ChatGPT prompts to tailor your resume to a job description

01

What do you need before you start?

Three things, and five minutes to set the rules.

• The full job description. Copy the text from the employer’s posting, including the requirements and any “preferred” list.
• A master resume. A longer document than the one you send: every role, project, tool and result you can stand behind. Harvard’s career office gives the same starting point: begin with your existing resume or as many details as you can pull together, including the impact you had and relevant numbers.
• Clean input. Remove your name, contact details and anything confidential from an employer before you paste.

Send this first. It sets rules the later prompts rely on.

I am going to tailor my resume to one job description, in four steps. Follow these rules in every step:
- My master resume is the only source of facts about me. Never add a skill, tool, number, title, date, employer, certification or result that is not in it.
- You may reorder, cut and reword. You may not change job titles, employers or dates.
- If the job asks for something my resume does not show, say so. Do not fill the gap.
- Use plain language and start each bullet with a verb.
Reply "Ready" and wait for step 1.

My master resume, with contact details removed:
[paste]

02

Step 1: how do you extract what the job requires?

Here is the job description. List its requirements in a table with these columns: requirement (quote the posting's wording), type (must-have, nice-to-have or implied), and the exact terms a recruiter would search for.
Order the rows by how much weight the posting gives each one. Do not compare with my resume yet.

Job description:
[paste]

Read the table against the posting before you go on. Check that hard requirements such as a license, a clearance, a location or a language are marked as must-haves, and that nothing from the “preferred” list was promoted. The terms in the last column are the ones worth using, and resume keywords explains where they belong.

03

Step 2: how do you map your evidence to each requirement?

For each requirement in your table, find the evidence in my master resume. Add three columns: evidence (quote my resume word for word), strength (strong, partial or none), and what is missing.
Then list:
- The requirements with no evidence.
- Material in my resume that the posting does not ask for and could be cut or shortened.
Quote only what is written. Do not infer skills from job titles.

This step is where you make decisions the chatbot cannot.

• “None,” but you have the experience. Your master resume is incomplete. Add the fact yourself, in your own words, and run step 2 again.
• “None,” and you do not have it. That is a real gap. If it is a must-have, consider whether this is the right job to apply for.
• “Partial.” Ask yourself what true detail would make it strong: a tool, a scale, a result. Add it only if you can back it up.

04

Step 3: how do you rewrite the bullets?

Rewrite my resume for this job using only the rows rated strong or partial.
- Within each job, put the most relevant bullets first. Keep the jobs in date order.
- Use the posting's terms where they describe the same thing I did. Do not use a term my resume does not support.
- Keep every number exactly as written. If a bullet has no number, do not add one; put [ADD RESULT?] at the end so I can decide.
- Keep each bullet under 25 words.
- Write a two-line summary that uses only facts from the bullets.
After the resume, give me a table of every bullet you changed: original, new version, and what you changed.

The change table is the point of this prompt. Read it line by line and reject any change that makes you sound more senior, more technical or more successful than the original did.

For the wording itself, the formula in resume bullet points is a better guide than anything a chatbot defaults to.

05

Step 4: how do you check for invention?

Audit the tailored resume against my master resume. Be strict: I would rather cut a line than send a false one.
List in a table every place where the tailored version:
1. States a fact, number, tool or skill that is not in the master resume.
2. Uses a stronger verb than the original supports, such as "led" where I wrote "helped".
3. Implies a scope, seniority or result the original does not state.
4. Uses a term from the job description without evidence behind it.
For each, quote both versions and suggest accurate wording. If you find nothing in a category, write "none found".

A chatbot auditing its own work will miss things. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology lists confabulation, meaning confidently stated but erroneous or false content, among the risks of generative AI, and an audit prompt does not switch that off. Finish by hand.

1. Compare every number with the master resume.
2. Confirm that job titles, employers and dates are identical.
3. Check that each tool and skill named is one you have used.
4. Read the summary. Summaries are where unsupported claims collect.
5. Apply the interview test. Harvard’s guidance is to be able to speak to every line of your resume if asked. Cut what you could not explain.

Then paste the text into your own resume file and check the layout, following the rules for an ATS-friendly resume. Save the version with the posting so you know what each employer received.

06

What should ChatGPT never change on your resume?

The consequences are real. The U.S. government’s Declaration for Federal Employment, for example, says a false statement on the declaration or the materials attached to it may be grounds for not hiring you, or for firing you after you begin work. Private employers set their own rules, and many applications end with a similar statement.

Career centers are cautious for the same reason. Carnegie Mellon’s strongly discourages using chatbots to generate the majority or entirety of your resume bullet points. The sequence here is built to respect that: the facts and the decisions are yours, and the chatbot handles comparison and wording. If you would rather do the whole thing by hand, the method is in how to tailor your resume to a job description.

FAQ

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