When it comes to artificial intelligence or AI, job seekers often worry about it replacing potential jobs or making some of their skills irrelevant. But can it be harnessed by job seekers to enhance their job search? Here’s 5 ways you can use AI in your job search to make your results more effective, including prompts to try out.

1. Use AI as a Career Coach or Optimize Your Resume

Using AI to help you refine your career path can be useful for both job seekers and professionals looking to move ahead in their current role. You can use various ‘prompts’ or instructions to ask an AI like Chat-GPT to assist your process.

• Either using the free version of Chat-GPT or Microsoft Copilot, ask the AI to act as an expert in career coaching for your field “Imagine you are an expert in career coaching for x field, and I have x years’ of experience. Help me outline a plan to change jobs seeking a position that pays x in x field.”

Adjust the prompt to meet your own criteria, entering your personal experience and type of job you are seeking.

• Upload your resume to have the ‘career coach’ identify ways to optimize it

Continuing your chat, upload your current resume and ask the coach to optimize it for the role you are seeking. You can start the chat with ‘I’d like to update my resume to optimize it for x role, analyze and make suggestions based on my current resume [Insert resume in brackets]

2. Use AI to Update Your Professional Branding

You can optimize your LinkedIn account or other profiles online with the help of AI. Just focus on what you wish to accomplish with your optimization. Do you want to attract a more senior position? Would you like to work with a different type of company or change careers? Do you want to emphasize a particular area of expertise? It’s up to you.

• Prompt your AI of choice with something basic if you don’t know the answers to the above question “Imagine you are an social media marketer with expertise in optimizing job seekers on LinkedIn. Optimize my profile to emphasize my passion for x skillset.”
• Another prompt might be “Suggest changes I should make to my LinkedIn profile to make me stand out among other job applicants.”

3. Use AI for Interview Preparation

Let’s say everything is going well and you have a few interviews set up. You can use AI to help coach you through the interview process to great success. The name of the game is asking for help in areas that you struggle with, or how to answer common interview questions.

• Give the AI a prompt to help you lay the groundwork in your interview. “Imagine you are an expert interviewer for a company in x field. Help me get ready for my interview with x company by asking me common interview questions. I’ll type my response, then provide suggestions to help me relax and improve my response to have a better interview.”
• If there is a particular issue with your work history you need to cover, include it in your prompt -“help me explain my employment gap in a way that will improve my chances of being considered for x role.”
• Depending on the AI model you use, some can and some cannot search the web. Use an AI that can to help you research the company you are applying for. Google’s Gemini and Microsoft CoPilot can both help with this process. A simple prompt for this action is ‘I have an interview scheduled for [company name] in [company location] – can you research this employer and provide a summary?

4. Use AI to Help Dress for Success

This one is a bit more fun than the others. You can ask AI or make use of AI Stylist apps like Style DNA to help you upgrade your look for the interview process.

• Give the AI a prompt to act as a stylist and suggest 1-2 interview outfits that will work for the season you are in: “imagine you are an expert in personal style and have a budget of $x, suggest 2-3 options for a professional interview outfit that will work for a [gender] interviewing for [role].”
• Tools like Amazon’s Shop the Look can help you translate something you see into an actual purchase.
• You can even use items from your current wardrobe and simply describe them to AI to come up with some combinations that work.

5. Use AI to Brainstorm Networking Opportunities

• Networking Assistance: AI can help you identify valuable networking opportunities by analyzing your career goals and existing networks to suggest connections who can offer relevant advice or job leads. Some AI tools integrate with professional social networks like LinkedIn to recommend the most strategic connections to seek out.

Lastly, don’t forget with use of AI, there can be some misinformation – called hallucinations – that are artifacts of the training the AI tool went through. Some tools are better than others, and in all cases, you should defer to your human intelligence first and foremost. One bonus way you can use AI is in the particularly challenging part of the job search process – maintaining positivity. You can ask the AI tool to ‘give me a pep talk to stay positive during my job search’ or you can call out any issues you are having ‘I’m having trouble creating success stories from this particular job on my resume.’ Oftentimes, when things didn’t go well, or you faced challenges at a job, the biggest outcome was a lesson learned. Remember that every job seeker has faced challenges and life happens.

Good luck in your job search, and to learn more about AI, follow this AI topic thread.