How to Write a Resume Using ChatGPT

A strong resume can help you find a job, whether you’re looking for your first job after college or are already employed. To highlight your talents, experience, education, honors, and references, update your resume every year or two instead of a cover letter, which needs to be adjusted for each new application.

Given the status of the labor market, the widespread layoffs, and the shift to the gig economy, it will be worthwhile to take the time now to craft an outstanding CV. Your CV serves as your initial point of contact with potential employers. If you find it difficult to write about yourself when faced with a blank page, consider delegating the task to artificial intelligence.

The revolutionary generative AI tool ChatGPT can expedite the process and assist you with CV writing best practices. If artificial intelligence is adept at anything, it’s information synthesis, organization, and summarization. Additionally, you can use your CV to write a unique cover letter once you have it.

ChatGPT has a free version that you may use, or you can pay $20 a month to get additional services including picture production, priority access during peak traffic, and the newest models.

Continue reading if you’re having trouble fitting decades’ worth of career highlights into two pages.

Creating a resume from scratch

Make sure you’re ready for success by doing some homework. Without context, ChatGPT will generate generic text that is occasionally even incorrect. I began by looking for sample resumes for reporters and making notes about my background, education, and achievements.

Then, simply ask to learn what ChatGPT requires. My initial query was, “Can you write me a resume?” ChatGPT kindly informed me of all the details I needed to enter so it could begin working.

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: 

• Contact Details 
• Summary 
• Experience 
• Major Clients 
• Skills 
• Education

Looking good.

Keep your info less sensitive

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: 

1. My 10 years as a full-time freelancer needed to be fleshed out, by adding noteworthy projects and long contracts. 
2. The skills list was way too long. 

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. 

However, it didn’t work, so I gave up and completed it in the document myself.

Final tweaks

Prior to making my last adjustments, I requested a brief list of recommendations from ChatGPT on how to make my resume better. Take it with a grain of salt, but it did offer some good tips. Some of these were emphasizing accomplishments, quantifying results, customizing my CV for a particular position, adding keywords, and condensing my professional profile.

For instance, my concise professional summary effectively showcases my storytelling skills. But I did provide a section on noteworthy initiatives.

Certain advice, like as quantifying accomplishments and beginning each bullet point with a powerful action verb, was helpful, but it wasn’t essential. For example, I didn’t want to condense my profile because that’s where I highlight my storytelling skills for writing assignments. Never disregard human instinct while working with artificial intelligence.

Lastly, I wanted to condense it from four pages to three, so I trimmed the talents list and divided my big clients into two columns. The completed form of my AI-generated résumé is seen below.

You can put the finishing touches on things yourself after ChatGPT takes care of the technical details. After I add my byline URLs and logo, everything will be ready to go!

See how to use Midjourney to design personalized wedding invites and how to use Grammarly, an AI-powered editing tool, for additional AI-related advice. Visit CNET’s AI Atlas hub for news and in-depth analyses on ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and other advanced artificial intelligence products.

My final résumé from ChatGPT:

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