Generative AI tools like UR AI, ChatGPT, and Gemini, can be valuable for exploring careers and professions, interview preparation, and refining your application materials through ideation and prompts. This page offers guidelines, strategies, and sample prompts tailored for University of Rochester students and alumni. It is important when using AI that you abide by all rules and regulations as outlined by the University’s Academic Honesty policy and the Student Code of Conduct. If you have any questions about the utilization of AI in your career education, please meet with a staff member at the Greene Center.
General Guidelines
AI is a tool to enhance your work, not replace it. When used intentionally, AI can streamline tasks, spark ideas, and help you prepare more effectively for opportunities. However, AI is not a substitute for human judgment, authenticity, or expertise. Always use AI thoughtfully, verifying everything it suggests, and treat its outputs as a starting point rather than a final product.
Top considerations when utilizing AI in your career journey:
- Be critical: AI outputs can be incorrect or biased; always cross-check what it says with authoritative sources and verify with your own research.
- Protect your privacy: Never include your name, contact details, or proprietary information when prompted. Consider using “temporary” chats, which are options some large language models like ChatGPT offer, where information is not stored.
- Add your voice: Treat AI as a starting point to explore topics, don’t just copy and paste the results it provides. Use your own voice to reflect your particular tone and lived experiences (i.e. don’t ask AI to write a cover letter for you, but have it help you ideate)
- Follow policies: Comply with employer and organizational regulations. Many policies from companies include sections that prohibit AI-generated content.
Career Exploration
AI can help you explore potential paths, but it should complement research and advice from trusted sources, like career advisors in the Greene Center or alumni of the University of Rochester, and not be your only source of information.
Strategies AI can help you with for exploration:
- Identify careers that combine your interests and skills—utilize tools like PathwayU to help you narrow down interest areas. AI can then help you further refine roles to seek.
- Generate lists of organizations or internships by industry, location, or values. If you’re an electrical engineer looking to move to California, but you’ve never lived there before, AI can be a great place to start when seeking top employers by region.
- Identify recent company or industry news across the media. As part of your research during the job search process, you should be using the web to find recent news and articles related to companies you’re applying to, and AI can be another avenue to parse the web for information about various fields and specific organizations of interest.
Talk to People
Talking to people is one of the best ways you can expand your network. AI can help you determine strategies for communicating with University of Rochester alumni, industry contacts, and recruiters across all fields.
Strategies AI can help you with for networking:
- Draft questions and elevator conversations for things like career conversations with employers, recruiters, and alumni. The Greene Center provides networking template letters, but if you want help tailoring them to your experience, the UR Chatbot is a great resource.
- Help you draft a compelling elevator pitch that clearly conveys who you are, what you do, and what you’re seeking in a way that’s tailored for different audiences.
- Simulate real networking scenarios by role-playing conversations or informational interviews, allowing you to refine your delivery, build confidence, and adapt to different discussion styles.
Resumes & CVs
Generative AI can be a powerful tool for resume development. It’s important to use AI wisely when creating your materials—it can help enhance language and align with job descriptions; however, it’s important to ensure your voice remains what employers read.
Remember, the Greene Center provides Applicant Tracking System (ATS)-formatted resume templates, so you don’t have to recreate the wheel. It’s important you strongly consider using these templates and don’t rely on a draft resume template created solely by AI.
- Start with your own ideas—what do you want to communicate to employers about your background, skills, and professional experiences?
- Ask AI for action verbs, keywords, and improvements to your bullet points based on the job descriptions.
- Omit any personal or confidential information from your materials when working with AI.
- Utilize Quinncia to check your resume’s adherence to ATS standards.
Cover Letters
Generative AI can be a powerful tool for cover letter development. It’s important to use AI wisely when creating your materials—it can help enhance language and align with job descriptions; however, it’s important to ensure your voice remains what employers read.
Remember, the Greene Center already provides examples of cover letters, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It’s important you strongly consider using our templates and don’t rely on a mock cover letter format created solely by AI.
- AI can analyze the job description and highlight the top skills employers may be seeking from candidates.
- Provide examples from your resume you’d like AI to help you further narrate within the cover letter to avoid regurgitating what’s already on the resume.
- Ask AI to help you reword sentences and review your narrative structure for cohesive and impactful letter development.
Interview Preparation
AI can help simulate mock interviews, provide you with practice in answering questions, and provide structured feedback on your responses. This can reduce anxiety, improve your delivery, and help you recognize areas of improvement.
When using AI to prepare for interviews, consider the following:
- Work with AI to customize mock interviews specific to the role, industry, and organizations you’re targeting.
- Use voice modes through services like ChatGPT and Gemini to practice your responses and receive real-time feedback from the AI.
- Ask for feedback that assesses your tone, clarity, and pacing.
- Utilize Quinncia to practice interviews—it can provide real-time feedback on your performance.
- Quinncia also allows you to upload specific job descriptions related to roles you are applying to.
- Stay authentic when practicing—use the AI for refinement, but make sure your answers reflect your own experiences, values, and personalities.
- Supplement AI feedback from human input by scheduling a career advising appointment with the Greene Center.
AI Prompts
What are AI Prompts?
AI prompts are instructions or inputs given to AI systems that are created to produce a specific output. Writing good prompts will create more succinct and accurate information for the response created by AI.
Best Practices for Writing AI Prompts
- Ask One Question at a Time: Putting more than one question at a time into your preferred AI tool can lead to a lack of clarity in the output produced. Try putting in one question at a time and refining your next question until you receive information that helps you.
- Utilize Clear and Specific Language: Simplifying language and not using technical language will help the AI tool produce better responses to your questions. Avoid acronyms, abbreviations, and lesser common words to produce the best response.
- Clarify the Role of the AI Tool: If you are looking for feedback from AI from the vantage point of a particular person, specify that in your input. For example, “You are a graduate school admissions counselor for this [insert school]. What question are you likely to ask me during the interview process?”
- Using Prompts is an Iterative Process: Utilizing AI is a process that is supposed to be thought-provoking and iterative. Make sure to do your due diligence in creating a variation of prompts to see what content is generated. The output is only as good as the prompt utilized to create it.
Provide Additional Context: When writing a prompt, utilize as much relevant background information as you see necessary to provide the desired output. This will provide an AI-generated response that is more accurate and pertinent to what you are looking for.
Sample Prompts Related to Job and Internship Searches
- I want to work in finance, but not as an investment banker. What can I do?
- Generate a list of organizations in the [city, state] area that specialize in [X].
- I am a biology major, but I am not planning to go to medical school. What are some ways for me to gain experience during the summer?
- What are some entry-level positions in the [industry]?
- Based on the experiences found in my resume, what are five career fields I may want to explore? [insert resume]
- What are some entry-level positions for people with a bachelor’s degree in [major]?
- I want to [insert career goals]. My current work is [insert details about your current job]. Create a 5-year career development plan that helps me to reach my goals.
- Which careers blend [major or skill] and [major or skill]?
- Which [X Industry] companies have the best-demonstrated track record for promoting marginalized communities?
- Please list 5 examples of entry-level jobs that blend someone’s interest in [insert industry] and technology? Include the company name, then the job title, and then the salary.
- Generate 10 questions I can ask a recruiter in [X industry] to help me learn more about working as [job title].
- Generate 10 specific questions for a career conversation with the position of [title] in [industry]
- Create an engaging elevator pitch for networking, given my profile [copy & paste your profile’s information]. Ex.) LinkedIn, Handshake, etc.
- Highlight the 10 most important skills in this job description: [Paste Description] Which of those keywords are missing from my resume: [Insert profile or resume]?
- Review my resume as a professional career coach would, and identify five improvements. [insert resume]
- Review my cover letter and add a few sentences explaining that I am a strong problem solver, while keeping the rest of the content intact. [insert cover letter]
- Based on the resume I uploaded, add a paragraph to my draft cover letter demonstrating my [insert] skills. Then create a new sentence on how these [insert] skills will help make me a successful [insert job title].
- What do companies look for when interviewing candidates for [Job Title] roles in [Industry]?
- What are the 10 most common questions [X] organization asks when interviewing candidates for a job in [Job Title] role?
- Give me a list of 10 questions I can ask an interviewer for a [Job Title] role at [Organization].
- Please write a post-interview thank you note to [Name]. Mention [things you spoke about] and use a formal tone.
- Create a response to [interview question] based on the experience of an undergraduate majoring in [major]. Use the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) method.
- Based on my resume, what’s a confident and engaging answer for [question]? [insert resume].
- Ask me [the interview question you’d like to practice], and I’ll share my response. Offer feedback from the perspective of a hiring manager: Which aspects of my answer were strong? What elements were lacking? Considering interview best practices, identify my strengths and suggest changes.
- Generate the 10 most likely interview questions based on this job description. And provide sample answers to these interview questions based on my resume.
- What technical knowledge do I need to know for a software engineering interview? A follow-up question can be: What are the steps to complete a coding technical interview question from [X company]?
- What is the cost of living in [location] for a recent college graduate living by themselves?
- What is the average rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in [location]?
- What is the salary range for investment bankers at [company]?
- I want to practice deliberately on how to conduct salary negotiations. You will be my negotiation teacher. You will simulate a detailed scenario in which I have to engage in a negotiation. You will fill the role of the hiring manager; I will fill the role of the job candidate. You will ask for my response to one question in each step of the scenario and wait until you receive it. After getting my response, you will grade my response and give me detailed feedback about what to do better using the science of negotiation.
*This webpage draws on resources from the career centers at Washington University in St. Louis, Yale University, and Northwestern University.
