Unless you have been living under a rock for the past year, you have certainly heard of Artificial Intelligence software, in particular ChatGPT. This chatbot was launched in November 2022 and gathered over 100 million unique visitors by January 2023, which is a record. As you may soon be looking for an internship, you might think that ChatGPT will be the perfect tool to write your CV and cover letter, saving you hours of hard work! However, certain rules need to be followed in order to reach the full potential of Artificial Intelligence.


Disclaimer: We certify that the following article was NOT written by ChatGPT 🙂

“Photo by Cash Macanaya on Unsplash”

1. How can ChatGPT help me prepare for my interview?

ChatGPT was originally conceived to help companies create intuitive conversations for their customers. It is able to understand languages and generate relevant answers based on collected data.
In order to communicate with ChatGPT, the user needs to give instructions so it can generate images or texts. These instructions are called prompts. It is fundamental to understand how to improve a prompt in order to get precise and original answers.
To put it simply, ChatGPT is a tool that needs to be fed clear and specific instructions in order to optimise its results. Students who want to use it will need to progressively learn how to write the right prompts in order to get suitable results.

2. How can I use ChatGPT to write a great CV and cover letter for an internship?

If your first instinct is to ask ChatGPT “Please write my CV and cover letter”, we regret to inform you that the result you will get will be mediocre at best, empty of personal elements and lacking any form of emotion. Without any specific prompt, the chatbot will provide very generic answers, which will be very easily identified by recruiters. Keep in mind that most internship offers attract dozens or even hundreds of applications. According to Pilar Gomez de Las Heras, Career Advisor at ESCP Business School, “Letters written with ChatGPT can lack personal authenticity. Be honest, even if your personal experience does not perfectly fit what the chatbot proposes.”Your CV and cover letters should therefore reflect your own examples and specific experience in order to emphasize your perfect fit for the position. There are several perks in using ChatGPT: its writing skills and sentence structure are usually excellent. For instance you can ask to rephrase or shorten certain paragraphs. The chatbot can even adopt a specific literary style if you specify it. 

Eun Paig, Head of Career Development for the Master in Management at ESCP Business School, explains: “ChatGPT is undeniably a powerful tool to write the first draft of your CV and cover letter. However, you should consider it as a first step that must be personalised thereafter. Your human touch will be better appreciated by another human: your recruiter.” 

The time that you save on structuring your ideas therefore needs to be used to personalise your CV and cover letter with your own experience. These improvements are crucial to achieve a letter that reflects your personality and is suitable to the position to which you are specifically applying. You should include precise examples of skills that you have developed through previous experience and are specified in the internship offer. You can use ChatGPT to understand the company’s missions and include these notions in your application.
If you find good CVs and cover letters online, you can also train ChatGPT to write similar documents for the offer. Do not forget to ask ChatGPT to include keywords specific to the internship offer in order to add them to your CV and cover letter. This will be particularly useful for large companies that use recruitment software to sort applications.

When you obtain a result that you like, save it and try again until you optimise your application. 
After you have submitted your application, we recommend getting in touch with the HR manager responsible for examining applications. This will be a nice reminder of your dedication and can differentiate you from the competition. In order to find the right person, you can make a search on Linkedin, and ask alumni or students who might work for the company. Your message will need to be short and very polite in order to be impactful but not pushy.

3. How can ChatGPT help me prepare for my interview?

Your CV and cover letter caught the attention of the recruiter, congratulations! Now comes the time for your interview and once again ChatGPT can be a great tool. 
You can ask the chatbot to analyse the job description to determine the most common questions that the recruiter might ask in this type of interview. Through specific prompts, you can also get as much information as possible about the company itself: the sector, the type of salary you can ask for, etc. This way you will feel ready for your interview!
ChatGPT is a great tool that everyone will soon need to learn to master in order to optimise their chances of finding a great position, however it takes time and dedication to learn how to use it properly. It is likely that knowing how to write suitable prompts will soon become a skill that will be included on a CV.