Leveraging Generative AI For Job Applications
Conversations on Careers and Professional Life
Release Date: 10/12/2023
Students Reflect on Foster MBA Core Case Competition
Conversations on Careers and Professional Life
In this episode of Conversations on Careers & Professional Life, we go inside the Autumn Quarter Integrated Case Competition at the Foster School of Business—a one-week sprint where MBA teams analyze an acquisition case, submit a written recommendation, and deliver a 25-minute presentation to faculty, alumni, and industry judges. I speak with three students from finalist teams: Nat Fernandes (Class of 2027) – whose team placed third, emphasizing early alignment and organized execution. Josh Gonzales (Class of 2027) – part of the second-place team, highlighting team cohesion built...
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Engage First, Then Inform: A Better Way to Start Any Communication
Conversations on Careers and Professional Life
On this episode I share a principle that shows up again and again in great communication but is often overlooked by professionals: you have to earn attention before you earn understanding. Too many presentations, meetings, and messages begin with dense context, background, or data. But audiences don’t start in “information-processing mode.” They start in attention mode — scanning for relevance. If the opening doesn’t grab them, the content that follows doesn’t land. The core idea of this episode is simple but transformative: Engage first. Then inform. Attention Is the...
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Structure Matters: Why Good Ideas Need Great Organization
Conversations on Careers and Professional Life
Structure isn’t a formatting exercise. It’s the foundation of every clear, persuasive communication. Whether you’re giving a presentation, writing an email, or leading a meeting, structure is the difference between an idea that gets ignored and an idea that creates action. In the latest episode of Conversations on Careers and Professional Life, we explore why structure matters so profoundly — and how leaders, students, and professionals can use it to communicate with more clarity and impact. Why Structure Matters Human beings aren’t wired to process information in random fragments....
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The ABCs of Professional Communication: Active Brief And Clear
Conversations on Careers and Professional Life
On this episode, I cover the ABCs of professional communication, just as I teach them to my MBA students. One of the simplest ways to elevate your professional communication—whether you’re writing an email, pitching a strategy, or presenting to senior leaders—is to filter your message through three words: Active, Brief, and Clear. They sound basic, almost obvious. But in practice, they create a powerful discipline that separates high-quality communicators from everyone else. Active: Own the Message Active communication is energetic, direct, and accountable. It starts with the choice to...
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Logos, Ethos, Pathos: The Ancient Keys to Modern Persuasion
Conversations on Careers and Professional Life
Logos, Ethos, Pathos: The Ancient Keys to Modern Persuasion In this episode of Conversations on Communication, I explore three timeless principles that sit at the heart of all persuasive communication: Logos, Ethos, and Pathos. They come from Aristotle, but their power is as relevant today in an MBA classroom, a boardroom, or a client meeting as it was in ancient Athens. When you learn to apply these three deliberately, your messages become sharper, more credible, and more emotionally resonant. Logos: The Logic of Your Argument Logos is the appeal to logic — the structure and reasoning that...
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Start with the Answer: The Minto Pyramid Principle
Conversations on Careers and Professional Life
In this episode of Conversations on Careers and Professional Life, I explire one of the most powerful frameworks for structuring clear, persuasive business communication: the Minto Pyramid Principle. The framework, created by Barbara Minto at McKinsey, is a simple but transformative way to organize ideas. Think of your communication as a pyramid: At the top is your main point — your recommendation, your answer, your “so what.” Beneath that are the supporting arguments — the key reasons your audience should agree with or believe your main point. At the base are the evidence...
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The AIM Framework
Conversations on Careers and Professional Life
The AIM Framework: The Compass for Every Communication” Welcome to Conversations on Careers and Professional Life, on this series, I’m going to turn lessons from my MBA course, Professional Communication into practical insights you can use every day. I’m Gregory Heller, and today we’re diving into one of the simplest—but most powerful—tools in communication, professional or otherwise: the AIM Framework, outlined by Lynn Russell and Mary Munter. AIM stands for Audience, Intent, and Message. It’s a framework I teach in the very first session of my Professional Communication course,...
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Think Like A Gardener
Conversations on Careers and Professional Life
On this episode, I talk about something that comes up all the time in my coaching sessions with MBA students—and that’s networking. I've talked about it before on the podcast on episode 1202 "Reframe the way you think about networking and asking for help" I'll drop a link in the show notes. I encourage you to go back and give that one a listen. As generative AI has proliferated on both sides of the job search with candidates using it to submit more and more customized applications, and recruiters using it to filter through piles of hundreds or thousands of applicants,...
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Lorraine Rise on the Hidden Job Market, Networking, Values Based Careers, and Using AI in the Job Search
Conversations on Careers and Professional Life
On this episode, I speak with Lorraine Rise, career coach, founder and CEO of Career UpRising and host of the Career UpRising podcast. With a background in federal recruiting, Lorraine has spent a decade empowering mid- and late-career professionals through career pivots and values-driven job searches. We explore: Redefining Networking Learn how shifting from transactional outreach to authentic relationship-building can unlock access to the hidden job market—especially valuable for MBA students and early-career professionals. Values‑Driven Job Search Lorraine shares her framework...
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Job Search Advice From the Back Catalog For Graduation Season
Conversations on Careers and Professional Life
It’s May, and for many of you, that means graduation. Whether you’re finishing your MBA or completing another academic journey, this is a moment filled with possibility—and uncertainty. Especially in today’s job market, it’s natural to feel some anxiety about what comes next. To support you in your job search, I want to point you to a few episodes from the back catalog that offer practical tools and strategies to help you navigate this transition. First up: , author of The 2-Hour Job Search. In our conversation, he breaks down a step-by-step approach to landing interviews...
info_outlineAs you navigate the challenging waters of internship and job searches, your resume and cover letter become your primary ambassadors. But what if I told you there's a tool that can give you an edge? Enter GenerativeAI. Today, we'll dive into how this technology can refine your application materials.
First off, let's talk about the basics. GenerativeAI can be a game-changer in improving the grammar and syntax of your documents. We've all been there – after hours of editing, a pesky grammatical error slips through. With GenerativeAI, those mistakes can be caught and corrected.
But it's not just about grammar. Imagine tailoring your resume's language to mirror a job description or even a company's core values. GenerativeAI can help align your documents in such a way that they resonate more deeply with your prospective employers. It's like having a personal editor who knows exactly what the company is looking for!
However, with great power comes great responsibility. It's crucial to remember that while GenerativeAI is a powerful tool, it's just that – a tool. Ethically, you must ensure that the content it generates genuinely represents your skills, experiences, and qualifications. It can be tempting to let the AI do all the heavy lifting, but authenticity is key. Your resume and cover letter should be genuine reflections of who you are and what you bring to the table.
This brings us to some potential pitfalls. GenerativeAI, as advanced as it is, can sometimes get a little... creative. It might suggest details or skills that sound impressive but aren't accurate. And like all technologies, it can sometimes exhibit biases based on the data it's been trained on. It's essential to review and vet any suggestions it makes critically.
Now, I know some of you might be wondering about the technical side of things. The good news? You don't need to be a tech whiz to leverage GenerativeAI. There are user-friendly platforms out there designed for non-techies. So, whether you're a marketing major or diving deep into finance, this tool is accessible to you.
Before we wrap up, I want to leave you with a challenge. Before you find yourself in the thick of the application season, give GenerativeAI a try. Review your resume or cover letters with it. Experiment, play around, and most importantly, learn how to prompt it effectively. The better your prompts, the more tailored and useful the AI's suggestions will be.
Remember, in today's competitive job market, every edge counts. But no tool, no matter how advanced, can replace the unique experiences, insights, and values you bring. Use GenerativeAI as a complement to your skills, not a replacement.
So, MBA students, are you ready to give your application materials a boost? Dive into the world of GenerativeAI, and let's make those resumes and cover letters shine!
This episode was written with assistance from ChatGPT 4.0, and my voice was synthesized using ElevenLabs.
AI Career Resources:
Follow Jeremy Schifeling on LinkedIn. Without a doubt, Jeremy is at the vanguard of using Generative AI for career search and prep. He is posting great content, tutorials, tools, and even wrote an e-book about using ChatGPT as your career coach.
There are a wide variety of apps and services that have emerged for various career search related tasks from writing cover letters, to developing your resume, to preparing for interviews. I have not used any of them enough to endorse them, other than Yoodli.ai for interview prep. Listen to my podcasts with Yoodli's co-founder Varun Puri, and Yoodli user Priyanka Natrajan (coming soon).
My advice, is to start with the feely available tools from the likes of OpenAI, or Anthropic's Claude, and look for recommended prompts.
Have you tried meta prompting? (HT Matt Westgate and his book, Go Prompt Yourself), before your prompts, add, "What additional information, details or context would help you effectively run this prompt?" This will drastically up your prompting game!
Here are a few that I like to use for developing interview questions:
Act like a hiring manager interviewing a candidate for [insert job] and [company]. Our company values are [insert text from company website]. I would like you to come up with a dozen behavioral interview questions based on the following job description. [insert relevant portions of the job description].
Are you struggling with your resume?
Act like a career coach. Help me revise my resume to better match the following job description [insert job description]. Stand by for my resume. [Insert accomplishment statements from your resume]. ** My recommendation is do do this on statement at a time.
OR, as Jeremy Schifeling has shown on his videos, give chat GPT a job description, ask it to identify the job related key words in that description, then give it your resume and ask which keywords are missing. Then you can ask it to help you rewrite specific accomplishment statements using the missing keywords.
Most people don't know what to write in a cover letter. And some people think you can just say to ChatGPT, "Write me letter for the following job description." This will yield garbage. Add a meta prompt to the front, and then also include relevant information about yourself, your degrees, a few professional highlights, maybe a line or two about why you are really excited about the job. Ask your Generative AI to return a cover letter that is no more than 325 words. Then be sure to edit it. Once you have a letter you feel good about, give that back to ChatGPT so it can learn from you. Check out ALexandra Samuel's newsletter (linked above) for some great cover letter prompts.
How did I make this episode?
I prompted ChatGPT 4.0:
- I am looking for is a plain text description of the text so I can use it to guide further writing. I don't want you to write anything other than a description of the style and voice of the text. How would you describe the style and voice of the following text sample [insert script from another podcast].
- What additional information, context or details would you need to effectively run the following prompt? PROMPT: Using the writing style and voice that you have identified, please write a 500 word script for a podcast about how to effectively use GenerativeAI to improve cover letters and resumes.
- I answered the 8 questions ChatGPT provided, which yielded the following prompt:
- Using the direct, prescriptive, analytical, conversational, structured, credible, and empathetic writing style and voice identified earlier, craft a 500-word script for a 6 to 10-minute podcast aimed at MBA students engaged in an internship or job search. The podcast should focus on how to effectively use GenerativeAI to improve cover letters and resumes. Highlight the capabilities of GenerativeAI in improving grammar and syntax, as well as aligning language with that of a job description or a company's values/principles. Address the ethical considerations, emphasizing the importance of ensuring that the AI-generated content accurately reflects the individual's genuine work experience, skills, and qualifications. Discuss the potential pitfalls, such as the AI's tendency to fabricate information or exhibit biases. Conclude with a call to action, encouraging listeners to experiment with GenerativeAI for their resume or cover letter reviews and emphasizing the importance of refining their prompts to obtain optimal results.
- I ran the prompt, took the script, did some light editing, and then fed it into ElevenLabs where I had already created a voice clone using some podcast monologues I'd already recorded and released.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/J8aN6rXtqaM?si=bbCqTq9IVR34AP0B" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>The video above was generated using HeyGen, after using Insight FaceSwap to swap my face onto a still image from MaxHeadroom.