# Can ChatGPT help you write a cover letter or résumé?

Date: 2022-12-28 · Author: Robert Scales · https://guidetoartificialintelligence.com/en/learn/chatgpt-help-write-cover-letter-resume/

**Answer:** Yes, as a drafting partner: it can match your real experience to the wording of a job posting, suggest structure and tighten your sentences. It can also invent achievements that sound right, so give it only true facts, tell it not to add any, and check every claim before you send the letter.

Job applications are full of the kind of writing ChatGPT handles well: a clear structure, a professional tone and a lot of rephrasing to match someone else's vocabulary. Many people find the blank page of a cover letter the hardest part of applying, and a draft to react to makes that page much less intimidating.

The risk is equally clear. ChatGPT produces fluent text whether or not it is true. OpenAI's launch post says the model sometimes writes plausible-sounding answers that are wrong, and when The Verge tested it in its first week, a professor who asked it for his own biography got one with several invented details. In a cover letter, an invented detail is not a small error. It is a claim with your name under it.

## What it does well, and what it should never do

Used carefully, ChatGPT can:

- **Map your experience to the posting.** It can point out which of your real tasks match each requirement, and in which order to present them.
- **Suggest structure.** Opening, two or three paragraphs of evidence, a closing that asks for an interview.
- **Tighten wording.** Turn "I was in charge of doing the weekly schedule for the team" into "Built the weekly schedule for a team of 12."
- **Vary tone.** Make a letter warmer for a small nonprofit or more formal for a law firm.

It should never supply facts: numbers, job titles, dates, software you have used or results you achieved. If those are not in your prompt, any that appear in the draft were made up.

## A worked example: tailoring without inventing

The method is to give it two lists, the job's requirements and your true facts, and to forbid anything outside them.

```prompt
Help me write a cover letter. Use ONLY the facts in "My facts". Do not add any experience, numbers, titles, tools or results that are not listed. If the posting asks for something I do not have, do not claim it; list it separately under "Gaps" at the end.

Job posting (key requirements):
- 2+ years of customer service
- Experience with scheduling software
- Bilingual English and French
- Comfortable training new staff

My facts:
1. Front-desk coordinator at a dental clinic, March 2020 to now.
2. Answer about 40 calls a day; book and reschedule appointments.
3. Use the clinic's booking software daily.
4. Trained two new receptionists this year.
5. Fluent in English; intermediate French.

Format: under 250 words, three paragraphs, warm and confident.
```

Notice fact 5. The posting asks for bilingual staff, and the honest answer is "intermediate French." A well-behaved draft will either describe it accurately or list it under Gaps. Either way, you see the issue before an employer does.

## The fact-check pass

Even with clear instructions, check the draft. The most reliable way is a second prompt in the same conversation:

```prompt
List every factual claim in the letter, one per line. Next to each, give the number of the fact from my list that supports it. Write "NONE" if no fact supports it.
```

Then do your own pass, line by line. An illustrative result might look like this:

| Claim in the draft (illustrative) | Supported by | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Nearly three years at a dental front desk | Fact 1 | Keep |
| Handle about 40 calls a day | Fact 2 | Keep |
| "Expert in several scheduling platforms" | NONE (fact 3 is one system) | Rewrite as "daily user of booking software" |
| "Fully bilingual" | NONE (fact 5 says intermediate) | Change to "intermediate French" |

Do not rely on the model's own check alone; it can mislabel a claim too. The table is a tool for your review, not a replacement for it.

> **Try it:** Take a real posting and write your own "My facts" list of five to eight true statements, with numbers only where you are sure of them. Run the two prompts above and fill in the claim-by-claim table yourself. Count how many claims you had to change.

## How do you keep it honest and specific?

Honesty comes from the input. Write your facts list first, before you open ChatGPT, using your actual records: dates from your pay stubs or contracts, numbers you can explain in an interview. Include the instruction not to add anything in every prompt, and ask for gaps to be listed rather than hidden. If a sentence in the draft surprises you, it is probably not true.

Specificity also comes from you. ChatGPT's natural drafts lean toward phrases that could fit anyone, such as "passionate team player" or "proven track record." Replace each with one concrete example you can talk about: the day the booking system failed and you rebooked the morning by phone, the two people you trained. Employers remember details, and only you have them.

For a résumé, use the same approach on one section at a time. Paste a single job's bullet points with the posting and ask for clearer, shorter versions that keep every fact unchanged. Then compare old and new side by side. Keep personal details such as your address and phone number out of the chat; you can add them to the final document yourself.

One more point from OpenAI's terms of use, updated December 13: they make users responsible for the content they produce with the service, and they bar presenting its output as written by a human when it was not. Rewriting the draft in your own words, with facts only you could supply, keeps the final letter clearly yours.

## Sources

- ChatGPT: Optimizing Language Models for Dialogue: https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/
- OpenAI’s new chatbot can explain code and write sitcom scripts but is still easily tricked: https://www.theverge.com/23488017/openai-chatbot-chatgpt-ai-examples-web-demo
- Terms of Use (last modified December 13, 2022): https://openai.com/terms/