How to Use ChatGPT to Write A Resume (Writing Prompts)

From creating CD covers for your made-up black metal band, through showing you what Shawshank Redemption might look like when directed by Wes Anderson, up to… Where exactly? That’s right, AI seems to know no boundaries. Scary? Perhaps. Helpful? For sure!

One of the things humanity can benefit from when using AI is applying for a job. I myself being slightly concerned about this whole AI thing, decided to give it a try and find out how to use ChatGPT to write a resume. The results? Read on and find out!

This guide will show you:

• Can ChatGPT write a resume?
• How to work on your ChatGPT resume.
• What are the things you need to remember when choosing ChatGPT resume writing.
• A sample job application I’ve created using a ChatGPT resume builder.

Want to save time and have your resume ready in 5 minutes? Try our resume builder. It’s fast and easy to use. Plus, you’ll get ready-made content to add with one click. See 20+ resume templates and create your resume here.

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Sample resume made with our builder—See more resume examples here.

Using ChatGPT isn’t the only way to quickly create a resume. Check these alternative solutions:

• Best Resume Templates You Can Fill Out & Send
• Best AI Resume Builders
• Professional Resume Writing Services Online
• How to Update Your Old Resume
• Blank Resumes to Fill Out
• Make the Perfect Resume in 7 Easy Steps

You can also check our collection of 500+ resume examples for various professions.

Can ChatGPT Write a Resume?

Trust me: I was just as concerned about this whole AI thing as you might be right now. However, I decided to give it a try and learn more about how it can help me with my day-to-day work as a resume specialist.

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. It was created by OpenAI and is available to use for free. ChatGPT can answer questions and create content, such as articles, jokes, poems, social media posts, and parts of a resume. It uses prompts entered by users to create these written forms.

Is ChatGPT a resume builder? No, but it can help you create parts of your resume. Mind that I bolded parts. Twice now. 

ChatGPT can be a valuable tool for writing your resume. However, you can’t just type “write my resume” and expect great success immediately. You need to put some work into it by providing the right prompts and all the necessary information it needs. Furthermore, you should always review and apply all the necessary changes to the resume ChatGPT created for you.

So what are the pros and cons of using ChatGPT for resume creation?

Pros of ChatGPT Resume Writing

• Saving time: Making a draft of your resume with help from AI won’t take long.
• Simplicity: Just ask ChatGPT to write a resume and deliver all the necessary information.

• Spelling and grammar: You will easily avoid most mistakes when writing a resume with ChatGPT.

• Inspirations: If you’re not sure what skills are achievements you can include in your resume, simply ask ChatGPT to provide you a list.

Cons of ChatGPT Resume Writing

• No human touch: You want to distinguish yourself from your competitors as much as you can. Using AI to write your resume will result in having the most generic resume on the recruiter’s desk.

• Input: To get the best AI-generated resume, you need to deliver tons of information. Then you have to add some more and correct all the errors. Relying fully on AI to create the final draft of your resume might take longer than you expected.

• Extra work: You always need to put some extra work for your resume to look well, whether it’s adding some sections, clearing all the inaccuracies, or removing false information.

• It can be detected: Your recruiters might use software that allows them to see whether the resume you provided was written by an AI. If it does, it sends them a simple message: you haven’t even written your own resume. Is your work ethic in the right place?

Let’s take a look at the entire process in more detail.

Want to learn more about using AI for creating a resume? Read more: The Pros and Cons of Using AI Resume Builders

Using ChatGPT to Write a Resume—My Experience

The entire process of writing a perfect resume or a cover letter with ChatGPT is somehow similar to writing a resume by yourself. However, simply asking it to write you a resume will only help you with your resume format.

When I decided to give ChatGPT a try, I wanted it to create a resume for a profession I know well. I decided to go with Gary Flynt, my imaginary copywriter. Here’s what I asked the AI:

And here’s what it came up with after a few seconds:

ChatGPT Resume Sample

I was impressed with the speed and how well it transformed my brief information into a pretty decent-looking summary. The work experience, education, and skills section look pretty well. The order, however, is confusing. Never in my career have I seen an education section placed after skills. 

Overall, this seems like a good way to start writing a resume. It quickly translated my brief into a resume structure. But this structure still needs a lot of work if you want to impress your future employer.

What I missed were suggestions of what can be done more, what can be improved, and what info is missing in order to deliver a perfectly written resume. I believe if you’re using an AI to help you with your resume you might need some more tips and guidelines, which are offered by a typical resume builder service, such as Zety.

Okay, now you know whether using ChatGPT for a resume is a good idea. Now let’s answer the big one: how to do it.

Creating a resume with our builder is incredibly simple. Follow our step-by-step guide and use content from Certified Professional Resume Writers to have a resume ready in minutes.

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When you’re done, Zety’s resume builder will score your resume and our resume checker will tell you exactly how to make it better.

How to Use ChatGPT to Write a Resume?

As you know already, ChatGPT isn’t a resume builder. You won’t create a professional job application with AI unless you know the right approach. Here’s a collection of tips that will help you:

1. Make a Fill-in-the-Blanks ChatGPT Resume

The first thing you might do is to type “create a resume for a marketing specialist” (that is, if you are a marketing specialist). Here’s what it would look like:

As you can see, ChatGPT knows how to write a resume. It provided you with the correct resume format, which covers all the necessary sections:

• Resume Header (including your contact information)
• Summary Statement or Career Objective
• Experience Section
• Education Section
• Relevant Skills
• Additional sections (such as your relevant certifications)

But what you can also see is that, apart from the right resume layout, this resume still requires a lot of work that can’t be done by ChatGPT. However, you can personalize this document by filling in the blanks.

Pro Tip: The layout given above provided some place for the address to put on a resume. Skip that part, as it is not necessary.

2. Provide All the Necessary Information Before Asking ChatGPT for a Resume

If you want to move past the perfect resume structure quickly, you should properly introduce yourself to the ChatGPT. 

Here’s what information you can include in your first message:

• Your name
• Work experience, including your previous employer’s name, location, working period, and most impressive accomplishments
• Your top relevant skills
• The institution you've graduated from, date of your graduation, and relevant coursework

Let’s see how ChatGPT would answer your resume request if you immediately provide it with some information about yourself:

As you can see, there are fewer things to work on once you give ChatGPT more details about yourself. Writing a detailed ChatGPT resume prompt helps AI create a more customized first draft of your resume. All you need to do next is quickly edit it and add more details instead of rewriting it entirely. 

However, there are still some areas for improvement. Especially if you lack inspiration about introducing all your skills or achievements.

Wondering what else you can provide ChatGpt with to have a perfectly-written resume? Read our guide and find out: What to Include in a Resume

3. Generate Skills and Achievements for Your ChatGPT Resume

Talking about yourself can be tricky. You want to make a great impression, but you don’t want to sound too cocky. And then there’s a difficulty with choosing what to highlight and what to omit. 

This can happen when you’re trying to list your skills on a resume. Luckily, ChatGPT can help you with that.

As you can see, you can easily use ChatGPT to write a resume skill section, focusing on both your hard skills and soft skills.

But what about achievements for a resume? Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint what you have accomplished that can impress the hiring manager. Let’s see what it can look like when you use ChatGPT for the resume work achievement section.

As you can see, all it took was hinting at some achievements you’ve already pinpointed and asking ChatGPT to build its list on that. And that’s a great foundation for you to either build your list on or a great entry point for considering what your real achievements are. There’s a good chance that with a list like that, you will get inspired to what you can include in your ChatGPT resume.

Even though you want your document to be created quickly by a ChatGPT, you want your resume to answer the job ad perfectly. And there’s a good way to do it.

Pro Tip: Always include your hard and soft skills on a resume because employers want a mix of both. And don’t just list them. Prove them with quantifiable accomplishments in your work experience section.

4. Include a Job Offer When Asking ChatGPT for a Resume

Did you know that an average corporate job opening attracts over 250 resumes? That’s why you must always aim at having your resume tailored to the specific job opening. And while ChatGPT works great for helping you write your resume quickly, it can also help you better target it to what the recruiter is looking for.

To make sure it happens, provide the job description by pasting it into ChatGPT. Mind that you need to paste the content of it and not the link, since ChatGPT can’t access external websites or specific job postings.

Let’s see how it works.

Looks good, doesn’t it? However, in this case, it answers directly what was posted in the job ad. And that’s not something that recruiters look kindly on. And, unfortunately, that’s usually what ChatGPT does with pasted job ads. That’s why you need to adjust it to make it slightly different from what was posted in the opening. 

At this point, you might have a neatly-done resume in your ChatGPT tab. But there’s still some work to do.

There are plenty of websites you can find your next job on. Here’s a list: The Best Job Search Sites

5. Edit Your ChatGPT Resume

There’s a good reason why recruiters warn against using AI for writing application documents. But they don’t warn against contacting these tools and using a ChatGPT resume builder of your choice for some help. As I’ve mentioned before, ChatGPT can be extremely helpful in creating parts of your resume. However, you must still structure them correctly to get a good final product, AKA your job-winning resume.

To achieve that goal, you should:

• Correct every made-up information. While asking for relevant hard skills or impressive achievements, ChatGPT, not knowing you that well, might have written something that isn’t 100% true. Lying on a resume is never a good idea. Your resume will only benefit from fixing what an AI has wrongly written about you.
• Add more relevant examples. Get inspired by what ChatGPT has written and adjust it to your real experiences. Add relevant numbers wherever you can. Include more accomplishments and skills. Having a unique resume is how you impress the hiring managers.
• Optimize the length of your resume. Sometimes ChatGPT will write more than necessary. You want to aim at having a one-page resume. However, if you have tons of experience, you can go for a two-page resume.

• Ask ChatGPT for more help. While working on your edits, you can still use ChatGPT. It’s great for improving your resume statement and checking spelling and grammar errors.

• Use professional resume templates. That will help you distinguish your resume from other candidates and impress recruiters even more, especially since they might not spend longer than 7 seconds looking at your application documents.

Let’s see some examples of useful ChatGPT resume prompts that will help you.

Having a resume written by an AI won’t make an eye-catching resume. But there is a guide that will help you achieve that. Read more: Eye-Catching Resume

The Best ChatGPT Resume Prompts

Before I leave you 1:1 with ChatGPT, allow me to show you some useful prompts you can use when working on your resume with artificial intelligence.

5 ChatGPT Resume Prompts

And there you have it. With a little help from ChatGPT, a resume you’ve been working on is written. But what’s more important is that with some extra edits and a good resume template, it is ready to send to your recruiter. Good luck!

Once you’re done writing your ChatGPT resume, it’s time to work on your cover letter. No application is complete without it! Read more: How to Write a Cover Letter

Plus, a great cover letter that matches your resume will give you an advantage over other candidates. You can write it in our cover letter builder here. Here's what it may look like:

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See more cover letter templates and start writing.

Key Takeaway

ChatGPT can be helpful when writing a resume. However, it is not as quick and effortless as it may seem. You still need to put in some work of your own to get the perfect resume you’re after.

Let’s do a quick recap of how this works:

• ChatGPT is great for structuring your resume. To speed up the resume-creating process, you need to provide it with as much information about yourself as possible.
• Suggesting work achievements and relevant skills is a very useful feature of ChatGPT, but you still need to give it some insights about your career.
• It’s also a good idea to copy-paste a job ad for an opening you’re after to make your resume as tailored as possible.
• ChatGPT can be used for editing your document, finding mistakes, and shortening it, but you still need to put in some effort to correct all made-up information.

Building your resume with ChatGPT can be helpful, but it will not be as effective as finding the right resume builder that uses the help of professional resume experts and not artificial intelligence.

Have you got any more questions about creating your resume with ChatGPT? Let’s discuss them in the comment section below!

About Zety’s Editorial Process 

This article has been reviewed by our editorial team to make sure it follows Zety's editorial guidelines. We’re committed to sharing our expertise and giving you trustworthy career advice tailored to your needs. High-quality content is what brings over 40 million readers to our site every year. But we don't stop there. Our team conducts original research to understand the job market better, and we pride ourselves on being quoted by top universities and prime media outlets from around the world.