Amanda Smith is a freelance journalist and writer. She reports on culture, society, human interest and technology. Her stories hold a mirror to society, reflecting both its malaise and its beauty. Amanda's work has been published in National Geographic, The Guardian, Business Insider, Vice, News Corp, Singapore Airlines, Travel + Leisure, and Food & Wine. Amanda is an Australian living in the cultural center of gravity that is New York City.
A great resume can get your foot in the door when you're looking for a new job. Unlike a cover letter, which has to be rewritten for every role you apply for, you only need to update your resume every year or two to showcase your latest skills and experience alongside your education, honors and references.
With the state of the job market these days -- mass layoffs and high competition to get one of the jobs still available -- investing time now to create an epic resume could really pay off. It's the first touch-point you get with a prospective employer. But if staring at a blank page and trying to write about yourself feels overwhelming, then let artificial intelligence do some of the legwork for you.
If you're struggling to condense career highlights over decades into two pages, read on.
ChatGPT, the breakout generative AI tool, can help you with the best practices of resume writing and speed up the process. If there's one thing AI is good at, it's synthesizing, structuring and summarizing information. And once you have your resume, you can use it to create a custom cover letter.
You can use a free version of ChatGPT or pay $20 per month for added features like the most recent models, priority access during peak usage and image generation.
Set yourself up for success by doing some preparation. ChatGPT needs context, otherwise it'll spit out generic content that's sometimes even wrong. I started by researching reporter resume templates and jotted down notes about past experience, education and accomplishments.
Then to find out what ChatGPT needs, just ask. "Can you write me a resume?" was my first prompt, and ChatGPT conveniently told me all the information to input so it could get to work.
I replied with all my information, outlined like this, and attached my preferred format:
Here is my professional summary: [paste]
Here is my work experience: [paste]
Here are my major clients: [paste]
Here is my education: [paste]
Please generate a list of skills based on my experience and format my resume like the example below: [paste template]
ChatGPT does a great job of organizing information into a cohesive format, but I wanted to change it so it flowed a little better (it put my education before my experience, making it look at first glance like I didn't have any experience).
Please reorganize the following sections in this order:
Looking good.
You'll see that I didn't give the chatbot my contact details to add to the resume. I prefer to keep my sensitive information out of the model to avoid any future data breaches or unnecessary risk, so I'll add my email, phone number and address myself in the final version.
When reviewing ChatGPT's draft, I noticed two issues:
Back in ChatGPT I wrote the following:
Please add two contract roles under Freelance Reporter and Writer in the experience section.
Freelance Reporter at NerdWallet, August 2022 - present. Tasks: Writing personal finance advice articles, providing insights and strategies to educate and empower everyday consumers in Australia. Topics include credit cards, travel points, frequent flyer programs, BNPL, credit scores, money management, and more.
Freelance Reporter at Decential, September 2022 - present. Tasks: Reporting on the people, projects and protocols in the world of web3. Cover news, interview founders, write deep dive features and commentary, and cover in-person events and conferences.
Then, instead of reducing the skills list, I asked that it be arranged in two columns. The chatbot put the info into a table, which I didn't like, so I asked that it be removed.
ChatGPT still had a hard time with it. I asked it again to present the info in two columns, with a space in between but without a table or borders. You can highlight a section and reply specifically there.
But it still didn't work, so I stopped wasting time and did it myself directly in the document.
Before I made my final tweaks, I asked ChatGPT to provide a short list of suggestions for how to improve my resume. It gave me some solid advice -- like highlighting achievements, quantifying results, tailoring my resume to a specific job, adding keywords and making my professional summary more concise -- but take it with a grain of salt.
For example, my professional summary shows my narrative abilities and doesn't take up much real estate. I did, however, add a section for notable projects.
Though some advice was relevant, like adding metrics to achievements and starting each bullet point with a strong action verb, the others weren't necessary. For instance, I didn't want to make my profile more concise, because that's where I show off my narrative ability for writing jobs. When using artificial intelligence, always trust your human instinct.
Last, I wanted to get it down from four pages to three, so I arranged my major clients into two columns and reduced the skills list. You can see the final version of my AI-created resume below.
Once ChatGPT is done with the nitty-gritty, you can add the finishing touches yourself. I'll drop in my logo and byline hyperlinks, then it's good to go!
