With layoffs rampant across the US, landing a new job is a competitive sport. It's also very time consuming to scroll through dozens of job listings, choose which ones are actually relevant to you, create an individual cover letter for each one and make sure your application stands out.
Enter artificial intelligence. While it may not be able to balance a budget yet or come up with the best creative ideas, it is very effective at summarizing info and giving you logical (most of the time) suggestions.
Super important caveat before you start using AI: please triple check all the details AI spits out at you, even when all you've asked it to do is summarize your accomplishments. AI tools are known to hallucinate -- aka confidently respond to you with made-up details -- so you might want to make sure that you're not unintentionally lying on your job application.
You also don't want to put sensitive or personally identifiable information into a chatbot, just in case there's ever a data breach.
With that in mind, here's how you can use AI tools in your quest for your dream job (or any job).
AI as your career coach
If you don't even know where to start, you could give ChatGPT a shot as your personal career coach.
If you tell the AI tool to "be my career counselor," it will provide a list of information to compile: your current career status, education and skills, career goals, industry preferences, location flexibility and lifestyle priorities. Plug that info in, and it'll begin giving you advice on how to leverage your skills and experience for a set of different roles.
You can then feed the ideas you like back into ChatGPT and ask for action plans and goals for each one. You can even ask it to prioritize its action plans from easy to hard, and to give a timeline for each one.
Check out our full guide to see all the steps on how to use AI as a career coach.
Writing your resume: ChatGPT
Before you can start applying for jobs, you'll need to update and polish your resume. We tried it using ChatGPT, which you can either use for free or pay $20 per month for added features like priority access and the most recent models.
Bring up the chatbot and ask it to create a resume using things like your career goals, work experience, education, skills, certifications, awards, languages, hobbies and volunteering efforts.
Here's one prompt idea: "Create a resume for me using:
- My professional summary [paste]
- My job experience: [paste]
- My education: [paste]
- My list of skills: [paste]"
Remember not to plug personal info into ChatGPT, so add your full name and contact details after the fact, when you copy and paste it into a Google or Word doc to finish off.
And one more tip: you can feed the finished product back into ChatGPT and ask it for a short list of suggestions on how to improve your resume.
Check out all of CNET's tips for how to create a resume using ChatGPT.
Visually designing your resume: Figma AI
Once you're happy with your resume wording, you may want to consider a visually appealing resume that'll help you stand out from the crowd.
Figma's visual-design-from-scratch feature, which will eventually allow you to insert a text prompt so it can generate an entirely new design, is temporarily down. So for now, you'll need either an online template, existing visual design you made in the past or create a design from scratch using another generative AI tool like Midjourney, Dall-E 3 or Adobe Firefly.
Then, plug the design into Figma AI to freshen it up with tools like:
- Turning a static resume into an interactive one, if you want an online resume that moves.
- Separating your designs into layers so you can easily swap them in and out depending on the theme or job you're going for.
- Generating content and titles in your design mockup.
- Instantly removing and replacing backgrounds.
Here are all of CNET's tips on using Figma AI to design a resume.
Faster, more effective job searching with AI
One helpful way to use AI is to ask it to generate job ideas and searches for you. You might want a version of ChatGPT that has access to the internet -- like the $20-a-month ChatGPT Plus -- so it has up-to-date info, but you could also use the free version.
Then, feed it your career goals and experience and ideally what you're looking for next. Ask it to give you some suggestions for job roles, company types and career paths that align with those.
Once it gives you a list of jobs you might be suited for, you can ask it to suggest which companies to contact. Remember to include the region you work in and whether you prefer remote or hybrid work. One way to get results that aren't just the generic big five companies in your industry is to ask ChatGPT to provide a list of 20 mid-sized or lesser-known companies that could be easier to score a job at.
Lastly, ask for help in writing a short message to recruiters. Doing this could cut out the need to be one of 1,000 applicants to the same job posting.
Here are all of CNET's tips on finding the job of your dreams using ChatGPT.
Churning out those cover letters
One of the biggest pain points in applying for jobs is when every single application wants an individual, personalized cover letter. If your creativity well is running dry on how to do this for every job listing you come across, here's how to use AI to help you out.
You'll need an account with ChatGPT, as well as the job ad and your new resume. Ask it: "Write a cover letter for the role of __ on the __ team at [company name]. Here is the job description [paste from the job ad] and here is my resume [paste your resume in].
Again, make sure it got all your details right. You can ask it to stick to a word limit or highlight certain things from your resume that match the job ad -- and even to write in a more formal or casual way, depending on what company you're applying to.
Paste the resulting cover letter into a doc, make your final tweaks and voila: a cover letter for an individual job.
Here are all of CNET's tips on how to use ChatGPT to write a cover letter.
Negotiate a salary with AI
Lastly, once you are in the running for a great job, make sure you don't sell yourself short. Use AI to help you come up with ways to how to negotiate a starting salary before you sign on the dotted line.
Firstly, do a quick Google search on salary ranges for your job title, location and company and get a good cross-section from sites like Glassdoor, Indeed, Payscale, Reddit and ZipRecruiter.
Then insert a prompt like this one into ChatGPT: "I'm a [insert job role] in [insert your location]. According to Indeed, the average salary is $[plug in the number] and I'd like to earn $[your ideal salary]. What advice would you give to help me negotiate this salary with employers?"
ChatGPT will come up with phone call and email scripts with all the details you should mention, which you can then use to negotiate your future pay.
Happy job hunting!