We’ve all heard of ChatGPT, the world’s favorite text-based generative AI, but can it write your next cover letter? Perhaps the better question is, can it write an effective one? Here’s how to use ChatGPT to write a cover letter.
Can ChatGPT write a cover letter?
In short, ChatGPT can write a cover letter or resume. In fact, it can write any kind of text in any tone of voice, writing style, with formatting included which you can edit afterwards. The only trick to getting an effective response is being able to describe objectively and comprehensively what you want. Make sure to check “What is ChatGPT – and what is it used for?” as well as “17 ChatGPT Alternatives in 2023 – free and paid options” for further advice on this topic.
So, it naturally follows that we would want to employ AI to write the most tedious documents in our lives i.e. cover letter writing. During the job search, the time sink of a custom document for each of your job applications is terrible for all involved. Your next employer is looking for you, wasting time on your application only puts a delay on the value you can bring to their organization.
However, cover letters play a useful role in demonstrating your personality, providing a good first impression, and as your opportunity to provide useful context to the experience they see on your CV. A good CV highlights interesting qualifications, shows enthusiasm, and provides clarity on your experience. Is there some way an employer can enjoy all of these benefits without wasting your time? Artificial intelligence may be the answer.
How to use ChatGPT to write a cover letter
We’re going to put together a personalized prompt you can input to a text-based AI like Chat GPT from OpenAI. This AI language model will generate a unique and effective cover letter for each application.
Step
List your unique qualifications
Step one is ensuring your cover letter showcases all the of the important context you want potential employers to know about you. This means evidence of expertise outside of the work experience they already see in your CV. To do this, you’ll write a list of your accomplishments, capabilities, achievements and qualifications that ChatGPT can draw from. So, if you’re a creative professional with freelance experience, you want to tell them about your most impressive clients.
Step
Copy your experience from LinkedIn
While you don’t need to explicitly include the job title you’re looking for, that will naturally appear while describing what you’ve already done and what you hope to do in the future. You can optionally copy the experience section of your linkedin profile to do this.
Step
Copy keywords from the job description
It should also hit all the keywords (job requirements) in the job description (these will be different for each application but with plenty of overlap depending on the specificity of the role you’re after.) Hiring managers and recruiters use a software called ATS (Applicant Tracking Software). Job seekers are sorted into two piles: Those who used the keywords the software checks for, and the discard pile. To do this, we’ll be copy and pasting the job description into ChatGPT as part of your prompt.
Step
Copy the employers website
Ideally, you should mention your potential employer by their company name and explain how you would solve their problems. To do this, we can give ChatGPT the employers website and use that as context.
Step
Paste it all into ChatGPT
Armed with these sets of data, ChatGPT will have all of the information and context required for a custom cover letter. The final step is to write a prompt that tells ChatGPT how to use these sets of data.
Your ChatGPT prompts might look something like this:
“Write a cover letter for a [Your profession] who has [done these things and earned these qualifications] applying for [the job title you want]. The cover letter must include these words: “[keywords you see consistently in the job descriptions of your profession]”. The cover letter must be addressed to [employer company name] and mention something from the following website [company website e.g. about page or mission page].
It’s important to note that, by default ChatGPT doesn’t have access to the internet and therefore cannot read websites via a link. This is possible via plugins, however, and some other text-based AI’s such as Bing Search have this ability by default.
You should always proofread anything from an AI for grammar and typos. However, we are already at the point in history where AI surpasses the average human in these respects, removing human error in addition to accelerating the writing process.
What are the alternatives to ChatGPT for writing a cover letter?
Let’s not forget that cover letter templates have existed for as long as cover letters. This, however, doesn’t solve the problem that AI does. Using a cover letter template provides a useful starting point, guide rails in a sense, but you’ll still have to spend a lot of time writing.
Essential AI Tools
Content Guardian – AI Content Checker – One-click, Eight Checks
Jasper AI
WordAI
Copy.ai
Writesonic
What’s the best AI humanizer for writing a cover letter?
The expectation of a cover letter is that it will be highly personalized. More than that, it is often the first impression your future employer has of your personality. How you write, especially about yourself, will transmit your personality across the internet (in the most accurate and most accessible way, short of assuming that everyone owns a webcam.)
Knowing this, the underlying point of it all, we know what we need from an AI humanizer. We need an AI chatbot that will:
- Write about us, our personal experiences, and relevant context that you won’t find on a CV.
- Connect these things to the job description.
- Use our personal writing style.
Therefore, we need to:
- Write a default paragraph about our personal experiences that would apply to any job we apply for. Paste this into the prompt window.
- Copy and paste the job description into the prompt window after your own paragraph.
- Tell the AI to write a cover letter that relates the former to the latter, in the writing style of the former.
Does the prompt window have space for all this detail? Thankfully yes, ChatGPT has a context window of at between 4K and 32K tokens across the most popular OpenAI models. This means ChatGPT is great at humanizing your AI-generated cover letter.
How do you write a cover letter in a text box?
Simply start typing! It’s advisable to write your cover letter in a document you control, like Google Drive or other cloud storage solution. This way, you have a backup copy you can access from any device, and it won’t get deleted if you refresh the page, close the tab, or turn your computer off. You can then copy and paste this text into any text box.
Can Chatbot write resumes?
Yes, in the same way that chatbots like ChatGPT can write cover letters, they can also write resumes and CVs. Scroll down to our other articles about this!
