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While the shift to remote work and theĀ Great ResignationĀ opened up the job market, today’s employment conditions have swung the power back into the hands of corporations, with massĀ layoffsĀ and hiring freezes. Way more competition in the market makes securing a new job a harder, longer progress.
Applying for a job is arduous and time consuming, and it’s tempting to use the fast apply button and attach a generic cover letter to every application — but that’s not going to get you hired in this market. But it’s also not realistic to carefully craft a new cover letter for every job, when you’re up against thousands of applicants.Ā
There’s a third option: Use artificial intelligence to customize your cover letters. Save time, stand out in a saturated market and get yourself an interview.Ā
The AI tool I used to try this out is ChatGPT, which wowed the world when it was released in November 2022 (you can read our hands-on review of ChatGPT as well as Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity on CNET’s AI Atlas hub). If this is your first time using AI, it makes sense to start with the tool that made AI mainstream.Ā
Here’s how to use ChatGPT for the job. I’ll walk you through the process, prompts and productivity tips (and a potential problem to watch out for) to enhance your applications and your chances.Ā
Read more: Job Hunting With AI: 6 Techniques We Tried and How They Work
Creating a custom cover letter
If you’ve ever tried to write a cover letter before, it’s hard enough to summarize your entire career on a single page, let alone customize it for each job role.Ā
Your resume presents your hard skills, and your cover letter showcases your soft skills – the ones you can mold with keywords to fit what a company is asking for in its job ad.Ā
Getting set up with ChatGPT
You’ll need an account with ChatGPT, the job application, your resume and a previous cover letter, if you have one.Ā
You can use a free version of ChatGPT like me or pay $20 per month for added features like the most recent models, priority access during peak usage and image generation.Ā
The initial prompt
Your first prompt can be something like: “Can you please help me write a cover letter for the role of reporter on the autos team of The Wall Street Journal? Here is the job description: [paste job description] And here is my resume: [paste resume].”
Immediately, I saw a big problem with my first attempt: ChatGPT had hallucinated. It mixed up some of my experience, correctly noting publications I’ve written for and topics I’ve reported on, but wrongly – very, very wrongly – with made-up stories (see yellow highlights).Ā
If I change nothing else in my cover letter, I’m certainly going to fix that.