How to Prepare for a Job Interview with ChatGPT
Looking to build confidence in your job search but not sure how to prepare? With ChatGPT you can do an in-depth simulation of an interview with some surprisingly simple prompts!
The newest video in our Generative AI Basics series helps familiarize you with a few of ChatGPT’s core capabilities and how you can bring them together for this unique use case. We hope the video and this accompanying blog can help demystify AI and help you start taking advantage of these new tools.
First, some important notes about the format of our prompts:
Anything in [square brackets] is meant to be a placeholder for you to replace based on your own context. For example if the prompt said “[your company]” I would replace it with “Third Eye Technologies.” Notice I didn’t keep the square brackets in my replaced version; in this instance the brackets are just there to make it clear what you’re replacing.
Anything with <angle brackets> is meant to be copied as is, keeping the brackets. In this instance we are borrowing some structure from coding by essentially creating variables to help keep ChatGPT on the same page as us.
For clarity, I will provide definitions of the placeholder terms used in the prompts below:
Desired role/job: The title or description for the job you are applying for. In general the more specific you can be the better.
Type of company: Relevant details about the company you are applying to. Could include things like the field they operate in, their size, or even their actual name if they are a somewhat well known company.
With that out of the way, let's get to our first and simplest prompt!
Write five interview questions for a [desired role/job] at a [type of company]
This prompt only contains the most basic elements that are required for it to produce a meaningful answer. It has an action (write five interview questions) and a base amount of context (the type of job and company) to make sure that the response is related to what we’re interested in.
With everything in Generative AI you get out what you put in so this very basic prompt will give you a very basic result. We’ll continue adding layers of complexity with each of our prompts, so if you follow along on your own you’ll be able to see this firsthand.
Second Prompt
Play the role of an interviewer for a [type of company] interviewing me for the position of [desired role]. Ask me common questions that I would expect to encounter in an interview at their company.
In our second prompt we are adding the concept of persona by telling ChatGPT to “play the role of an interviewer.” In many ways, assuming our chosen persona is a secondary action that we’re asking it to take. Our primary action is essentially the same as our first prompt (asking interview questions) but by framing the task through the lens of a specific identity we can change the way that ChatGPT approaches the problem we give it.
Generative AI chat bots like ChatGPT pull from a truly vast amount of information to construct their answers and it’s our job as prompt-writers to help them figure out what pieces of information are relevant to us. Persona is an extremely powerful way that we can do this.
Third Prompt
[Insert Prompt #2]
Ask each question one at a time and wait for me to answer. Provide feedback on my answer before asking the next question
Our third prompt is a direct extension of our second. By adding a couple of sentences, we can completely change the way the prompt works. This addition represents another powerful aspect of prompt writing: form. Form refers to the idea of being very specific with the way in which you’d like the AI to construct their response.
In the case of this prompt, we are setting a behavior pattern that we’d like ChatGPT to adhere to. Rather than rattling off a list of questions, we have it ask the questions one at a time and then wait for further input. The use of this concept turns what would be at best a script for an interview into an experience that flows and develops as it goes along. Not only is this a far more immersive approach, it also allows the chat bot to follow up on your responses and ask you interesting questions that it might not otherwise.
Final Prompt
Pretend to be a person in a job interview for [details of job]. I will provide <questions> and you will provide answers that help highlight your skills and professionalism. I will provide a <resume> that you can treat as your own resume to fill in details about yourself.
<questions>:
[questions you want example answers for]
</questions>
<resume>:
[paste resume text or type filename of attached resume]
</resume>
This last prompt is for helping out if you find yourself getting stuck on any of the questions that ChatGPT asks you. Furthermore, it's an opportunity to learn how you can take further advantage of context by separating it out to cleanly include more complex information. By doing this extra formatting you can fit longer content like a list or even a whole document into your prompt without the AI getting confused about where the instructions end and the context begins.
That’s everything you need to know to utilize AI to prepare for a job interview. With any prompt you can often get interesting results with a little experimentation so feel free to deviate from our examples and see what happens, especially considering this is such a personal use case. Hopefully this tutorial not only taught you how to simulate an interview, but also left you with a greater understanding of Generative AI itself to help inform your experimentation.
We hope you found our video and accompanying blog useful! For any questions or feedback feel free to reach out to us.
