How to Write a Cover Letter with ChatGPT

The shift to remote work and the Great Resignation have opened up the job market, but current working conditions have put power back in the hands of corporations. Massive layoffs and hiring freezes mean much more competition in the market, making it harder and longer to find a new job.

Applying for a job is difficult and time-consuming, and it’s tempting to use the ‘Quick Apply’ button and attach a generic cover letter to each application – but that won’t get you started in this market. But it is also not realistic to carefully draft a new cover letter for every job when you are faced with thousands of applicants.

There’s a third option: use artificial intelligence to customize your cover letters. Save time, stand out in a saturated market and arrange a job interview.

The AI ​​tool I used to try this out is ChatGPT, which stunned the world when it released in November 2022 (you can read our hands-on review of ChatGPT and Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity on CNET’s AI Atlas hub ). If this is your first time using AI, it makes sense to start with the tool that made AI mainstream.

Here’s how to use ChatGPT for the job. I’ll walk you through the process, pointers, and productivity tips (and a potential problem to watch out for) to improve your applications and your opportunities.

Read more: Job Searching with AI: 7 Techniques We Tried and How They Work

Creating a custom cover letter

If you’ve ever tried to write a cover letter, it’s hard enough to summarize your entire career on one page, let alone customize it for each position.

Your resume presents your hard skills, and your cover letter showcases your soft skills: the skills that you can shape with keywords to match what a company is asking for in its job advertisement.

Getting started with ChatGPT

You will need an account with ChatGPT, the cover letter, your CV and a previous cover letter, if you have one.

You can use a free version of ChatGPT like me or pay $20 per month for additional features like the latest models, priority access during peak usage, and image generation.

The first prompt

Your first question might be something like, “Can you please help me write an application for the role of reporter on The Wall Street Journal’s automotive team? Here’s the job description: [paste job description] And here is my CV: [paste resume].”

I immediately noticed a major problem on my first try: ChatGPT had been hallucinating. It conflated some of my experience, correctly citing the publications I’ve written for and the topics I’ve reported on, but incorrectly — very, very incorrectly — with made-up stories (see yellow highlights).

If I don’t change anything else in my motivation letter, I will certainly fix it.

The cover letter was also too long for my liking, so you could give ChatGPT a word limit or ask it to remove certain things.

Then I also asked ChatGPT to highlight the top five keywords I would use in my cover letter for a reporter role on The Wall Street Journal’s automotive team, and this is what I got:

Follow-up instructions

I then asked ChatGPT to include these keywords in my cover letter. I’ve chosen my top three.

Fast: “Remove the five bullet points and incorporate the following keywords into my experience: scoops, breaking news, and business and financial reporting.”

We’re getting there slowly.

Since the role requires technology and financial reporting experience, I pushed ChatGPT to focus on my work at NerdWallet and previous reporting at the MIT Tech Review.

Fast: “Highlight my experience reporting on emerging technology and personal finance for outlets like NerdWallet and MIT Tech Review.”

With a solid foundation I could now adjust the tone. It still didn’t feel like me, and I wanted it to be tighter, but more conversational and eloquent.

Fast: “Rewrite in a more conversational tone, with shorter sentences and without repetition. Eloquent, exciting and worldly.”

This style prompt reduced it by 30% to this:

You can work on it further in ChatGPT, but I did my final adjustments manually, which allowed me to blend in my personality.

Finish

Copy the content to a separate Word or Google document to change the language to suit your voice. For example, change “Dear Hiring Manager” to “Dear [company] recruiting team” and remove any weird lines you’d never actually say, like “is a prospect I enjoy.” And be sure to look through any other oddities ChatGPT may have hallucinated.

Here was my final ChatGPT plus me version. I took out the branding work because it’s a reporter role and spruced it up to my taste.

While the tone of what ChatGPT returns for your cover letter should mimic your personality, you can set it higher or lower to match the company’s voice, atmosphere, and vision. Let ChatGPT show you off, then all you have to do is shape it, style it and send it.

For more AI tips, check out how to use Midjourney to create custom wedding invitations and how to use AI (or not) to build your budget.