seeking process can be. Instead of feeling discouraged, I chose to use this time to my advantage and try a more creative approach to job searching. I’m utilizing the power of AI and no-code tools, to make the process a lot more manageable and fun… And I am doing it only in my free time while my 4-month-old naps!
In this article, I’ll tell you what I’m learning and 5 tips and tricks I’ve found along the way.
My vision: What if I had a companion to help with the most draining parts of the job hunt — staying organized and saving time writing resumes and cover letters, finding roles, applying, and keeping track of my opportunities?
What if I had a companion to help me with the most draining parts of job hunting ?
To accomplish this goal, I’ve enlisted the help of ChatGPT, a clever little bot that uses natural language processing. My first task was to help ChatGPT “sound like me”.
The Basics
Prompt is everything with ChatGPT. You want to be concise and specific in your prompt, provide appropriate context, and use natural, conversational language.
I began with “Act as a professional resume writer…” for a prompt. This is a great starting point, but the results sounded pretty staid and bland. By feeding it work samples of previous resumes and writing, I found better results by including detail about the style I wanted to receive back. I would ask it, “Describe the writing style, tone of voice, and word choice…” of the work I supplied. Then I was able to reverse engineer prompts that emulated my style for touching up template resumes, cover letter, and LinkedIn profile with my achievements from my most recent position. This is called basic prompt engineering. ChatGPT is so powerful and can help turn your first draft into a final draft more quickly. I’m enjoying learning how to craft the perfect prompt with all the right settings to get exactly what I’m looking for.
Tip 1: Use “Act as as a __________” to help narrow the writing style you want to see. Provide as much detail as you can while being clear and concise. Instructions come first, then detail.
Another thing ChatGPT does well is idea generation. I asked ChatGPT what tools I could use for gathering my job opportunity list by scraping the web. By telling ChatGPT your goal and your current approach, you can discover alternatives.
Be sure to keep your chats organized, separating out very different topics from each other into different chats. For instance, you want to separate a chat about a Craiglist post for an item you’re selling from a chat about tuning your resume. This is so that the context is better maintained, and in my experimentation, led to much better results.
Tip 2: Keep your chat threads topical to keep your results from getting muddled.
Searching for Roles
Along with ChatGPT, I’m employing no-code and low-code tools like Browse AI, Airtable, Zapier, Google Docs, and Calendly.I turned to Browse AI robots to scour LinkedIn and Indeed for relevant job postings, so I didn’t have to waste hours scrolling through job boards. By programming the robots to scrape on a schedule based on my preferred keywords and requirements, I am able to quickly create a regular, up-to-date, and comprehensive list of potential job opportunities without feeling like I had to sacrifice all my free time to do so.
Managing my Pipeline
To keep things organized, I’m relying on Zapier for simple no-cade automation. Zapier is a platform that allows you to automate tasks between different web apps. So far, I’ve set it up to write those extracted jobs to a basic Airtable database I’ve set up a Kanban view based on a job search pipeline– selection, tuning, application, and preparation. Zapier is pretty easy to use and had both of these applications available as integrations.
When a job on my list piques my interest, I move the job opportunity forward. When I do that, I can kick off scripts that automate certain parts of the job search pipeline. Another thing that ChatGPT is great for is basic coding and debugging. Though folks are seeing some key limitations with more complex coding challenges.
Tip 3: Use ChatGPT for help with basic coding and scripting challenges. If you get stuck, troubleshoot with ChatGPT. You can copy and paste your code right from the UI.
Making a Match
I use an API call to OpenAI to summarize the job post and extract the key skills from the job description. For summarization, ChatGPT is incredible, and it makes teasing through opportunities a breeze. I’m also using ChatGPT to grab company contact information, which I will need for unemployment claims.
If I believe I’m a great match for the role, I’m using Google Docs merge tags to pull in the key skills, adjust my resume, and save a new document from my resume template. I will be able to automate this with some AI-assisted scripting. I can replicate this for cover letters for each job application.
By varying ChatGPT’s temperature and nucleus settings, you can explore wording variations for your resume content to better match wording in the job description and improve your probability of getting through ATS resume filters. Temperature and nucleus settings are used to control the creativity and coherence of ChatGPT’s responses. The temperature setting determines how random and surprising the responses can be, while the nucleus setting restricts ChatGPT to generating responses within a certain range of likelihood. By adjusting these settings, you can fine-tune the balance between novelty and relevance in the responses.
Tip 4: Experiment with temperature and nucleus settings in your prompt to control fine-tune creativity and coherence of your responses.
Then I apply! Applications can be a numbers game in your job hunt, especially if you don’t have a warm contact at the company for a referral. My friendly AI companion significantly reduces the lift on applying even though I am editing each final draft myself. Not only does this save me time, but it also ensures that my materials were tailored to each position I applied for to increase my chances of landing an interview. As I apply to more jobs, I’ll get data on how my approach is going, and I’ll be able to adjust and optimize.
Keeping Organized
One of the toughest challenges with job searching is juggling your calendar across several different opportunities that may all be in different stages. For this, I have set up Calendly. Calendly is a tool that syncs my personal calendar with the availability that I enter into the console. Then to coordinate with the recruiting teams, I only need to send a link to set up meetings complete with Zoom integration.
I can use scripts (written with the help of Chat GPT) to keep tabs on my job applications and monitor my progress through my pipeline. With these no- and low-code tools, I can create custom workflows that track my application process. It’s like having a personal assistant who kept me accountable and ensured that I never miss following up.
What’s next?
After experimenting with ChatGPT, I’m confident that it will be a valuable resource for me in several ways. It can help me identify companies that align with my values, refine my “STAR” stories, collect common interview questions, practice responses, and even assist with negotiating offers. Additionally, I’m intrigued by the potential to automate the job-seeking process. While there has been much innovation on the hiring and recruiting side, there is still much-untapped potential from the seeker’s perspective. I look forward to exploring this further. ChatGPT is designed to be interactive and enjoyable, so don’t hesitate to experiment with different questions and prompts.
Tip 5: Have fun with it!
My experience so far using these tools has been eye-opening and is making the process of finding a kickass job a little less daunting and a lot more fun. So if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the volatility of the current job market, don’t give up — give these no-code tools and AI-enabled solutions a try and see how they can transform your job search too.
As the business world continues to evolve and new technologies emerge, it’s essential to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and tools. We have only just begun to tap into the potential of AI and LLMs. By embracing these new technologies and finding innovative ways to use them, we can transform the way we work and achieve greater heights than ever before.
Now, if I could only get my 4-month-old to nap…
Thanks to my friend and colleague Greg Mushen for inspiring me to get building. He and Kyle Shannon publish the outstanding newsletter Everyday AI. Be sure to check it out for the latest AI news, entertaining content, and techniques in this swiftly changing field of artificial intelligence.
