Artificial intelligence (AI) is on everyone’s mind these days, and for a good reason: It’s transforming how we do nearly everything. Using AI tools in your job search like ChatGPT can help you research careers and employers, perfect your resume and cover letters, and prep for interviews. There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of AI tools out there that can give you a leg up on your job search. We’ve included a few ideas below. They can offer a great boost, but don’t turn off your common sense: Blindly trusting AI tools is like putting all your faith into someone who calls themselves a recruiter or a career coach without any experience or credentials to back them up. Therefore, we offer a few cautions in using AI tools in your job search as well.
Before we start, here’s a little terminology heads-up: Generative AI tools use machine learning capabilities to produce text, video, images, and other types of new content in response to a prompt (like a question or request). AI tools can also include automation, like updating a spreadsheet when an email is sent. We’ll be talking about both in this post.
Find the Right Career Path
AI tools can help job seekers identify careers that fit their skills and interests well. For example, using AI tools in your job search like ChatGPT can generate a list of potential careers based on your input. The tool can also provide information about the job market for each occupation, including salary ranges, job growth, and educational requirements. It can be a fun way to explore career opportunities. For instance, tell ChatGPT about your personality, how you like to work, and what degrees and experience you have, and see what it recommends for you!
Here’s a caution for those who are using AI tools in your job search, though: While ChatGPT is one of the most popular generative AI tools out there and runs directly on OpenAI’s powerful GPT large language tech, it can’t search the internet in real-time. Instead, it can only access the data it was trained on, which currently ends at September 2021. So, accessing current data—like salary ranges—is limited. Other generative AI tools may have the same or different limitations.
Nail your Resume and Cover Letter
Don’t you wish you had an extra set of eyes to proofread your writing or a coach who can tell you if you’re doing a good job putting yourself out there? Using AI tools in your job search can be useful there, too. We don’t recommend relying on AI to write your resume or cover letter entirely (we experimented with that, and the results were abysmal), but it can be a great assistant.
Programs like Grammarly can help you avoid the humiliation of spelling and grammar mistakes and give you feedback on how the sentiment in your cover letter and emails come across (smart and professional versus curt and unsure, for instance). For hitting the right notes with your resume, Jobscan includes its match-rate calculator and keyword comparison tools in its free version to review how well your resume aligns with the job you’re applying for word-for-word.
Prepare for Interviews
Using dozens of AI tools in your job search claim they can help job seekers prepare for interviews. For example, Google’s is called Interview Warmup, and it focuses on helping tech candidates practice key questions and gain insights about their answers.
The trick is to find a tool that can access your microphone (Google’s does) so its assessment is based on how you would answer in an actual, live interview. LinkedIn also has an Interview Prep tool you may find helpful. Honestly, though, using both AI tools in your job search come with mixed reviews. With just a bit more time and ingenuity, you can search Glassdoor for real interview questions from the employer you’re about to interview with. Then, you can turn to Google Docs or Otter.ai to record and transcribe your practice answers so that you can evaluate, rework, and hone your skills. You can also ask your recruiter for mock interview tips to polish your approach.
Negotiate Your Salary
Using AI tools in your job search can also help job seekers research and negotiate salaries. However, remember our warning early: Generative AI tools like ChatGPT may be limited in their ability to access recent data.
For example, we asked ChatGPT and Google version called Bard to each tell us about interesting and well-paying jobs for a mathematics major. They both included software engineering in their possibilities, but ChatGPT listed the salary range as $60,000 to $80,000 per year, while Bard listed a median annual salary of $107,510. That’s a big difference. There are also geographic and other factors that the AI tools neglected to point out. Online tools like salary.com and payscale.com provide more reliable and up-to-date salary information—and they’re free for job seekers. For even better specifics and negotiating power, nothing beats working with a recruiter.
Using AI tools can benefit in your job search as long as you don’t hand over your common sense to the bots. Don’t be afraid to play around with what works for you—saving you time and improving your results where and how you need it most.
