Times are a changing. And the way you can build a resume (and at record speed, we might add) is changing, too, with the help of ChatGPT.
ChatGPT has quickly become a household name, but if you’ve been living in the Dinosaur Age, here are the basics: It’s an advanced AI that can understand and generate human-like text based on your prompts, meaning you can get it to do things for you!
We assume you don’t love writing resumes, which is why you’re curious about a ChatGPT resume. Stay tuned—we’ve got your roadmap for how to use ChatGPT to write a resume.
How to Use ChatGPT to Write a Resume
Let’s be real: Resume writing can be tedious. Worse yet, every resume you send out should be tailored to the job, so it’s not a one-and-done kind of thing.
With the aid of ChatGPT and a top-notch resume template, you can cut back on the hassle without resorting to sending cookie-cutter resumes to every employer. This strategy can save you time and energy and inspire you when you need help with how to emphasize your skills the right way.
Not sure how to get started? We’ve got you.
Come to the ChatGPT table prepared
If there’s one key to creating a ChatGPT resume, it’s to be extra specific with your requests. (Coincidentally, that’s also the key to a good resume.)
Without a precise prompt, ChatGPT will still give you a response, but it often won’t be what you’re looking for. It might be vague, overly wordy, or too generic.
However, if you feed the AI the correct ingredients, the final dish is bound to turn out much better.
Here are some of the things ChatGPT needs to know to help you with your resume:
- Job title and description: For most jobs, ChatGPT already has a rough idea of what you do, but it helps to narrow it down in a paragraph or two.
- Your achievements and daily tasks: From winning employee of the month to spearheading a successful merger, tell ChatGPT your career highlights.
- Skills and certifications: Give ChatGPT a list of your skills, including hard skills like software or tool proficiency.
- Educational background: This can be useful but isn’t always necessary, as you may not be mentioning school outside of a separate little section in your resume template.
- Keywords from the job description: Read the job description carefully and ask ChatGPT to incorporate some of the keywords—this often means the required skills or duties.
Using ChatGPT for resume job description bullet points
The job description bullet points are what you want to emphasize about your past or current roles. It’s not so much what you do every day, such as “marketing strategy,” but it’s more about what you’re most proud of and how you impacted the companies where you worked.
But how do you go from point A to point B and then C? It’s simple: Just ask ChatGPT to help.
- Pick an achievement or responsibility: Do this separately for each point—ChatGPT tends to do better if you don’t ask it to do too many things at once. Example: “Managed a team.”
- Prompt ChatGPT to enhance or elaborate: Be specific. Ask ChatGPT to include relevant keywords from the job description and which aspects of the role you want to emphasize.
You might get something like:
Managed a team of sales associates, leading to an increase in sales.
You don’t have to stop here—you can, and should, tweak this by yourself, but it often helps to ask follow-up questions.
- Ask for more details: Mention a technology or a skill that you used to achieve this.
To that, ChatGPT may come back with:
Managed a team of sales associates, using Lean Six Sigma to optimize workloads for efficiency, leading to an increase in sales.
But that’s still not enough.
- Focus on impact: Ask ChatGPT to quantify the results. Make sure to tweak the results so that they’re fully relevant to your job.
The final bullet point should now look something like this:
Managed a team of 10 sales associates, using Lean Six Sigma techniques to optimize workloads for efficiency, effectively increasing upselling by 19%.
You could also cut back on the back-and-forth with ChatGPT and use our quick resume builder, which uses AI to suggest bullet points suited to your role.
Our tool will also give you some handy resume tips to make it even better. After these tweaks, recruiters will be fighting over you, and that’s an enviable position to be in!
Writing a summary or career objective with ChatGPT
A career objective is useful if your experience is limited, but as a veteran, you’ll want to brag a little in an impactful summary. Using AI can help you with both.
To make a personalized resume summary or objective, let ChatGPT know a little more about you. Spill the beans about your experience, skills, the company you’re applying to, and the job description to let the AI decide what’s important (or you can tell it yourself).
Next, specify whether this is for a resume objective or a summary. For an objective, ask ChatGPT to focus on your career aspirations. For a summary, focus on—you guessed it—your top achievements.
It’s a good idea to ask ChatGPT to revise things one by one, such as restricting the length of the summary, including skills from the job listing, or making the language more natural.
A ChatGPT resume objective
Here’s what a well-crafted prompt with a few follow-ups can get you in the way of a career objective:
Ready to leverage my expertise in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, and Angular at Intel, I aim to progress into a senior engineering role with a focus on mastering web and user interface development. Eager to excel in fast-paced environments and contribute to innovative solutions, I’m ready to learn from Intel’s top engineers to deepen my knowledge of client processors and accelerate my growth.
A ChatGPT resume summary
Now, a summary. Don’t forget to guide ChatGPT toward focusing on your past achievements and how they can translate to real-world gains for your next employer.
Your friendly neighborhood AI may come up with something like this:
With 15 years of diverse experience in personal training, including gym and football coaching, I’m ready to meet the demands of a rigorous fitness environment. At Planet Fitness, I aim to leverage my experience, including spearheading a gym loyalty program that boosted customer retention by 19%, to lead the Personal Training Department toward new heights of success and client satisfaction.
You’ll often have to tweak this yourself before pasting it right at the top of your chosen resume outline.
Polishing your ChatGPT Resume
So, you’ve fed ChatGPT your life story, and you’re now officially a ChatGPT resume writer.
Is your finger now hovering over the “Send” button in your email client of choice? It might be tempting, but don’t do it yet!
First, run through our checklist of resume tips to consider right before takeoff.
- Make your resume more “you:”
- Just like you wouldn’t want to read purely AI-generated content, neither do recruiters. Check whether your resume has a unique voice and writing style that aligns with your own.
- Anything else?
- For some jobs, adding hobbies/interests, certifications, or a link to your portfolio can be a great idea. Consider expanding your resume to include those for a bit of pizzazz.
- Tweak your resume to perfection:
- Check your resume for active voice, the use of helpful metrics, filler words, and more, saving you both time and stress.
- Proofread!
- Don’t let a silly typo be the reason you get a “No.”
- Look your best with a fitting template:
- Picking the right resume template can make the difference between getting shortlisted and getting ghosted. Make sure your resume is clean, easy to follow, and limited to a single page to maximize your chances of success.
Finally, writing a resume is necessary, but it’s a good idea to also include a personalized cover letter. This shows the employer you care, and if you write a good cover letter, it’ll emphasize not only your skills but also how much you fit that particular company’s culture.
ChatGPT Resume Prompts for Best Results
ChatGPT is a mighty helpful tool, but it’s not without fault. For instance, it can veer off-topic or use a LOT of words to say very little. Neither have any place in your resume, but don’t worry—we’ll show you how to make the most of your everyday AI companion.
Let’s go over everything you need to know to prompt ChatGPT into making you an amazing resume.
ChatGPT prompts for job achievement bullet points
Here’s the first prompt that opens the door to efficient dialogue with ChatGPT:
I’m a software engineer with seven years of experience and skills in back-end development. I want you to write me a work experience bullet point that relates to one of my tasks in a previous role, which was building an intelligent search functionality.
And here’s what ChatGPT comes back with:
Why this ChatGPT prompt works
- This prompt sets the stage for what comes next. It explains who you are, what you do, and briefly introduces what you want the bullet point to address.
- Notice how the prompt is specific from the get-go? That’s the way to get useful responses from ChatGPT. Make sure to include your job title and the skill or achievement you want to focus on.
This next prompt can help you get even more specific:
Enhance this bullet point with a mention of a technology that helped me achieve this. The job description emphasizes Python, Django, and C++, but you should only use what’s relevant to my achievement.
ChatGPT generates the following:
Why this ChatGPT prompt works
- Employers want to know not just what you did but how you achieved it, too. The mention of programming languages enhances the bullet point while ensuring ATS picks up on those hyper-relevant keywords.
- Work experience bullet points work best when they tell the full story, combining your achievements with your resume skills.
While the mention of technologies is crucial, ChatGPT did its usual thing and went a little off-base. This prompt will help you bring it back on track to achieve the perfect bullet point:
Tweak this bullet point to focus on impact, including quantifiable metrics. Limit it to a single sentence that explains what I did, how I did it, and the impact that my work has had. Use active voice throughout and do not use first person.
And boom. ChatGPT gets back on the train track:
Why this ChatGPT prompt works
- This prompt guides ChatGPT toward making the perfect bullet point: concise, impactful, and expressing ownership.
- It cuts out the unnecessary fluff from the previous iterations and shines a light on your achievements.
ChatGPT prompts for a resume summary or objective
The key to getting the perfect resume objective or summary out of ChatGPT is to provide it with plenty of guidance from the get-go:
I’m a physical therapist with three years of experience, and I am applying to Massage Envy as a massage therapist. Craft me a targeted career objective that mentions the company name and emphasizes my skill in mobility therapy.
ChatGPT complies with our request:
Why this ChatGPT prompt works
- Mentioning a key skill from the job description is a good idea when you’re working on a custom career objective. This helps ChatGPT pick the right abilities to focus on.
- With this prompt, ChatGPT accurately pinpointed the skills the employer cares about, and that’s without extra guidance!
This next prompt is what you should use if you’re a seasoned pro in need of an engaging summary:
Craft me a targeted career summary for a software engineer specializing in AI technologies, highlighting innovation and problem-solving skills. I’m applying to work at Nvidia and have in-depth knowledge of CUDA cores and GPU architecture.
Not bad, ChatGPT, not bad:
Why this ChatGPT prompt works
- With a couple of sentences, you’ve set the stage for your vast expertise to shine. Giving ChatGPT some background on your specialization and the name of the company can help it write a successful summary.
- You don’t have to write the resume summary yourself, but if you imagine it in your head and let ChatGPT make it come to life, it’ll turn out a lot better than if you just let the AI wing it.
If you’re generally happy with the outcome and just want ChatGPT to make it sound better, try this prompt:
Improve the summary to make it less wordy. Get rid of inconsequential terms and focus on my experience using active voice. Include a key achievement (writing a GPU programming framework). Maximum two sentences for the whole summary.
ChatGPT seems to love wordiness, but with a little push, it’ll get in line:
Why this ChatGPT prompt works
- This is how you can tighten ChatGPT’s natural predisposition (well, as natural as AI can be) to be wordy. This prompt refocuses the summary, making it more exciting and impactful.
- Remember that once you’re done chit-chatting with ChatGPT, there will always be room for improvement. Give your resume a once-over and tweak the summary as needed!
ChatGPT prompts to perfect your resume
To make your resume better than ever, consider using this prompt:
Rewrite this job achievement to highlight the impact on team efficiency: ‘Responsible for leading a team to implement a new project management software.’ Include quantifiable metrics and the name of the software, Asana.
ChatGPT:
Why this ChatGPT prompt works
- Focusing on the right things is the recipe for writing a winning resume. This prompt guides the AI toward a particular aspect of the role—which should come from the job description.
- Adding the mention of quantifiable metrics is how you make your work experience points go from “nice” to “amazing,” showing recruiters what you’re capable of.
If you’re at a loss when it comes to filling out your skills section, let ChatGPT be your inspiration:
I’m a digital marketer. The job description asks for experience in social media, marketing campaigns, and relevant SEO tools. Write me a bullet point list of 10 relevant skills, including software and marketing techniques. Two to three words per skill.
ChatGPT delivers. Just make sure whatever skills you add from ChatGPT are truly skills you’re versed in:
Why this ChatGPT prompt works
- ChatGPT can’t tell you what you know, but it can tell you what’s relevant in your industry. This list of skills can serve as a good baseline for your own resume skills, replacing generic traits like “team player.”
- You can ask ChatGPT for even more skills, but stop at around 10 in your resume to keep it clutter-free.
No work experience? No problem!
Write me a career objective for a college student applying to work at Best Buy. I’m good with computers and know how to use MS Office. Emphasize that I’m eager to learn and grow within the company. Keep it concise at a maximum of two sentences, and use active voice.
This is how ChatGPT can help elevate your resume:
Why this ChatGPT prompt works
- Sometimes all ChatGPT needs to get it right is to be told to be concise and on point. This prompt is specific in what it wants, limiting the length of the objective and directing the AI to use active voice.
- If you’re not happy with the quality of the outputs, ask ChatGPT to reword, use shorter words, or stay on topic.
Should You Use ChatGPT to Write Your Resume?
It’s clear that ChatGPT resume writing has its merits, but should you trust the AI to handle your resume? There’s almost no reason not to, but be mindful of a few things.
Pros
There’s no beating around the bush—ChatGPT turns resume writing from a chore to a quick stepping stone toward landing a job. Some employers, particularly those in the AI or tech space, may embrace that you’ve used ChatGPT to speed up the process. Other employers, however, might not see it in the same light.
Aside from the above, the perks of using ChatGPT for your resume include:
- It’s a lot quicker
- It helps if you lack inspiration
- It’s fairly accurate about most jobs
- It has a large knowledge base, including thousands of roles
Cons
Nothing is perfect, especially not ChatGPT. The downside is that once you’ve seen enough of its writing, it’s glaringly obvious and easy to spot. It’s not as easy as feeding it the job description and pressing “Generate.”
Here are some reasons why you should be wary:
- ChatGPT can have its preconceived ideas, and it tends to go on and on
- It sounds like AI and will never truly replicate your voice
- Some employers will be adamant that you have written your own resume free of AI
- ChatGPT still makes errors
Our 3 Best ChatGPT Resume Writing Tips
Having followed our guide, you’re now quite the ChatGPT prompt engineer! These final three tips will make sure your resume stands out from the crowd and gets you that job.
- Check your resume:
- ChatGPT for resumes is more of a baseline than the finished product. Once you’re done working with it, go over everything, revise it to make it sound more natural, and then analyze it all with a resume checker. This gives you a top-notch resume with far less work than writing it from scratch.
- Back up your experience:
- ChatGPT will come up with relevant skills and achievements based on your job, but remember to only include metrics and accomplishments that you can back up with experience. Interviewers may ask you to elaborate on any and all parts of your resume.
- Give ChatGPT detailed information:
- Provide ChatGPT with as much information upfront as you can, including your skills, achievements, current and past roles, education, and the job description. A detailed prompt will give you a useful response, while a short and vague question produces subpar replies.
ChatGPT Resume FAQs
For a bite-sized guide to using ChatGPT to write a resume, check out our quick FAQs.
Tackle each part of your resume separately, tailoring your prompts to match the task. Give ChatGPT a lot of context as to what you do and the job you’re applying for, then ask it to write a job experience bullet point, a career summary/objective, or even a skills list.
If you’re not happy with the response, rephrase your question or ask it to fix something, such as the wording or the length of the response.
It’s often easier to use an AI-based resume checker instead of ChatGPT for this. However, you can either paste each section one by one into ChatGPT and ask it for detailed feedback or give it specific prompts, such as, “Improve this job bullet point to focus on ROI.”
Copy and paste the job description into ChatGPT to give it a good idea of what you’re looking for. Next, share some details about your background and ask it for help with specific parts of your resume. Asking it to write the whole resume at once usually produces very lackluster responses.
Use detailed prompts that direct the AI toward what you want it to do. Simply saying, “Write me a resume for a caregiver,” won’t give you a high-quality resume.
Instead, use a specific prompt, such as, “Write me a personalized career summary for a caregiver with 15 years of experience. Mention my expertise in ADLs and how this can contribute to the role at Sunset Valley Homes.”
Stephen is the co-founder and CEO of BeamJobs. He started his career in data fulfilling the dream of little kids everywhere: working for an insurance company. He then moved on to work in edtech for a company called Chegg before venturing out to start BeamJobs. Things have come a long way after countless “learnings” (fancy word for mistakes), and BeamJobs has now helped 2.5M+ people create their perfect resume. Stephen and BeamJobs have been featured on awesome sites like Business Insider, Chicago Tribune, Dallas News, Baltimore Sun, the Daily Press, Zendesk, HubSpot, and loads more.
