Creating an Amazing Custom Tailored Cover Letter Using ChatGPT and This Simple Little Tool

Does anyone like writing cover letters?

I’m sure there are some but I would bet that most people do not enjoy the process of writing cover letter after cover letter as they search for their next position on their career path. BUT you still want that cover letter to be impressive, unique, tailored to the specific job that it completely blows the pants off the person tasked to read it.

Well ChatGPT is here to make the process a lot easier, and frankly better than what I personally could write in a letter about myself. Sorry professional cover letter writers, the bots may have found their next industry victim.

It’s About the Prompt

So if you are just here for the good stuff and are wanting to get this thing rolling – TLDR is use this ChatGPT prompt tool and plug the prompt it gives you into ChatGPT, read and refine the results, rinse and repeat. For the rest of us not living our lives in the fast lane let’s continue (it will be worth it…we will learns some new stuff together!).

To get a quality cover letter out of the chat bot you gotta give it the goods. It needs some juice to squeeze if it is going to give you the result you crave. Prompt engineering right? You have heard that before…the job of the future. It’s pretty easy actually so lets get started.

I use a basic formula like so:

Good afternoon great lord AI I come to you with a humble request. Please write a [style of the coverletter like professional or quirky, or funny – needs to match the job you are applying for] cover letter. I am applying for the job of [Job Title] at [name of the company you are applying to]. My related experience is [job 1 years] years at [job one] and [job 2 years] years at [job two]. I graduated from [highest education here]. I really want the job because of [one sentence about why you want the job]

This formula will work well for 95% of jobs. Notice I treat the AI as polite and flattering as possible which I believe provides better outputs. The more you tailor the prompt to the job at hand the better the output will be. For example if you want to mention some specific related experience of skills you have then you should specify that in the prompt adding something like:

Include the fact that I have a deep passion for golfing since this is a golfing products company [or whatever it might be related to the job].

Shining Up the Cover Letter

ChatGPT will give you a pretty good start with the right prompt but no matter how good the prompt it is vital to actually read the cover letter. Take a hot minute and read each line of the cover letter and make sure it makes sense and would be something that grabs the attention and highlights you well for the specific job you are applying for.

There are some common things to look out for:

• Inaccurate Information: ChatGPT may make things up about you that are not true. You don’t want to lie (I’m assuming) and so you want to make sure everything in the cover letter is true and you can back it up.
• Unrelated Information: You may find things added to the cover letter that don’t really apply to the job you are looking at. Make sure if the cover letter is highlighting one aspect of your skills heavily that it makes sense for the job you are applying for.
• Lack of Human Touch: Some of the phrases the bot will come up with will just sound like a robot wrote it. Sometime you might have to rewrite parts of the cover letter to give it just a little bit of a human touch. If you read something and have a feeling it sounds robotic it probably does and could use a rewrite.
• Repetitive content: AI sometimes gets a little chatty and can repeat itself. You don’t want to say the same thing over and over again in a cover letter. You want it short and sweet and to pack a punch. Remove anything that seems repetitive.
  

The big thing is…read the cover letter. Don’t just send it out and expect it to be perfect…yet.

Maybe Try a Preprompt

If you don’t get the results you are looking for you may need to preprompt. I only call it this because I don’t have another name for it that I am aware of. Basically you are just going to tell ChatGPT a few details before you feed it the prompt to generate the cover letter. So for example I might tell the AI something like this:

Hello and good day. I am a professional [your niche] with many years experience in [skill to highligh, like project management]. I am really excited to start a new job at [company you are applying for] but first I need to get an interview. Please remember this for me when I ask you my next question.

After you enter this prompt it should come back saying something like “Of course…I am here to help…what can I help with?” At that point you enter the cover letter request with one addition.

Taking into account the above please [paste the cover letter prompt]. This may help give your generated cover letter a little bump.

Feedback and Conclusions

ChatGPT is perfect for something like a cover letter. There are many ways to get the results you want without having to put in the effort writing each letter by hand would take. When you are applying to hundreds of jobs using tools like this can give you a big time advantage and can hopefully make you stand out from the crowd.

Do you have a better way or perhaps an improvement to our tool? I would love to hear your feedback with a comment below! Let me know you successes, failures, and problems you have along the way!