How Chat-GPT can help build your resume

A resume is the first glimpse a hiring manager gets to determine whether you're a good fit for a job. Most companies use an Application Tracking System (ATS) that automatically flags resumes based on their relevance. The ATS seeks to find a match between the job ad and the candidate by identifying relevant skills and keywords in the resume. Chat-GPT can be a valuable resource for crafting a resume that stands out.

The essential components of a resume include:

• Professional Summary: Two or three sentences highlighting your experience, accomplishments, and what you can bring to the company you're applying for.
• List of Experience: Include the most relevant experiences to the job ad and your achievements. Present achievements using the format "Action verb + task/project + metric." Aim for 2-3 bullet points per experience.
• List of Education / Certifications / Courses relevant to the job ad.
• Skills: List skills that you possess and are relevant to the job ad.

By tailoring your resume to the job ad and including these points, you'll have a higher chance of landing an interview. Chat-GPT can help with most of this process.

First, prompt Chat-GPT to act as an experienced resume writer who is an expert in writing resumes that land jobs:

You are a very experienced resume writer who is an expert in writing resumes that land jobs.

Great! Let's put Chat-GPT to work. Provide your full resume and the job ad with the following prompt:

Improve my resume below in order to fit the job ad. Explain also why you make the changes you make.
Resume = …
Jod ad = …

Chat-GPT effectively improves the phrasing of several of my accomplishments and aligns my skills more closely with the job requirements. However, it makes up some stuff relating to my experience within Finance sector and FinCrime, which makes both the professional summary and the skills not true. 

So some improvements to be made:

• Rewrite the professional summary in a better way
• Add more achievements as I don’t have 2-3 bullet points per Experience
• Remove the Financial Services & FinCrime point from the skill list. This can be done without Chat-GPT.

As we stated at the beginning of this post, a strong professional summary contains “two or three sentences that highlight your experience and accomplishments and what you might bring to the company you’re applying for.” We could specify this even more, telling Chat-GPT what to write in each sentence. Also, we would like to avoid some buzzwords like passion and passionate. This is the prompt we use (long one, but let’s try it):

Write me an inspiring three-sentence Resume summary to be used on my resume for the job ad below. Make sure to follow this structure with short sentences that are straight to the point and avoid buzzwords like passion or passionate: First sentence should include a character trait relevant to the role and a very brief summary of experience below. Second sentence should include Eager to support/help/assist/etc. company name using my skills in the resume that are relevant to the role. Third sentence should include my key achievements with metrics below that are relevant to the role. Please don’t mention where I have worked and it is really important that the output should not exceed 500 characters. 

Sounds much better! I’ll copy that into my resume.

How about the bullet points for achievements? Here it will be difficult to Chat-GPT to understand exactly what you have achieved so either you explain what you have achieved and it works for you, or you ask for examples of bullet points for a specific job.

Let’s ask Chat-GPT with help on re-writing an achievement I made: 

In my role as Director of Product Management at Schibsted Media Group I led a cross-functional team to launch a new product vertical that scaled to 100 000 of users with very high satisfaction ratings. What are some examples of sentences that I could put as bullet points on my resume? The sentences should include a metric.

The first two ones make the most sense. Just need to make sure to adjust the numbers to fit reality, and then copy & paste to the resume.

If I need inspiration for bullet points I write the following:

In my role as Director of Product Management, Schibsted Media Group, what could be examples of achievements I could out in bullet points on my resume? The bullet points should include a metric.

Here I can just copy and paste into my word document the ones that I have achieved and make sure the numbers I put in actually are true.

Adding it all together, we have now created a great resume tailored to the job with the help of Chat-GPT.

Josie is powered by Chat-GPT and can help you create job-specific resumes, cover letters, and interview guides in seconds. Try it out.