Top 5 ChatGPT Prompts for Job Seekers!
About this video
Jeff Su contrasts the worst and best ChatGPT prompts for job seekers, arguing that viral one- or two-sentence LinkedIn prompts are untested hype. For company research, his stronger prompt casts ChatGPT as a job search coach with over 20 years of experience — his example is interviewing for a Product Marketing Manager role at Stripe — and asks only for what the initial research phase needs under an 80/20 approach: Stripe’s core business model and how it makes money, its top three competitors and how its products are differentiated, and specific tips for candidates for that role. For cover letters, he says a single prompt produces generic, robotic output, so he uses chain-of-thought prompting: break the letter into paragraphs with separate prompts. He first feeds his resume and then the job description (each with a respond-yes-if-understood step), asks ChatGPT to reverse-engineer the job description to find the biggest day-to-day challenge and its root cause, then to write a hook within 70 words in three variations, then a paragraph expanding the resume experience most related to that hook, and finally a closing paragraph within 50 words. He criticizes one-click auto-apply tools, arguing tailored applications succeed more and AI should make the work more efficient, not replace it, in a segment that also features sponsor Teal’s job tracker and resume builder for tailoring bullets with AI. His ‘steal with pride’ method copies proven structures: prompt ChatGPT as a career coach to generate a LinkedIn headline from a curated headline template, within 100 characters in three variations, and similarly generate a professional summary using a successful colleague’s summary structure. His ’learn from the best’ method feeds ChatGPT a reputable source — his favorite example is an article by his friend and mentor Austin Belcak analyzing over 125,000 resumes — plus the job description and his resume, and asks for 10 specific tailoring recommendations, step by step. He calls the lowest-effort, highest-impact tip rewriting each resume bullet with an expert-resume-writer prompt in Google recruiters’ XYZ structure: accomplished X, as measured by Y, by doing Z, within 50 words.
Key takeaways
- Reject one-sentence viral prompts; use role-based, multi-step prompts that ask only for the information needed at that job-search phase.
- Write cover letters by chain-of-thought: feed resume and job description separately, identify the role’s biggest challenge and root cause, then generate hook, experience, and closing paragraphs in separate prompts.
- Steal with pride: apply proven headline and professional-summary structures from others to your own resume via a career-coach prompt with length limits and three variations.
- Learn from the best by feeding ChatGPT a reputable source, the target job description, and your resume, and asking for specific, step-by-step tailoring recommendations.
- Rewrite every resume bullet in the XYZ format — accomplished X, as measured by Y, by doing Z — which he calls the lowest-effort, highest-impact tip.
Episode details: published March 19, 2024 · 8:11 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Jeff Su’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.
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