Will you get what you need with a ChatGPT-generated resume?

Now that ChatGPT has taken the world by storm, you might be wondering about its application in your job search – namely, to write your resume or other materials.

But what are the implications, advantages, or pitfalls you might experience when using ChatGPT for resume writing?

ChatGPT can produce a seemingly robust resume in seconds, potentially eliminating the dreaded task of resume writing from your job search tasks.

A truly compelling resume, however, must use unique content that sets you APART from the competition… ensuring others can’t claim your achievements or own your professional perspective.

The bottom line: No matter if you turn the job of resume writing over to ChatGPT (or its competitors Google Bard and Baidu Ernie), both you and the bot will need to dig deeper to discover your competitive edge.

Consider these scenarios where it can make sense to use ChatGPT to build your resume:

1 – You’re targeting a lower-end role with a ChatGPT resume.

With 10 or less years of experience under your belt, most of your accomplishments and career path should echo that of similar professionals.

For example, most IT security analysts will be able to point out how they’ve engineered or embedded threat detection solutions or worked on intensive monitoring systems. A registered nurse should have a background in hands-on patient care, with a good understanding of safety initiatives.

However, when you’ve amassed a significant amount of experience, your resume (and LinkedIn) should also capture your leadership style, pattern of success, career trajectory, and personal brand reputation.

You’ll find that chatbots can prompt you for individual achievements, but function best as a foundational tool for a resume (as described by Eryn Marshall of Oyster in “ChatGPT writing résumés and cover letters needn’t be feared, HR pros say“), who points out that the “human element” will still be a factor in your job search.

2 – You already know someone at the company, so your ChatGPT-generated resume is a mere formality.

Unlike the hiring process at graphics solutions company Canva, your resume might not need to undergo intensive scrutiny, especially if you were referred for a great opportunity or otherwise leveraged your network and reputation.

But if you’re planning on targeting a role where you’ll face stiff competition and a grueling interview process, think again before cranking out a ChatGPT-generated resume and calling it done.

The text will look professionally done, but will it convey the heart and effort behind YOUR career success?

Recruiters and employers have been unimpressed by bland resumes for years. Most often, these resumes fail to provide the context crucial to describe each candidate’s contributions. Therefore, when you use ChatGPT to write your resume, be ready to supply your own career data – leveraging the app as a resume-writing framework.

As noted by Cliff Jurkiewicz in “Should you use ChatGPT to apply for Jobs?” on FastCompany, “ChatGPT is just another tool that requires input to create something.”

3 – You have a straight-line career path that needs minimal explanation.

If your career aligns with the typical trajectory in your field, using ChatGPT to write your resume can make sense. Each job description and bullet will emphasize your successive wins and roles.

If your career has taken a few left turns, however, it’s important to build a writing strategy that describes your penchant for your field, echoes your leadership philosophy, and helps employers realize why you’re a good fit despite some bumps in the road.

These steps are crucial when presenting a work history with gaps, career detours, or other setbacks, where you might need:

• Your last several jobs to appear on the first page (where they can take center stage). If this is the case, each entry must be short and crisp. ChatGPT does NOT produce tight content (see point #5).
• A strategy for explaining how your career path adds up to a new, high-level role that could be a slight detour from your previous experience.
• Formatting that helps feature some experience over others, especially if you’re aiming for a position reflecting only a segment of your skills.
• Brief explanations of new industry keywords or trends.

If you’ve encountered these issues, you already know you need a plan to address them.

So keep in mind you may need a compelling way to craft your STORY, not just assemble the components piece by piece.

4 – You’re pursuing a role commonly found in job descriptions (familiar to ChatGPT).

Targeting an operations manager, chef, or medical technician position? Chat apps can dig up and leverage MILLIONS of related job descriptions before you can even blink.

However, there’s only one Chief Executive Officer in many healthcare systems, manufacturing corporations, yacht design companies, or wholesale golf distributors.

The more esoteric your career pursuits, the more difficult it will be for ChatGPT to train itself to provide  the distinguishing content needed for your resume.

In Should You Write Your Own Executive Resume?, you’ll see that the task of setting yourself apart requires some introspective thought about your personal brand and career contributions.

You must answer the tough questions likely to be posed in an interview – and get that compelling story on paper! This is true whether you rely on a professional writer, chatbot, or resume template, and even MORE important when you’re approaching or targeting the C-suite.

5 – You don’t mind taking the time to edit ChatGPT-generated text.

Prompting ChatGPT for resume content will produce lengthy, often generic sentences. The problem? Most recruiters and employers aren’t interested in navigating a dense thicket of words to see your ROI.

In 2023,  your resume must hit the mark quickly – while DIFFERENTIATING you. If you’re unsure how to make each sentence your own, or how to roll up each bullet without losing its meaning, you may need more help than a bot can supply.

The verdict?

Use chatbots like ChatGPT to write your resume if you’re comfortable gathering the detailed and salient information that really answers the tool’s prompts – and if you’re focused on cohesion in your career story.

Then, you’ll need to spend more time fine-tuning the results to fit your target pursuits – ensuring your final resume is powerful enough to support your ascent to the top.

Concerned about showing an employment gap on your resume?

Life happens and work gaps happen, too.

Executives, just like other candidates, often experience lapses in employment due to job searches, board work, illness, layoffs, downsizing, performance, and of course, COVID.

Your resume, however, is meant to be an impressive picture of your accomplishments, value proposition, and skills – NOT the place to bring up a potentially negative aspect of your work history.

So how DO you explain a gap in employment?

Here are 5 strategies for handling the gap – both on your resume AND in your interviews:

1 – Realize that gaps in employment aren’t rare.

You aren’t the only leader facing this issue.

Maybe you lost your passion for the industry – or realized the company was headed for troubled times. Some executives find themselves job hunting after realizing their employer had a much different cultural, financial, or leadership philosophy (see Regret Taking Your New Job? What to Do Next).

Business Insider even suggested applicants with resume gaps should be seen as more valuable, as they have often experienced a period of upskilling, self-reflection, or career exploration.

Of course, layoffs, mergers, or restructuring inevitably hit many industries in 2023. All of these situations are, unfortunately, VERY common.

You may also find attitudes toward gaps have softened (as a similar shift has occurred with hybrid work). Your gap is probably not the huge issue you might think it is.

No matter what the cause, most gaps are easier to explain in person during your interview – and some won’t even come up, especially if years have passed since you left.

2 – Add a brief note to your resume if your gap occurred during COVID.

If you were unemployed between 2020 and 2022, you have plenty of company.

The pandemic and its impact on business disrupted many operations and left businesses reeling – with little opportunity to recover.

Many executives and senior leaders worked hard to keep the company afloat during this unprecedented time. When revenue tanked, costs soared, or supply chain issues surfaced, you may have needed to shut the doors or scale back teams.

If this happened to you, a COVID gap can be easily noted on your resume, with an entry such as “Left operation after COVID-related shutdown” under the description of your job.

Depending on the pandemic’s effect (especially in retail or restaurant businesses), you might not even need to mention why the operation didn’t survive.

3 – Leave a long-ago gap for discussion during your interviews.

You may fear disclosing a gap in your work history, no matter when it occurred.

However, it’s likely that recruiters or employers aren’t as concerned about a long-ago gap as you are. Downsizing and industry changes have become so common that you might not find it necessary to mention a lull in employment.

Here are situations where a gap from 6+ years ago may NOT be relevant (and you don’t need a resume entry for it):

• You transitioned from one leadership role to the next, but were unemployed for a few months while job hunting;
• Your executive team experienced a reorganization, and while it took a while to find your next job, you’ve been employed steadily for the last several years;
• Most of your industry or company took a substantial hit due to circumstances beyond your control (such as the fallout from a previous recession), and nearly everyone was unemployed at that time.

In these cases, try leaving your work gap to be discussed during the interview (and plan to be ready with a brief summary).

Resist the urge to over-explain on your resume or LinkedIn Profile, unless you are presented with evidence that these gaps are hurting your job search.

4 – Take action if a recent (non-COVID) gap could affect your brand.

Perhaps you left a former employer of your own accord in recent years, then went back to work. In this case, you SHOULD mention the gap on your resume.

It’s best to show this time between employers as a positive career step. For example, your work history can show an entry called Sabbatical or Master’s Degree Studies that covers the time you took to upskill, work on a special project, or attend an educational program.

You could also use Family Care to describe how you managed the needs of children, tended to an ailing relative, served as executor of an estate, or handled similar scenarios.

Don’t worry about the implications of these situations. Recruiters and employers have seen these circumstances before; you didn’t invent them!

Whatever you use, stick to the TRUTH and use a simple, concise description. (If your situation was more complex, such as incarceration or extended layoffs, consider working with a career coach to come up with an overall plan.)

The idea is to offer employers a glimpse of what may have happened, without dwelling too heavily on this aberration in your career.

5 – Bring the focus back to your personal brand.

Even if an employer comments on your break in employment, your BEST interview and job-search strategy is to emphasize what you OFFER.

If you’re prepared with a synopsis of your gap – coupled with reasons you can drive revenue, growth strategy, compliance, or technology modernization – this part of your employment will be less important.

As an example, consider these interview statements that place emphasis on the executive’s future contributions:

“It’s true that I left the manufacturing industry during a family situation that is no longer a factor in my life. I’m ready to continue delivering the same level of insight and change that took 6 of our regions to the top of the market.”

“Taking a sabbatical to re-center my career into non-profit was the best move I ever made. Combined with my development experience raising more than $7M in 2 different companies, I’m ready to lead the $25M in growth important to you today.”

The bottom line: no matter when and how your gap occurred, it may not be a deal breaker to employers.

Your executive resume and LinkedIn presence should ALWAYS emphasize capable leadership and a strong value proposition, rather than draw attention to unrelated periods in your career.

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Updating LinkedIn for a stealth job search? 

How can you make it look like you don’t have a foot out the door?

Maybe you don’t want the boss to think you’re looking around, but you’d like to promote your skills for a next-level opportunity.

In 7 Must Know LinkedIn Tips for Executives, I cover ways you can put yourself “out there” at the start of your job search.

Keep these other things in mind when updating LinkedIn on the down low:

Your boss and teams are probably updating LinkedIn, too.

There’s now more than 10 million C-suite executives on LinkedIn, according to these LinkedIn demographics, with more joining every day.

In short, if you’re on LinkedIn, so is your boss – and they’re updating their Profile continually or considering it.

Your colleagues are also likely combing LinkedIn to see what co-workers are doing, and wondering how to properly adjust their own profiles while employed. (There’s nothing stopping you from joining them by looking at how they’ve described their own backgrounds.)

Your first step, described in 5 Steps to a Best-in-Class Executive LinkedIn Profile, is to add a LOT more content, which can benefit you by educating employers on your value proposition and making your profile findable on more keywords.

While you’re updating your own profile, keep an eye on whether your executive team and colleagues are doing the same  – and you’ll probably spot some revisions on their end, too.

Your LinkedIn update can promote your employer as well as your own career.

If you fear the boss looking over your shoulder, relax. Your LinkedIn profile can tout your expertise AND the company’s reputation at the same time, to everyone’s benefit.

First, think about how to market your employer’s value proposition and your role in it. Start by answering these questions:

• What product or service does your employer deliver, and what type of positive reputation do they have for doing it?
• How has your work helped them stay competitive or innovative in the field?
• If you met someone at an industry conference, what would you tell them about your employer?
• How would you describe your impact or legacy in the industry? In your team?

Then, turn these answers into a synopsis (for your About or Experience sections) that benefits both YOU and YOUR EMPLOYER, such as this example:

As Chief Revenue Officer for XYZ Company, I work behind the scenes to ensure our sales teams completely understand the B2B market for sheet metal components.

By partnering with suppliers on steel and fabrication requirements, we’ve created trend-setting, innovative products. Our sales and revenue metrics reflect a #1 ranking among major residential and commercial customers.

My role as CRO demands an insider’s view of product strategy, growth opportunities, lead generation, and marketing, enabling me to collaborate with senior executives and build a data-driven organization.

We strive to create a positive customer experience with the right talent, sales enablement, and integrity that has positioned XYZ as the premier source for quality building and roofing products.

This About section for a Chief Revenue Officer describes a company-focused and driven leader with the right skills to take the company forward – and to satisfy the needs of prospective employers.

Note the KEYWORDS added throughout this section, which help strengthen this executive’s searchability by recruiters.

Your LinkedIn update should, however, go light on confidential metrics.

Your resume and LinkedIn Profile are used differently: you can distribute your resume confidentially, but you can’t take back company secrets after they’re published on LinkedIn.

So, it’s best to tune your Profile to avoid disclosing confidential details on LinkedIn (even if you’re adding the same data to your resume).

Think about it: if you’re describing extensive turnarounds or transformation projects, this could imply that your employer is struggling. Showing how you’ve improved productivity might also show that your company doesn’t hire strong teams.

To decide how to update your LinkedIn Profile without giving away corporate secrets, consider the following:

• Are there sensitive projects (such as a restructuring) you shouldn’t mention online?
• Do your achievements contain metrics, such as revenue or new customer volume, that are only known to company insiders?
• Would any of your accomplishments tip off competitors and give them an unfair advantage?
• Have you participated in “undercover” growth initiatives or M&A strategies not yet announced?

If any of these are true, consider removing the details or referencing them in a more “general” manner.

Your LinkedIn account should ALWAYS use a personal email, NOT a company email address.

You may have provided your company email address when signing up for LinkedIn, but if you haven’t changed it, now’s the time.

Your employer can not only see any email coming into your account (including any messages related to your job search), but could also take ownership of your account, making it inaccessible to you!

So switch over to a different address while your job search is just getting underway. This guide will help you change your primary LinkedIn email address.

Your future self (who may soon be employed elsewhere) will thank you.

To summarize, updating your LinkedIn Profile while you’re still employed is a great idea – and a common step for many leaders in today’s job market.

Take a moment to ensure you’ve portrayed BOTH you and your employer in the best light, even while searching for a perfect-fit new job.

Job searching with decades of experience to offer?  Great!

Leading with your age? Not so great.

No matter your field, you’ll eventually find yourself among the older workers. This isn’t a problem – unless you’re holding tight to outdated beliefs.

Take a look at these ways you could be making your age an issue in the job search, with ways to refresh your approach:

Using a resume that describes work history from 20+ years ago.

It’s common for most employers to expect approximately 10-15 years of detail in a resume, with the rest summarized for relevance. Yet, it can be difficult to trim off seemingly important details.

Career coach Yolanda Owens describes this conundrum in How Far Back Should Your Resume Go? Here’s How to Decide, saying it’s best to keep your work history brief and easy to skim. “Age proofing” your resume by trimming it to relevant details can be a key step to avoid having your resume tossed out.

Try condensing specifics in your resume summary, or rolling them up at the end of your work history, but ONLY if they’re related to the job you want (see How Long Should Your Resume Be?).

For example, “Closed major technology win at Fortune 500 CPG manufacturer” could be a great tie-in for a sales leadership job, no matter when it happened.

Giving long, rambling answers to interviewer questions.

In the rapid pace of today’s job market and digital communications, you’d better make your case succinctly. 

According to Jennifer Scupi of Interview Genie in How Long Should Your Interview Answers Be?, it’s a good idea to limit most of your interview answers to 2-3 minutes, even for complex subjects.

To get yourself into the mode of shorter interview answers, record practice interviews where you’re answering common questions such as “Tell me about yourself” or “Why should we hire you?” These sessions will help you review the timing for each topic and help you condense responses where needed.

Displaying an outdated headshot on LinkedIn.

It’s important to have an up-to-date approach and relevant style in the images you use online. After all, this is a core component of your personal brand.

(If you’re not even USING LinkedIn, read what Bob McIntosh has to say in 4 Areas in Your Job Search Where You’re Broadcasting Your Age.)

Consider adding a professional headshot, a casual photo within a work setting, or even an outdoor shot. The idea is to give viewers a glimpse of your personality and build a trusting bond.

If in doubt, look at Profiles of the industry leaders you’d want to emulate; you’ll see some trends in their attire, demeanor, and background settings that may work for your photo.

LinkedIn also allows you to choose a background image that appears behind your photo. By using a fresh, current image from low-cost or free stock photo websites like Canva, Pexels, or Dreamstime, you’ll show your energy for your work and project an image consistent with your qualifications.

Possessing a demeanor that puts off younger interviewers.

Decades of experience can make you feel as if you must explain complex concepts in minute detail to anyone younger than you.

Yet, these attempts to thwart age bias could actually work against you.

Jessica Nordell describes various types of unconscious bias and age discrimination in The End of Bias: A Beginning, noting that pervasive assumptions about age, gender, or ethnicity can interfere with communication.

It’s important to carefully assess your interviewing style to acknowledge and eradicate any internal stereotyping before speaking to company representatives.

Also, take time to reflect on whether you’re unwittingly conveying a lack of confidence based on your age – and ensure you’re focused on the ROI you provide to employers (in your interviews, LinkedIn Profile, and resume).

Expressing frustration with emerging technologies.

It doesn’t matter what solutions are used at a prospective new workplace. You’re best off not disparaging them.

The good news is you can quickly pick up technology skills from online platforms, enabling you to brush up on collaboration, project management, virtual whiteboard, or other new tools (such as Basecamp, Flock, Slack, or others).

Many companies offering these products will let you sign up for free webinars, and they’ll also provide online guides, Help Centers, and other ways to get up to speed.

These new competencies can carry you with confidence through the interview stages – and into the first days on the new job.

To summarize, the way you convey your qualifications and promote your value can make a huge difference in the outcome of your job search.

Take conscious steps to show employers your readiness and fit in their organizations.