Elevate Your Teaching Job Search with ChatGPT-Powered Resumes and Cover Letters

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as ChatGPT, are becoming increasingly popular and accessible to people worldwide. Their ability to craft quick humanlike text responses, from full-length essays to poetry, highlights their endless potential. It isn’t surprising people are using these tools to create resumes and cover letters to save time. 

Teachers are notoriously busy between lesson planning, grading, and maintaining relationships. Finding time to brush up your resume and cover letter may feel impossible, especially in the midst of the academic year. Explore the benefits of creating a ChatGPT resume and how to tailor text to your unique skills and career goals. 

Defining ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a natural language processing (NLP) tool that creates humanlike conversational dialogue. It can respond to questions or compose written content, including articles, essays, emails, code, social media posts, creative writing pieces, and resumes.

The chatbot is available for free and can be accessed with an OpenAI account. After creating an account, simply ask a question or provide a prompt, and the tool will respond accordingly. 

Benefits of ChatGPT 

ChatGPT’s advanced capabilities have changed the writing and researching landscape, with more people turning to generative AI for assistance instead of traditional search engines. Here are some benefits of using ChatGPT for resume writing:

• Time-saving: ChatGPT generates content quickly based on your input, which can be useful if you need a quick resume update or have little experience drafting resumes and cover letters. 
• Customizable: ChatGPT tailors content to your personal needs, whether you want to highlight unique skills, target a specific job position, or spotlight industry achievements. The more information you provide, the more specific the content will be. 
• Free and easily accessible: ChatGPT is free and can be used anywhere, anytime. This makes it a convenient option if you need to update or create a resume but can’t afford to hire a professional resume writer. 
• Quality improvement: If writing isn’t your strongest skill, ChatGPT can improve your resume’s quality by enhancing its language and making it more engaging. This can help you stand out among other applicants. 

How to use ChatGPT to write a resume for teachers

Now is an ideal time to consider updating your resume for teaching positions. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 67,100 teaching jobs are projected to open per year over the next decade due to workers transferring to different occupations or exiting the labor force.

Applying to multiple jobs is time-consuming, but ChatGPT can tailor your resume to each job description and streamline the process. This can look a bit different, depending on whether you want to create a brand-new resume or update an existing one. 

Create a new resume

The first step is finding a template for your resume. ChatGPT can loosely format text, but its main purpose is generation. Look for credible resume references to see how other teachers are formatting theirs. Many professionals share their resumes on LinkedIn, or you can search Google for generic references. 

Once you’ve chosen a template, work with ChatGPT prompts until it produces text aligned with your career details and job aspirations. Get as specific as possible by including information such as:

• Name and location
• Educational background
• A brief overview of professional experience
• Your strongest skills
• Awards, accolades, or other achievements
• Career goals
• A short job description of your desired position

A prompt you might use is, “I am a high school teacher with 2 years of experience seeking [career goal]. Can you create a personalized resume highlighting the following information: [skills, professional experience, achievements]. The job I’m applying for is [job description].” 

You may need to alter the job description and career goal in each prompt to ensure specificity if you’re applying to multiple positions. You can then copy and paste the text ChatGPT generates into your template to piece together a polished resume. 

Update an existing resume 

Updating an existing resume with ChatGPT is as simple as copying and pasting the draft into the chatbox and asking it to strengthen certain sections, such as your work history or personal summary.

Mention in your prompt that you’re providing a current resume, and give clear instructions explaining what information you want ChatGPT to add. It’s also important to include a job description to ensure the chatbot tailors information to the position you’re applying for.

Use ChatGPT to write a cover letter

Using AI for cover letters is just as easy as using it for resumes. Because your resume already includes information about your experience, skills, achievements, and career goals, you can create a prompt asking ChatGPT to format this information as a letter. It’s also helpful to include the company name, title, and job description in the prompt before requesting the letter. 

Being specific allows ChatGPT to include relevant information about job duties and responsibilities, skills, and experience in your cover letter. Your prompt may say something like, “Can you write me a cover letter for [job title] at [name of company]? This is the job description: ABC. Please highlight the skills and experience outlined in this resume.” Then, copy and paste your resume in the chatbox as part of the prompt. 

ChatGPT isn’t perfect, and it may fail to include certain information. All you have to do is ask it to tweak or expand a specific aspect of your letter, and it’ll dutifully oblige. 

Potential risks of using AI for resume writing

Despite ChatGPT’s miraculous ability to produce fast, quality content, it also has its drawbacks. It can’t physically write a resume or cover letter without human assistance, which means the responsibility of researching and including relevant information still falls on you. ChatGPT also can’t follow specific templates, leaving you to restructure text to a desired format. Here are a few other risks to consider:

• Incorrect or outdated information: The current version of ChatGPT launched in November 2022, and it’s limited to information from 2021 or earlier. It has a good understanding of resume language, but it may pull data from outdated web sources, which can hurt your resume’s credibility.
• Lack of human personality: ChatGPT can compose a professional-looking resume, but it lacks the personality of a human writer. It may include generic information that doesn’t do your personal experience justice and hurt your chance of getting hired. 
• Ethical concerns: Many educational institutions have banned using ChatGPT due to copyright infringement and plagiarism concerns because its outputs are based on human-generated text. This has raised ethical concerns about substituting it for tasks typically completed by humans and may cause some employers to disregard AI-generated documents.

ChatGPT is useful for creating quality, time-saving resumes and cover letters, but relying on it fully may damage your credibility and sabotage your chances of scoring a dream teaching job. When used as a guide, AI can teach you how to effectively communicate your professional experience and career goals and help you stand out as a competitive candidate in the education industry. 

To read more helpful tips for ChatGPT, check out our ChatGPT for Teachers Guide.