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I Asked ChatGPT-4 to Rewrite My Resume. Here’s What Happened was originally published on Forage.
The buzz around ChatGPT continues. With the latest iteration, ChatGPT-4, everyone is wondering what comes next. Has it improved since the last version? Does it write better resumes? Can it improve yours? We put ChatGPT-4 to the test, and while it’s better, there’s still room for improvement.
- Where We Were: ChatGPT-3.5
- Where We Are Now: ChatGPT-4
- Testing ChatGPT-4 With a Real Resume
- Should You Let ChatGPT-4 Write Your Resume?
Where We Were: ChatGPT-3.5
In our first round of experiments, we asked ChatGPT to write various resumes. Overall, the results were OK but broad and included “hallucinations.” The bot created something that seemed plausible but had no basis in reality. In this case, ChatGPT-3.5 invented skills and abilities for our job seekers even though we never included any in the initial inputs.
But that was (we learned) expected. We gave ChatGPT broad prompts, so it did the best it could. And with some experimentation, we learned that the more specific the prompt, the better the output.
Overall, our recommendation (and that of our experts) was to only use ChatGPT as an assistant when writing your resume. Because ChatGPT “makes stuff up” and can be inconsistent, it’s unwise to take what ChatGPT gives you and present it as your own when applying for a job.
Where We Are Now: ChatGPT-4
With the release of ChatGPT-4, we wondered if the latest version would produce better resumes (and if that’s worth $20 a month).
ChatGPT-4’s Resume for an Entry-Level Financial Analyst
Our first ask was for a resume for an entry-level financial analyst. Here’s what ChatGPT-4 produced:
The first observation is that this is a very long resume. It took approximately five screenshots to capture everything, compared to two screenshots in earlier versions. When we put the output in a Google doc and formatted it (Arial font, size 11), it was just over three pages long.
>>MORE: How Long Should a Resume Be in 2022?
Second, ChatGPT-4 continues to include things you don’t need on a resume, like a full address, “references available upon request,” and an objective. There’s nothing wrong with including them, but they take up valuable real estate on a short document. You’re better off including information about your abilities and outcomes than mentioning that you have professional references ready to go.
Third, ChatGPT-4 placed the education section ahead of the experience section. While this isn’t “wrong,” you generally only put education ahead of experience on a curriculum vitae (CV). Recruiters are usually more interested in your skills and abilities than where you went to school.
Fourth, the skills section on this resume is broken into two categories, like what you might do on a functional resume. However, this takes up a lot of space. The section is “Skills,” and that’s subdivided into “Technical,” “Quantitative and Analytical Skills, and “Communication and Teamwork.” While separating your hard and soft skills might be helpful to the reader, you’re probably better off condensing this section into something smaller or including it as part of the professional summary.
>>MORE: 7 Types of Resumes: Which Is Right for You?
The skills section also doesn’t include quantifiable results. Mentioning strong Excel skills (like PivotTables) is a smart idea. But you need to explain how you use your Excel skills at work or in school. And it’s better to link your skills to a specific job or educational experience (like a project) whenever possible. This helps the reader understand where you learned the skills. Did you learn them on the job or teach yourself?
And finally, this resume includes many hallucinations. We were expecting that, though, and are willing to say that ChatGPT-4 may be trying its best to fill in the gaps or generate an outline of ideas and suggestions for us to follow and fill in with our own experiences.
ChatGPT-4’s Resume for an Entry-Level Programmer
Then, we asked for an entry-level resume for a programmer. The results were very similar to our financial analyst’s entry-level resume:
We noticed many of the same issues: it’s very long, there are things you don’t need to include, education comes ahead of experience, and it has hallucinations.
ChatGPT-4’s Resume for a Pirate Deckhand
Of course, we couldn’t conduct our experiment without asking ChatGPT-4 for a pirate deckhand resume:
While this resume is shorter, it contains many of the same concerns. However, ChatGPT-4 does a better job of explaining how this deckhand uses their skills for the good of the entire crew compared to the earlier version.
Take a look at the “Skills and Abilities” section. First, the skills and abilities are numbered, which you wouldn’t normally do on a resume. But look at number six: Lookout duties. This is neither a skill nor an ability. It’s a job duty. Though it’s in the wrong section (or the section is mislabeled), the resume explains how the deckhand uses their skills and abilities to help the team:
Lookout duties: Keen eyesight and attention to detail, ensuring the timely identification of potential threats or targets.
While a bit clunky, this isn’t bad. It’s a decent example of quantifying your abilities into measurable results. A better version might be:
Keen eyesight and attention to detail: Ensure timely identification of potential threats or targets while on lookout duty.
The rewrite emphasizes your skills first, how you used your skills to help the team, and then mentions the duties of the role.
Not bad ChatGPT-4. Not bad at all.
>>MORE: Learn how to write a resume without AI. Enroll in Forage’s Resume Writing Masterclass.
Testing ChatGPT-4 With a Real Resume
Asking ChatGPT-4 to whip up a resume is fun and potentially a time saver. But, as we’ve seen, Chat-GPT 4 still hallucinates. Of course, none of these examples are for real people, which could explain the made-up information.
So, what happens when you put a real resume in ChatGPT-4 and ask it to make improvements?
I put my resume to the test and asked how ChatGPT-4 would improve it.
How ChatGPT-4 Rewrote My Resume
ChatGPT-4 rewrote my professional summary. It went from this:
to this:
I have to admit, I like some of the edits. It packs in a lot of information with less fluff than the original. However, I am not an SEO specialist, and I do not write the most compelling headlines (ask my editor!). I would not be comfortable including what ChatGPT-4 wrote about my abilities here.
Also of note, the output included my skills section as part of my professional summary. In the original, the skills are just below the summary, but I don’t have a header for that section to help save space. It’s interesting that ChatGPT-4 did not catch this line break.
I also noticed that ChatGPT-4 wrote the entire resume in past tense. That’s fine for my previous positions but not my current one. I’m doing all those things right now!
Finally, ChatGPT-4 rewrote a bullet point for a specific job. I had “Produce content according to calendar due dates.” That’s not fantastic (and I could do better), but it is accurate. ChatGPT-4 changed it to “Managed content production calendar.” What ChatGPT-4 wrote is an improvement (and exactly what I asked it to do), but it’s not true. Not at all.
Improving ChatGPT-4’s Improvements
Though ChatGPT-4 had a ton of information from me, I did not give it a precise instruction. So, I tried drilling down my inputs a bit to see if I could improve ChatGPT-4’s improvements.
I asked it to rewrite a very messy bullet point:
Some of this output is excellent (“flawless functionality”), but it should be three bullet points. That said, I understand why ChatGPT-4 went this route. The input includes a lot of information. It’s essentially a “brain dump” of a project I’m leading and includes multiple tasks that should be separate bullet points. Too much messy information as an input resulted in an output that wasn’t quite what I was looking for.
I feel your pain ChatGPT-4. You did the best you could with what I gave you.
I tried again with a different bullet point. I picked this specific bullet because it’s short but doesn’t include any outcomes or explain the importance of locating and interviewing subject matter experts:
This is pretty good. It’s a little over the top but is a fair assessment of the process. It does a decent job explaining how I reach out to experts and why I interview them for articles. My only complaint is it’s too long for a bullet point and would need some pairing down before landing on my resume.
After some experimentation, I decided that part of the problem with relying on ChatGPT-4 to write my resume is that it seems to make assumptions based on the input. For example, I asked ChatGPT-4 to write a bullet point about my SEO writing:
This is both accurate and inaccurate. I do integrate the target keyword seamlessly and use internal linking. However, ChatGPT-4’s rewrite also describes how I use on-page SEO techniques like meta statements and header tags, and how I conducted “comprehensive keyword research.”
While these activities are part of effective SEO writing, in that particular role, I didn’t do any of that. I think ChatGPT-4 was making assumptions based on my inclusion of “SEO.” So, I asked ChatGPT-4 to try again, only this time, I specified what aspects of SEO it should ignore:
This is a little better. It removes the “hallucinations” of what I was doing in that role. However, I’d probably delete the second part of the bullet. I did not have access to the metrics and cannot confirm if my SEO writing did improve rankings, increased traffic, or elevate content visibility and discoverability (but I hope it did!).
Should You Let ChatGPT-4 Write Your Resume?
I had ChatGPT-4 rewrite other bullet points from my resume. In general, they were decent but not spectacular. It took several tries to get an output that didn’t overstate or inflate what I was doing and even more tries to ensure ChatGPT-4 didn’t include things I didn’t do. Given how much time I spent redirecting ChatGPT-4, I might have been better off using the initial output as a draft and rewriting my resume from there.
That said, I’m a professional writer, and you may not be. So, should you let ChatGPT-4 write your resume?
If you’re having trouble getting started or need help rewriting a messy bullet point, ChatGPT-4 can be an excellent writing prompt, outline generator, and general guide to help you write your resume. But you still should not rely on the output. ChatGPT-4 continues to hallucinate — sometimes despite your best efforts. And if you include these hallucinations on your resume, you may find yourself in an interview talking about skills and abilities you don’t actually possess.
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The post I Asked ChatGPT-4 to Rewrite My Resume. Here’s What Happened appeared first on Forage.
