14 Tips to Use ChatGPT In Your Job Search (DF#98)

Ryan [00:00:00]: [Episode Preview]

The more powerful use case that I like in the salary negotiations phase is using chat GPT to help you come up with a list of objections and then how to overcome those objections in the salary negotiation.

Hannah [00:00:14]:

That's killer because that's the hardest thing, especially if you don't have a lot of experience negotiating.

Ryan [00:00:20]:

There are no rules. No rules. You're listening to Degree Free on the Degree Free network where we talk about how to teach yourself, get work and make money. No degree needed. Here are your hosts, Ryan and Hannah Maruyama. Maruyama aloha folks, and welcome back to Degree Free where we teach you how to get hired without a college degree. We are your hosts, Ryan and Hannah Maruyama. It is great to have you back.

Hannah [00:00:49]:

Welcome back. Welcome back to the podcast. As always, folks, we are stoked to have you listening with us today.

Ryan [00:00:55]:

This is a long awaited episode and I am really excited to get into it. This is going to be 14 tips to use chat GPT in your job search and it's really more like 17 or 18 tips.

Hannah [00:01:07]:

So not only is it a long awaited episode, it's also a long episode.

Ryan [00:01:12]:

Yes, this episode is going to be a behemoth. There's going to be a lot of information in this episode. So please remember that this is recorded and you can always come back to it later. You can go to YouTube and watch the video or wherever you are listening to this for your podcast. You can just download it again and replay it and come back to the different parts because there's going to be, like I said, a lot of information and there's also going to be a lot of resources for the episode. So you can go to Degreefree codcast to get all of the links and all of the prompts, et cetera. And if you know somebody in the job hunt in the job search that's trying to change careers or trying to get a job and they are thinking about using AI and using Chat GPT in their job search because they're stuck share this episode with them because there is a lot of information that we are about to drop.

Hannah [00:02:10]:

I'm really excited to talk about this too, because in our Career Change Crash Course cohort we have been talking about using chatchbt and how to use it effectively in resume writing and generating your LinkedIn profile, all kinds of stuff.

Ryan [00:02:22]:

Yeah, definitely. And if you would like to sign up for the Career Change Crash Course, go to Degreefree co careerchange to learn all about it. Okay, so this is going to be all about chat GPT in your job search and there's going to be a bunch of different areas and categories of how you can use chat GPT in your job search, from creating job search materials to interview prep, negotiation prep, all of that stuff. Some housekeeping things, you can access chat GPT by going to chat Openai.com, you can use the tool for free or you can pay for their premium access. As of this recording, it's $20 a month.

Hannah [00:03:05]:

The free version is totally fine though.

Ryan [00:03:07]:

Yeah. So I was going to say that the premium gives you access to GPT Four, which is better than GPT 3.5, and it also gives you priority access to their platform. So during peak hours, you will not get stopped out of it because there's no server space for you. So that's what the plus membership gives you. So if you want to use it all the time, whenever you want it, that's what it does.

Hannah [00:03:30]:

That is really useful because I remember trying to use the free version when I wanted to do something and I was not able to because of that exact reason.

Ryan [00:03:36]:

So originally when I had this idea for this episode, I wanted to make this episode all about AI, all about artificial intelligence and the different tools out there. And then I started collecting different tools and thinking about how to use all of these things in the job search, and I realized really quickly that it was too much. I am just going to focus on Chat GPT today and how to use Chat GPT, which is the most popular AI tool as of this recording, and it has skyrocketed to like 100 million users. Plus in like, I don't know, 30 days it was, or something like that. Something crazy.

Hannah [00:04:14]:

This is helpful too, because I've looked into AI tools specifically for job seekers. And man, if you look that up, you'll get lists of like here's the top 110. And at the point where someone's giving you a list of 110 AI tools that all do basically the same thing but slightly different, it's better to just be able to use the original chat GPT because that's what they're plugged into. So you're basically using it, but you're using a different front end and they all do mildly different things, and then you have to decide which mildly different thing that you want to use. So instead, just use the real thing.

Ryan [00:04:42]:

Most of the AI tools are using the API for OpenAI, and if you want access to the API, this actually took me a little while to figure out because I was trying to play with it. You have to go to Platform Openai.com, and like I said, links to everything that we talk about are going to be at the show notesdegreefree codcast. And that took me a little while to figure out because I kept going to openai.com and being like, how do I get access to their API? How do I get access to their API? And it was really confusing. But once you use that URL platform openai.com, it will take you to your profile and then you can just put in a credit card and then you can have access to their API and you can use it with whatever other apps. That's for more advanced users, obviously. So just in the beginning, so that we all start at the same place here, I wanted to briefly talk about what is Chat GPT? So there is a lot of preamble before we get into these 14 points, but this is really important so that I know that all of these listeners are going to come from different backgrounds. And some people might not have ever heard of Chat GPT, they might have been thinking about AI or heard AI, but you didn't know how to access it. So we're going to talk about it really quickly. And so in my dumb explanation of what Chat GPT is, we call these.

Hannah [00:06:01]:

Any old idiot explanations, that means that I can understand it and Ryan can understand it.

Ryan [00:06:05]:

Basically, you ask it stuff and it answers stuff. That's basically it. That's the way that I think about it. But of course, I asked Chat GPT to answer what it is.

Hannah [00:06:17]:

How meta, right?

Ryan [00:06:18]:

Exactly. And it said it was a chat GPT is a computer program created by OpenAI that can understand and generate humanlike text, allowing it to chat with users and provide helpful information on various topics. It's designed to be easy to use and understand, so people from all backgrounds can get quick and accurate responses to their questions or assistance with tasks.

Hannah [00:06:39]:

Weird, it doesn't say anything in here about taking over the world.

Ryan [00:06:42]:

Yeah, that's in the fine print.

Hannah [00:06:45]:

I see.

Ryan [00:06:45]:

So for those people who have never used it before or never played around with it, you can ask it to create a whole bunch of things. Some examples would be you can ask it to create a workout routine, you could ask it to create a content calendar if you are a content creator, a website for your side hustle idea, it could code up a website for you marketing copy. The possibilities are pretty crazy and almost endless.

Hannah [00:07:11]:

I've seen some pretty nut stuff with people just plugging in a sentence and getting an entire website. It's wild.

Ryan [00:07:16]:

Yeah. The good part about Chat GPT is that the interface is very simple. It's just chat and you can just put in a sentence, just like how you would if you were talking to somebody, and then it gives you its output, which is pretty okay.

Hannah [00:07:33]:

And you've been using Chat GPT a ton, you've been playing with it nonstop pretty much since they published it.

Ryan [00:07:38]:

Yeah, I've been using Chat GPT since the beginning, basically, or maybe a couple of weeks after it released. And yeah, it's game changing. Game changing, for sure. I will say that I did of course use Chat GPT to help me with this episode. I already had a bunch of ideas of how to use Chat GPT in the job search and things that I've already done and I wanted to see what other things that it could come up with, other ideas that I didn't think of. Lo and behold, it did think of a lot of ideas that I had never thought of. And so I am going to post the actual prompts and outputs I used to prepare this episode. You can go to Degreefree Co podcast to check the prompts and the raw outputs. The reason why I'm doing that is that I've noticed that when I see other people's prompts for Chat GPT, it can help to jog my own thoughts of how to prompt it better. And the better the prompt, the better the output that you're going to get. And so I definitely want you guys to take a look at the prompts and the actual raw output that Chat GPT gave me. So you'll notice that this episode is going to be very similar to what Chat GPT put out, but it's also going to be very different. And that's exactly how this tool should be used, really. Like, you can use its output immediately, unedited if you want, but we found that the best way to do it is to take its output and then edit it, put it through your own filter and then it really comes out great. This goes for resumes, cover letters, outlines, ad campaigns. Any output is better when you go and edit it after.

Hannah [00:09:19]:

Yeah, it just goes to show that it's much easier to edit when something's actually there. But the blank page intimidation factor is very real. Sitting down to do your resume, sitting down to write cover letters, sitting down to write anything is difficult. But if someone has made something for you and they said, here, here's your resume, you can look at it and see what's wrong with it, see how to make it your own. And that's really what this does, is it just gets past that first version, so you can edit something and make it useful for you.

Ryan [00:09:44]:

Yeah. And then the last thing that I wanted to talk about before we get into the different tips of how to actually use it, I did want to talk about Chat GBT's paper bias. And since Chat GBT is trained on historical data of what's already on the internet, it has a heavy, heavy paper bias and will tell you that you, quote, unquote, require a bunch of prerequisites, like a college degree or a certain certification to get certain jobs, when that's just not the case.

Hannah [00:10:16]:

Yeah. You're going to have to fact check Chat GPT for these types of things.

Ryan [00:10:19]:

Look through the output through that degree free lens, take what's useful to you from Chat GPT and then leave what's not useful. So the same rules apply about doing things a degree free way, which is ignoring the college degree requirements, ignoring the years requirements on jobs, things like that. You can totally ignore that. And you can watch podcast episodes that we've done prior to get that degree free mentality down.

Hannah [00:10:48]:

Yeah, just use it to do the heavy lifting for writing and rewriting things that you've already written.

Ryan [00:10:52]:

Not only writing and rewriting, it's the research that we're going to go into. That's really what I'm talking about here. It's the actual research of these jobs that you're going to use in really creative ways here and it's going to give you a bunch of things that are just not true. You still have to look at it and look at it through a degree.

Hannah [00:11:10]:

Free lens the same way you look at job descriptions.

Ryan [00:11:12]:

Exactly.

Hannah [00:11:13]:

Got you.

Ryan [00:11:14]:

So we're going to talk about using Chat GPT in different categories to make this episode a little bit more digestible. You can go back and listen to this certain category that fits what you're doing at the time. We are going to talk about each one, give a couple of examples, and then we're going to give you an actual prompt that you can use for Chat GPT and some other tools and tips. So like I said, this is going to be super heavy on notes and resources. So go to degreefree codcast to find the original prompts from Chatchee Petit and the ones that I've modified for you. And by the time that this comes out, I'll make a blog article to make it easier to digest. Once again, you can find the link to that blog article at Degreefree co podcast and the blog post will be linked there. So the first category is going to be the job search in general and the first use case is going to be for job matching. So Chat GPT can help match your skills, needs and wants to suitable job openings or job roles. Rather, it can analyze your resume experience and job preferences to recommend the best job opportunities.

Hannah [00:12:22]:

Careful when doing this. As we said, take into account the paper bias because it may limit you unnecessarily.

Ryan [00:12:27]:

Yeah, this can save a lot of time and effort in your job search, especially if you're starting from nothing and you're not sure what you want to do. A good exercise that I created is called Vocational creativity. This exercise helps you to expand the jobs you know and therefore can target in on because without a defined goal of what you want to do, it's going to be impossible to reach that goal. I'll link a podcast episode and some other resources for this. We go over this at length in our job change accelerator course. So if you want to learn more about that, you can go to Degreefree co Jobchange.

Hannah [00:13:02]:

So the prompt you're going to use is what are some job roles and titles that match my skills and experience in the software development field?

Ryan [00:13:08]:

Yeah, perfect. And not necessarily software development. Obviously it could be any field or it doesn't have to be an industry. It could also be job titles or job roles as well. So that's just a sample prompt for that one.

Hannah [00:13:22]:

The second use case is looking for a specific type of work like remote work opportunities. So 60% of people are looking for remote work. Chat GPT can help you identify which remote work opportunities are a good fit based on your skills and experience.

Ryan [00:13:35]:

Yeah, and Chat GPT isn't connected to the internet as of this recording. So it can't tell you which jobs are open at this time right now. So you can't ask it to search indeed or ZipRecruiter LinkedIn or your favorite job board and say find me a list of current open remote work opportunities. But what you can do, especially if you're trying to make a job change, if you're trying to make a career change, is you can ask for the different roles that could possibly be remote and so that you can get that target like we talked about, so that you have something to shoot for. And then you can work backwards from there. You can go to your favorite job board after that and look for those roles.

Hannah [00:14:18]:

So an example prompt that you would want to use is find remote work opportunities in the field of data analytics.

Ryan [00:14:24]:

Exactly. It will give you a bunch of different job titles where you can start looking into.

Hannah [00:14:29]:

The third use case is creating a personalized job search strategy. You can use Chat GPT to create a custom job search strategy for yourself, which takes into account your skills, experience and the goals and the type of work you are looking for. And it can help you focus on the most effective channels or job families or roles that might be a great fit for you.

Ryan [00:14:47]:

The great thing about using Chat GPT to create an actual personalized job search strategy is that it can give you actionable tasks and actionable tips to be effective in the job search. And it can help you to create a plan to help make you stay accountable. So let's say that you want to apply to ten a day. It can give you an actual strategy of here where to go and here's how to do it and here are the job families or here are the job roles that you should be looking at. It can also help you once you have that job search strategy down, it can help you prioritize those tasks better so that you are focused on the ones that have the highest impact for your effort.

Hannah [00:15:35]:

So a prompt you could use here would be based on my skills and experience, create a personalized job search strategy with goals, tasks and priorities. That way it's all organized for you and you don't have to think about how to set this up for yourself.

Ryan [00:15:47]:

To get your skills and experience into Chat GPT, you can literally just copy and paste your resume, your LinkedIn about section, your LinkedIn headline, job search materials like that. And then Chat GPT will mine all of the they'll parse that data and it will summarize all of it for you.

Hannah [00:16:06]:

Even more basic than that too if you don't have a resume, just paste in past job descriptions and ask it to break it down for you and make them better.

Ryan [00:16:12]:

So the second category that we are going to talk about is going to be application materials and personal branding. So this is going to be actually creating the resumes, cover letters and other assets for your personal brand when you're in the job hunt and when you're trying to get a job. The most straightforward use case, which is number four, is going to be resume optimization. So Chat GPT can analyze and optimize your resume. So like I said, it can take your current resume and it can turn it into a totally different resume. It can optimize your resume for the jobs that you are looking for. This is going to be the most utilized tip for everybody. It has the most direct impact, which is writing your resume. And there are a bunch of different ways that you could utilize Chat GPT to write your resume. But I'm going to go over three different ways to make it really concrete. So the first way to have Chat GPT optimize your resume is going to be writing the entire resume from scratch.

Hannah [00:17:20]:

Prompt write me a resume for a data analytics job.

Ryan [00:17:22]:

Right? And this is a good option if you have no idea where to start and you just want to stop staring at a blank piece of paper, which is one of the most intimidating things when you write anything. So this is just a really good way of getting some place to start.

Hannah [00:17:37]:

Keep in mind, you are going to have to edit like crazy too, because the resume this is going to spit out is going to be super generic. Even though it might be well constructed and thoughtful, you're still going to have to put your own personal spin on it. Add in your specific experience, numbers and statistics of results that you've had in jobs that you've held, but really good place to start.

Ryan [00:17:55]:

And one of the best things about writing the entire resume from scratch and you having Chat GPT do it for you is you can see its output and then look at your own resume and compare and see where the two work different. The second way that you can have Chat GPT optimize your resume is by inputting your resume and having it give you another one.

Hannah [00:18:18]:

Yes. So you put your original resume in and then you ask it to spin and prioritize your experience for a different specific job that you're trying to apply for.

Ryan [00:18:26]:

Yeah, exactly. And so literally copy and paste your entire resume into Chat GPT.

Hannah [00:18:34]:

This is like magic too. Because really what happens is it's just going to pull the things that are relevant from the past job description into this current resume that you're writing, which is great. An example prompt would be create a resume for a data analytics role using my current resume. This is my current resume. And then you copy and paste your current resume into Chat GPT?

Ryan [00:18:52]:

Yes, it's really that simple. It will spit out a totally different resume for you and you just put in the role that you are applying for or the roles that you're applying for. The third and final way that you can use Chat GPT to create your resume or help you optimize your resume is by writing your resume in pieces.

Hannah [00:19:14]:

Then you kind of Frankenstein it all together in the document.

Ryan [00:19:17]:

Yeah, you put it all together in a Word Doc or a Google Doc, something like that. We go over all of the different building blocks of the resume in our course, the Job Change Accelerator, so you can go to degreefree co Jobchange to find out more about that. But really quickly here I'll say at the beginning of a lot of resumes, depending on which format of resume that you choose, at the very top there is either a summary or an objective statement and you can use Chat GPT to formulate the stat statement for you. And then you can use it to also do your work history and work experience sections for each job that you've had. Then you can use it for the skills section as well.

Hannah [00:19:57]:

An example prompt would be to paste in your current resume and then say write me an objective statement for a data analytics position given my background and my current experience.

Ryan [00:20:07]:

Yeah, exactly. And then you would do that same thing for each other block of your resume. So your work experience, your skills section for each job that you've had in the work experience, that is the best way to do it and that's how you're going to get the best output is you're inputting your own stuff and taking it one section at a time. So the next tip, the fifth tip in the Application Materials and Personal Branding category is going to be Cover Letter creation.

Hannah [00:20:37]:

Chat TBT can help you to write really compelling cover letters that are tailored to specific job postings. So you can plug in the type of COVID letter you want for what type of company and it suggests structure, content, tone that aligns with what the company is looking for and their values and their requirements.

Ryan [00:20:53]:

The way that you're going to use Chat GPT is very, very similar to the resumes. You can have it either spit out an entire cover letter or you can have it ingest your cover letter and then spit out something that is tailored for this job. Once again, the best way to do it is to put in your own and then have Chat GPT give you a more custom output.

Hannah [00:21:15]:

Yeah. And you can ask it to take into account what the company is focused on and how you bring value to this specific role because of who you are and what skills you have.

Ryan [00:21:24]:

Yeah, this is really powerful stuff. You can go and ask it to make value proposition statements in your cover letter. Obviously you don't want to lie, so you should edit, but it can create value proposition statements that you might not have thought of. And it can also take into account the company's mission statement, vision statement. All you have to do for this is to go to their About US page, basically whichever company that you're applying to, go to their About US page and copy and paste their mission vision statement, all the copy on that page and have Chat GPT analyze it. And then you say, create me a cover letter based off of all of the things that I gave you, my current cover letter, and then make a better one so that it all fuses together. And I sound like a great candidate, because you are a great candidate.

Hannah [00:22:19]:

Here's an example. Prompt help me write a cover letter for a marketing position at Company XYZ.

Ryan [00:22:24]:

The 6th tip that we have is going to be personal branding and portfolio. Chat GPT can help you improve your personal branding by analyzing your online presence and suggesting improvements for your LinkedIn personal website or professional portfolio.

Hannah [00:22:40]:

You can have Chat GPT help you with all the professional branding and forward facing things that you're using for your job search.

Ryan [00:22:46]:

Yeah, like I said before, it doesn't have access to the internet, so you can't put in the site like say, analyze, degreefree co and tell me how to improve it for jobs in marketing, whatever.

Hannah [00:23:02]:

If only.

Ryan [00:23:03]:

Yeah, you can't do that right now. But what you can do is you can copy and paste all of your copy into Chat GPT.

Hannah [00:23:09]:

Yeah, pull the text, put it in there and then tell it what to do with it.

Ryan [00:23:13]:

Yeah. And you can do this for every piece of your online content. And it can be your social posts on LinkedIn, it can be your LinkedIn About US section, it can be your LinkedIn headline. So many of these different online presence materials. Chat GPT can help you optimize and.

Hannah [00:23:34]:

Create to get the right output, you have to remember what you're trying to get. What do you want the recruiters who are looking at your profile to see? What do you want to communicate to the people who are looking at your resume, to the people who are looking at your profiles? And this is something that we talk at length about in our career change crash course. But something that we all need to think about is how to make it easy for the people trying to hire us to understand who we are and why they should hire us. And that is what this can help us do. It helps us create very clear, simple copy about who we are and why we are good fits for the types of jobs we're trying to get and then use those on our LinkedIn profile. So the prompt you would use for this would be review my LinkedIn profile after pasting in the text and suggest improvements to enhance my profile based on this type of job that I'm trying to optimize for.

Ryan [00:24:20]:

Yeah, exactly. And if you don't know what type of job that you want, but you just know that you need to get out of your job now, that's okay. Instead you can summarize your past experience for the certain industries that you're looking at. So for example, there are people that are listening to this that could be mechanics that are looking to get into sales, they could be looking to get into marketing, they could be looking to get into operations accounting. No idea. You just want to stop being a mechanic and get a job doing something literally anything else. So with your LinkedIn, it would not be wise if you're applying to all of these different things, to basically say that, oh, I am a sales professional in this. And then somebody that's in operations comes to your LinkedIn and is like, well this guy's a sales professional, what the heck? I don't see the value that you can provide to me. You can have it. Instead summarize how you are good at general business or general soft skills, things like that. And then that can just be a general value add proposition that could be useful in any company.

Hannah [00:25:25]:

Yeah, absolutely.

Ryan [00:25:26]:

So the third category is going to be interview and negotiation preparation. And the 7th tip is going to be about the interview prep. Chat GPT can help simulate interviews, allowing you to practice and receive pretty much instant feedback. It can also generate relevant questions and rate your responses, helping you improve your interview skills.

Hannah [00:25:47]:

The interview preparation point is actually really important here too because Ryan is the king of interview prep. He's prepped a ton. He's helped me prep. And here what you're going to use it for is you are going to practice and prepare for your interviews and you are going to use it to ask questions of and to just practice getting all of the kinks out of your answers before you go into these interviews.

Ryan [00:26:08]:

I go over the whole interview prep system that I've created and the practice that I do and I've helped a lot of people do as well in our jobchangeaccelerators or degreefree co Jobchange for that. But I'll summarize it quickly here for everyone. So for every interview that you have and for every job role or industry that you're applying for, you should have the answers to the top interview questions like tell me about yourself or why do you want to work for this company? Things like that. You should have the answers to those written down, not in your head, not somewhere in the ether sphere, but written down in a Google Doc or a Word doc. Now you can have either bullet points or you can write it out word for word. I. Prefer to write it out word for word. And what you can do here is you can take those answers and you can paste it into Chat GPT and saying, is this a good way to answer this question? How can I make this stronger for this role? You can also ask Chat GPT to give you the most common interview questions. So if you don't know what the top interview questions are, you can literally just ask it. What are the top interview questions? So if you have no system of how to answer, tell me about yourself and you're not very good at it. You can ask Chat GPT to answer that question for you by pasting in your resume, by pasting in your LinkedIn about section, all of these different job search materials. You can paste it all in and you can have it spit out answers for you in this way. It's sort of similar to conducting a mock interview.

Hannah [00:27:55]:

A good prompt for this would be conduct a mock interview for a data analyst position and give me feedback on my responses.

Ryan [00:28:01]:

Yeah, that's perfect. And it will give you the feedback and then you can choose to incorporate it or not. The next way that you can use it for interview prep. And this 8th tip is preparing for behavioral and technical questions. So Chat GPT can help you come up with the answers for them, but it can also help you identify those questions. A lot of times when you're making a career change, you're making a job change. You've never interviewed for this type of role, ever. And so how are you supposed to know what behavioral or technical questions they are going to ask in that interview? Let's say that you want to be a marketing associate and you're currently a server at a restaurant. How are you supposed to know what behavioral or technical questions they're going to ask you in that interview? You've never interviewed for them before. You can ask Chat GPT to say, I am interviewing for a marketing associate role. Can you please list out the behavioral and technical questions that my interviewer might ask me?

Hannah [00:29:04]:

Yeah. And this is super useful. As Ryan said, if you're Pivoting Industries and you're really, really worried about the types of questions they might ask you because you've never been asked them before. So a prompt you could use here would be generate behavioral and technical interview questions for a project manager role and help me create responses.

Ryan [00:29:20]:

I definitely think for these as well. Once you get the behavioral and technical questions spit out from Chat GPT, you should do the exact same thing and you should write your answers down to all of them. For me personally, I was terrible at interviewing. I'm still terrible at interviewing, but I'm better because of my prep. And all of the prep that I do is very helpful to not fumble on my words in the actual interview because I get really, really nervous. And so once again, I go over all of that in the job change accelerator.

Hannah [00:29:54]:

Yeah, and that's helpful because a lot of people do get extremely nervous when they start interviews because it's just there's so much writing on it.

Ryan [00:30:00]:

Yeah, exactly. Because you really want this job. If you listen to this podcast, you've been applying to hundreds of jobs and you're just like, man, I need this job, I need this job, I need this job, and you get paralyzed. It happens. And that's where good preparation comes in. The 9th tip that we're going to talk about is going to be salary negotiation.

Hannah [00:30:19]:

Okay. Careful with this one too, because Chachi BT supposedly didn't know anything about the Internet past 2021, and a lot has happened there since. Salaries have changed a ton since then, and they do change all the time. But this is good for benchmarking.

Ryan [00:30:35]:

Yeah, and not only that, but the data that Chat GPT has and the data that's on the Internet is mostly self reported. And self reported data is widely inaccurate. So why is this useful? Well, it can just give you a.

Hannah [00:30:53]:

Place to start talking about salary and how to ask and how to find a range is always a very controversial topic, but there's really no right or wrong answer because as Ryan said, most of the data is self reported, so it's really difficult to know what's right. And you just want to make sure you're asking in an appropriate range for yourself for what you want for the company that you're applying for.

Ryan [00:31:12]:

Yeah, so the salary ranges are useful if you have no idea, and then you can kind of fact check that. Like I said, it quote unquote facts because it's all self reported data against Glassdoor, Reddit, Cora, all those other salaries, expectations and salary websites. That is definitely one use case. But the more powerful use case that I like in the salary negotiations phase is using Chat GPT to help you come up with a list of objections and then how to overcome those objections in the salary negotiation.

Hannah [00:31:46]:

That's killer because that's the hardest thing, especially if you don't have a lot of experience negotiating. You're afraid of what they'll say after you finally get that number out there, and then what?

Ryan [00:31:56]:

Yeah, I love the use case here because a lot of people do not have experience negotiating, which makes sense. You would really only have experience negotiating if you're a business owner or if you're in sales. But even the people in sales don't have the experience negotiating. You have experience in overcoming objections, which is basically the same thing, but it's not actually negotiating. Like 20,000, no, 10,000. You have to be in a very specific type of sales where you have the power to negotiate the price, like, say you're a contractor or something like that, and you are actually quoting Jobs and saying, yeah, how about $20,000? And they're like, I don't know, 15 sounds good to me. And then you're like, I don't know, 19 sounds whatever, and not a lot of people have that experience. And so using Chat GPT to come up with all of the objections that you could run into and then giving you ideas of the counters for those objections are really, really powerful.

Hannah [00:32:59]:

Yeah, because if you don't know and you've never done it before, you can't really think through those objections before you hear them unless some external force tells them to you, which is what Chat GPT is going to do. A good prompt you could use to ask Chat GPT about this would be what's an average salary for a software engineer with five years of experience in New York City? Or what are some common objections that I will hear in a salary negotiation and how can I get around them?

Ryan [00:33:22]:

Yeah. And then obviously, once again, take those answers that you get from Chat GPT and make them your own, to make them fit and gel with your own personality and with your own style and tone, because it might give you something that you're not comfortable saying or the way to overcome it. Might not be the way that you'd say it, but at least gives you a basis, especially if you're not used to negotiating or sales or overcoming objections at all. The fourth category is going to be networking and research. The 10th tip is going to be about networking and Chat TPT can give you a plan of how to go about networking and give you a plan, strategy, tactics to do cold outreach and to build your network.

Hannah [00:34:11]:

You can even have it come up with cold outreach emails and DMs to send to people.

Ryan [00:34:15]:

Once again, with the networking, it can't give you the people that you need to network with, but it might be able to identify different job roles within certain organizations or within target industries that you should reach out to. So, for example, let's say that you want to work in procurement at a tech company, and you say that you tell that to Chat GPT, and then you ask them, what are the job roles and what are some of the companies that I should be focusing on to network and try to get into procurement in one of these tech companies? And so, like I said, it won't give you the actual names, it won't give you Ryan Maruyama, but it will give you the job titles so that you can take that to LinkedIn, you can take that to Google, and then you can find those people and try to build a professional relationship with them.

Hannah [00:35:10]:

A prompt you can use here is give me a plan to build my network in the marketing industry. Give me a plan with specific strategy, goals and tasks. Write a sequence of two emails that I can send for initial outreach to people.

Ryan [00:35:21]:

This one's a quick point, but it is very, very powerful. I really like being able to ask it to come up with a plan for me, and then I can look at it and see like, nah, I don't like that. And I'll edit the plan. Or I'll ask it to keep editing and reiterating on the plan, and it'll give you an endless amount of different iterations for these plans. Because a big hurdle for me personally is just coming up with that plan. Because not only do I have to execute the plan, but then I have to come up with it, and then I will procrastinate and procrastinate and procrastinate until the cows come home. And by the end of the day, I'd be like, oh, well, I had one thing on my thing, which is to come up a plan for networking, and then I just didn't do it.

Hannah [00:36:08]:

That is so funny you say that. I was about to say Chat QBT is fantastic for procrastinators and people that are afraid of starting when I think I speak for all of us when I say that's all of us, if I have an action on my to do list, I'm a yellow legal pad checklist person. If one of the tasks on my yellow legal pad is to create a plan to do something it does not get done. And so that initial draft of it, using Chat GPT to do the initial work just to get you started, it's almost like handing the task to somebody else and just having it done so you can go, ah, that's wrong, but I can fix it. And this is how it's going to be better. Even if the whole thing you don't even end up using.

Ryan [00:36:45]:

Yeah, totally. Number eleven is going to be company research.

Hannah [00:36:50]:

Chat GPT can help you research potential employers, providing insights into their company culture, news, values, financial performance, and enabling you to make decisions about things you want to talk about when you're writing your resume, when you're working on your cover letter, when you're doing your initial outreach.

Ryan [00:37:05]:

This is going to be very easy for larger established companies that were around and well established when Chat GPT was trained. For example, some of those bigger companies could be like Coca Cola or Pepsi because their business model really hasn't changed in the past two years. But they were very well known a couple of years ago, right? It could be like unilever or something like that. And to a certain extent it could be Netflix, Amazon, those types of big companies as well because at the basis their business model hasn't changed, their values haven't changed too much. Now where the struggle is going to be is going to be for the newer companies and for the startups. So once again, Chat GPT isn't hooked up to the internet and so it doesn't know about that startup that just started two months ago. It can't analyze their website and so you will have to go to their website, go to their about page and copy and paste in what you see there and what you see is relevant.

Hannah [00:38:08]:

Give me three interesting points about this company from this text.

Ryan [00:38:11]:

Yeah. And then another thing that you can do is you can go to their home page and then copy and paste all of the content in there as well. The reason why that is good is because usually the home page of a website is going to be where the bulk of their effort is. That is going to be what they are working on right now and what they want you to see and the different initiatives that they're working on. So you can copy and paste in the home page. For a lot of companies they have investor relations, for this size company they might not, but those types of things meet the team. All of those different pages you can copy and paste and feed that into Chat GPT to get out all of the company values, mission statement and just to see if you're a good fit. But also if you are trying to apply and interview for those companies, try.

Hannah [00:39:08]:

Using this prompt research company XYZ and provide insights on their company culture, values and financial performance.

Ryan [00:39:15]:

And the fifth category is going to be skills development. This is awesome and I am really excited to talk about this one. The 12th tip is going to be about skills gap analysis. Chat GPT can help identify areas where your skills might be lacking compared to job requirements or compared to where you want to be. This is one of the most useful cases for Chat GPT. This is something that we suggest doing manually. We call it finding a job backwards. And I'll put links to resources at degreefree Codcast and you can go to degreefree co Gethired, you can sign up for a free course and learn how to do this skill of finding a job backwards and basically starting at the end and figuring out what skills you need to learn to get that job.

Hannah [00:40:10]:

I love this too, because finding a job backwards is how I went from twenty eight k to being unemployed to making over six figures working in tech. It was because I looked at job descriptions and I worked backwards to figure out what in demand skill sets were. And I'm not talking about college degrees and I'm not talking about experience. What I am talking about is what tools does this company need you to know in order to do work. Because that's what they're actually going to care about. And at the end of the day, knowing how to use these tools, that's what they're looking for. And so going and making sure that you have these skills is key. And if you can use Chat GPT to do the heavy lifting. Because when I did this, I was manually reading these things and I was tallying up how often things were mentioned in different job descriptions. And then I was looking to see, okay, which one has the most mentions? And then okay, from there, which one costs the most, which one takes the longest time to learn all these things, and now you can use a robot to do that for you instead.

Ryan [00:40:57]:

Yeah, absolutely. This one is really powerful and I definitely suggest still doing it manually, or at least if you're going to use Chat GPT to use its output and then edit it from your own brain and from what you've seen on the internet and from your own reading about which skill to learn next.

Hannah [00:41:18]:

To use Chat GPT to find a job backwards, put in this prompt, analyze my skill set, and recommend courses or certifications to improve my chances of getting a job as a product manager, or insert whatever job you want.

Ryan [00:41:31]:

Exactly. Like I said, this is a really powerful use case for Chat GPT and I think it's something that everybody should be doing. Number 13 is going to be soft skills assessment. Soft skills are extremely important and a lot of employers look for that in a candidate. So you want to be presenting those skills as much as possible because the fact of the matter is, for most jobs, all of it can be trained.

Hannah [00:42:01]:

Yeah, most people can do most jobs, right?

Ryan [00:42:03]:

Soft skills are much, much harder to train. While you can train those things, it takes a lot longer to teach people how to work good as a team, how to prioritize tasks, how to communicate well. It takes a lot longer to teach somebody that than it does to move this from this software to that software, hook this up with that, and then you know what I mean. Move this from here to there. So this is a use case that I didn't think of, and I am glad that I asked Chat GPT because it's not something that is made apparent quickly of how you can use chat GPT to analyze your soft skills. But if you copy and paste your resume and your cover letter into Chat GPT, you can ask it to summarize your soft skills and then you can ask it to give you a sentence or two about how you can say that to an employer during an interview.

Hannah [00:43:00]:

You can even ask Chat GPT to give you a list of resources for how you can improve your current soft skills, like how can I learn to get better at public speaking?

Ryan [00:43:07]:

Or how can you be better at communicating.

Hannah [00:43:09]:

So the prompt we're going to use here is evaluate my soft skills and recommend resources to help me improve in areas where I may be lacking in my resume and my cover letter.

Ryan [00:43:17]:

And number 14, last but definitely not least, is going to be using Chat GPT to help you analyze job trends. Chat GPT can provide insights into job market trends helping you understand which skills are in demand or are likely to be in demand in the future. It can help you see how an industry is evolving over time and where the puck is going.

Hannah [00:43:44]:

This last use case is really good if you're trying to set up your skills and your career for the future. You can ask Chat GPT what trends it sees, where it thinks the job trends are going, and what skills you're going to need in order to stay ahead of the job market curve. A prompt we're going to use for Chat GPT here is analyze job market trends in the renewable energy sector and suggest skills that I should focus on developing to get a job in those fields.

Ryan [00:44:04]:

Yes, absolutely. And we have a couple of other things to talk about before we go, like some final tips on how to get better prompts and output out of Chat GPT. But once again, as you can see, there are a lot of resources and a lot of prompts and everything like that in this episode. So make sure that you go to degreefree codcast to get all of the links and all of the prompts.

Hannah [00:44:33]:

And if you want more like this, you want more tips, you want to know how to get hired without a degree, you want to know what is coming down the pipeline in the job market? Sign up for our newsletter Degreefree co newsletter. It is free and Ryan and I want you to have it in your inbox.

Ryan [00:44:46]:

And then the final tip that I want to talk about is going to be about prompting and editing output from Chat GPT because making good prompts is the basis for getting amazing output and then making the editing on the other side a lot easier. So if you have a specific outcome in mind in a certain style, the more detailed you make your prompt, the better the output will be.

Hannah [00:45:12]:

Please take Ryan's advice for this too, because he is a prompt engineer at this point with the amount of work that he's putting in with Chat GPT and so he is really using these tools the way they should be used.

Ryan [00:45:22]:

So a basic example for a prompt for writing your resume is going to be write a resume for a customer service job. That is a very simple prompt and you are going to get a very, very generic and general answer and it's probably going to not be super useful. So a better prompt, more detailed, in depth prompt, would be write me a resume summary statement that's two sentences long, that is easy to understand and demonstrates my value in a customer service role. And then you can say, use my current skills, use my current cover letter, and you can copy and paste those things into Chat GPT. So as you can see, that is a much more specific prompt and therefore you are going to get a much more specific output. So you can break the resume down into parts, which is what we suggest doing, which is what I just did there. I just did the summary statement. But if you don't want to break the resume up into parts, you can prompt it by saying, write a resume for a customer service job. Here are my three last job roles. And then you put it in. One, two, three. Use action verbs at the beginning of each bullet point. Write four bullet points for each job. Use simple words and short sentences. Focus on the benefit that I will bring to the company in a customer service role. And that prompt right there is going to give you an amazing output. As you can see, you basically wrote an entire paragraph to tell Chat GPT what to tell you or what to output to you. But the output is going to be stellar. It's going to be amazing.

Hannah [00:47:09]:

Okay, there was a lot, a lot, a lot in this episode, so make sure to go back and watch it again on YouTube or listen to it again on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.

Ryan [00:47:17]:

Yeah, send this episode to a friend who's also trying to change careers, get a job, and is stuck in the job search.

Hannah [00:47:25]:

Let the robots do some of that heavy lifting for you.

Ryan [00:47:28]:

If you like this episode, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave a review. If you're watching this on the YouTube channel, then please give us a thumbs up and subscribe. I loved doing this episode, although it did take a lot of work to put this episode together, as I think a lot of people can see. Although I did use Chat GPT to help me out here. A lot of this is all original, which is exactly how it should be.

Hannah [00:47:54]:

How you should use it exactly. Use it to bolster. It's not going to replace people. What it does is it makes us work easier. It makes us work more efficiently, it makes us able to do things that take too much time.

Ryan [00:48:06]:

And so if you like this episode, please like subscribe. Share this and if you want more episodes like this where we go and do deep dives on AI and other subjects, then go to YouTube and comment on what you want us to talk about. Out and go to Degreefree Co Newsletter to sign up for our free weekly newsletter so that you are informed about the latest in the degree free world, degree free jobs, and other tips to get you high.