Your AI Job Search

When working with AI, it is important to be descriptive and specific. AI cannot know anything about you that you do not explicitly tell it. So tell it!

AI never gets impatient, so you can take as long as you want to describe things in detail.

AI is a stranger. It doesn't know anything about you unless you tell it. AI will patient listen and absorb everything you say, and the more information you give it, the better it can work to serve you.

Laying out your goals is good advice for life in general. What are you hoping to get from this interaction with AI? Be specific. For example, if your goal is to feel more confident networking at a target company, say so!

Most of the time, stating what you want is called "being assertive". It is a highly rewarded business skill. And it helps with AI, too. One of the major upsides (and potential downsides, as we'll see later) of AI is that it always gives you what you want. For example, if you want a 5-step process for networking at a target company, ask for it!

AI like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot are trained on massive online databases that contain millions of words from all sorts of people. Thus, AI can take on just about any persona you can imagine. If you want it to be a career coach, it will be your career coach. If you want it to act like a hiring manager, it will act like a hiring manager. If you want it to be a CEO, it will think like a CEO. Give the AI a persona that is specifically helpful to your situation.

AI can tend to ramble, and (like a person) the more it rambles, the less useful the information becomes. Keep answers short by asking for answers of a certain length and the AI will give you better information that is easier to read.

If you ask AI for a list, it could give you three options or it could give you 300. If you explicitly state how many options you want on that list, the AI will give you the best options it can find. It's better to focus on three good opportunities than waste time on 100 bad ones.

AI is designed to be conversational. Talk to it like a friend.

You are going to find your dream job.

Many people, especially those just starting their careers, have no idea what their dream job actually is. AI can help. If you've described yourself in sufficient detail, AI can search the internet and find jobs that people like you LOVE.

Even if you already have a certain job in mind, job titles might not be entirely predictable. What's the difference between a Quantitative Researcher and a Quantitative Research Analyst? AI can find out.

In the old days of 2019, we used to need informational interviews to find out what "a day in the life" was like. Now, we interview AI. Ask questions about the day-to-day work that a job title does and see if you really want to pursue that career.

Your job search will be much faster and easier if you focus on 1-2 job titles. You'll be able to target jobs much more effectively and won't have to rewrite your resume much, plus you'll be able to build and show skills specific to the jobs you want.

Once you know what you want to do, you need a place to do it. Most of what makes a person happy or unhappy in their job is the people they work with and the companies they work for. Find a good company, and you may never need to search for a job again.

AI is optimistic and positive. That makes it great to work with but not very discerning. You are the owner of your career. You owe it to yourself to do your own research on the companies you pursue. Plus, it'll help in the interview if you know about the company already.

Your resume is the way you present yourself to employers. It is an extension of yourself, and so you must create it yourself.

All major AI can handle uploaded documents. They do well with PDF and DOCX files but can handle pictures and other formats, too.

A great baseline resume is easy to target to specific positions. Have AI help you rewrite the basic parts of your resume. If you have a resume that you could use without targeting, imagine how great it will be after you target it!

You are the owner of your resume, and your resume is an extension of yourself. You cannot give up control of your resume. You must make all the decisions.

AI works best in short bursts. You can ask AI to rewrite as much or as little of your resume as you want, but little adjustments tend to be better. When AI makes small changes, it can focus on getting those small changes right, leading to less hallucination and better outcomes.

I prefer to include a job description by copying and pasting it into the prompt, but you can also upload the job description. Once the AI has seen it, it will reread it as part of the conversation.

Targeting a job description isn't about keywords, it is about understanding what is important to the role. Once you understand what is important, you can highlight it on your resume.

We learned three things in this course.

1. How to use AI to research dream jobs and dream companies

2. How to use AI to find open dream jobs at dream companies

3. How to use AI to target your resume at your dream job

Thanks for learning with me! If you want to continue learning, visit my website, my YouTube channel, or my page here on Udemy for more courses!

Download the accompanying workbook to start your dream job in no time!

You can also download the slides that I use for the in-person version of this course.