Your company just got a series - A round of funding (excellent!) and it’s your job to create 150 new job descriptions, post them, and start sourcing. (Oh no!)
You could write them yourself — using all that free time you have. Or you could use ChatGPT to write them — if you had time to poke around with the tool and figure out how to use it to get good results.
Fret not. We’ve already done the legwork, and we’ve come up with a great system for creating compelling and effective job descriptions that attract top talent, faster than you can schedule a callback.
Throughout this article, we’ll explain what to do, with simple prompts you can enter to build your descriptions.
Ready? Here are the easy steps.
You can learn how to use ChatGPT to write job descriptions, or — meet with our hiring coaches today to see how AI can slash 90% of the time from your hiring process. Start filling jobs faster right away — with 10x higher quality people.
We’ll create custom job descriptions, candidate outreach, interview questions, scorecards, social media posts, and all the hiring materials you need — in minutes.
Why use ChatGPT to write job descriptions
ChatGPT is extremely simple to use, free to try, and the paid version is affordable, coming in at just $20 per month at the time of writing. There’s a very high demand for this app right now, so the free version experiences outages. So — if you're serious about adding AI to your process, we recommend the paid version for uninterrupted access.
Strengths
- Save hours writing job descriptions.
- Write compelling text.
- Create customized descriptions that fit your job title.
- Give you a fully-written draft that you can easily edit to your tastes and needs.
Limitations
- Can magnify hiring bias inherent in original prompts.
- Learning curve can be steep at first.
- Job descriptions can be generic without tailored prompts.
What Is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is an AI language model developed by a nonprofit called OpenAI. It's designed to understand and generate human-like text, making it an ideal tool for HR professionals and recruiters who want to create engaging, well-structured job descriptions that appeal to potential candidates.
Think of ChatGPT as your assistant who’ll help you wordsmith, check grammar, and make sure your writing is clear and unbiased.
How to use ChatGPT to write Job Descriptions
Here are the simple steps to follow — not only to write job descriptions with ChatGPT — but to quickly write expertly tailored descriptions that fit your org like a Herman Miller chair.
1. Open ChatGPT
First, visit the OpenAI website. You’ll need to sign in with your email, Google Account, or Microsoft Account. You don’t need to download or install anything. It's all accessible via your web browser.
2. Create a basic Job Description
You can use ChatGPT to write a basic, unique job description, just by typing in a job title and asking for the description. Here’s an example:
Prompt:
Write a job description for a restaurant server.
ChatGPT Reply:
Job Title: Restaurant Server
We are seeking a reliable and friendly restaurant server to join our team. The ideal candidate will have excellent communication skills, a positive attitude, and a passion for providing exceptional customer service. The restaurant server will be responsible for taking customer orders, serving food and drinks, and ensuring that our guests have an enjoyable dining experience.
Responsibilities:
- Greet and seat guests, present menus, and take customer orders.
- Relay food and drink orders to the kitchen and bar staff.
Serve food and drinks to guests and ensure that their orders are accurate and timely. - Monitor table and dining area cleanliness and appearance, and maintain a clean and organized workspace.
- Answer questions about menu items and make recommendations.
- Handle cash and credit card transactions and process payments accurately.
- Upsell menu items and promotions as appropriate.
- Collaborate with kitchen and bar staff to ensure that orders are accurate and timely.
- Maintain knowledge of current menu items, specials, and promotions.
- Address customer complaints and resolve issues promptly and professionally.
Requirements:
- Previous experience as a server in a restaurant or food service setting preferred.
- Excellent communication and customer service skills.
- Ability to work well in a fast-paced environment.
- Ability to work flexible hours, including weekends and holidays.
- Ability to stand for extended periods and lift up to 25 pounds.
- Strong problem-solving and multitasking abilities.
Basic math and computer skills. - Familiarity with restaurant POS systems is a plus.
- If you are a team player with a positive attitude and a passion for providing exceptional customer service, we encourage you to apply for this exciting opportunity.
If you’d like to use ChatGPT to write a job description with a skills list or other details, include that guidance in your prompt.
3. Write a more robust Job Description with ChatGPT
While the job description above is adequate, you’ll attract better-fit candidates if you add a little more detail. This could include the job skills you’re looking for, the focus of the role, and a more robust responsibilities list.
To get the best results, don’t ask for the entire job description all at once. Instead, ask for the different parts in order:
Job Title
Not all job seekers know to search your role by the title you chose. So — use ChatGPT to come up with some alternatives. Here’s how:
Prompt:
Give a list of 5 job titles that mean the same as construction foreman.
ChatGPT Reply:
1. Site Supervisor
2. Construction Manager
3. Superintendent
4. Site Manager
5. Project Foreman
While not all of those titles will fit the role you’re hiring for, they’ll give you some suggestions to zero in on the best. You can even plug them all into Google Trends to see which ones get the most search.
Job Skills
You’ll find a better match in the job pool if your job description includes a list of the skills you’re most interested in. While you won’t use ChatGPT’s list verbatim, it can provide useful inspiration.
Prompt:
List the top ten skills for a construction foreman.
ChatGPT Reply:
1. Leadership
2. Communication
3. Technical Skills
4. Time Management
5. Problem Solving
6. Decision Making
7. Planning and Organization
8. Budget Management
9. Safety Management
10. Quality Control
Responsibilities
This is central to zeroing in on the right candidate. You can ask ChatGPT to “write a job description” for you and get a pretty good list of the role’s responsibilities. But if you ask the AI tool specifically for a list of responsibilities, you’ll get a more robust list that you can copy-paste into your job description.
Prompt:
What are the top five responsibilities for a construction foreman?
ChatGPT Reply:
1. Managing the Crew: The construction foreman is responsible for managing the construction crew, assigning tasks and ensuring that everyone is working efficiently and safely.
2. Reading and Understanding Blueprints: The construction foreman must be able to read and understand blueprints and technical specifications to ensure that the construction work is being done correctly and to the required standards.
3. Coordinating with Other Trades: Construction projects often involve multiple trades, and the foreman must be able to coordinate with other trades to ensure that work is being done in the correct order and that there are no delays.
4. Ensuring Compliance with Safety Standards: The construction foreman is responsible for ensuring that safety standards are being followed on the construction site. This includes ensuring that workers are wearing the appropriate safety gear and that safety procedures are being followed.
5. Reporting to Management: The construction foreman is responsible for providing regular progress reports to management, including updates on the work completed, any issues that have arisen, and any potential delays. They may also be responsible for ordering materials and equipment needed for the project.
You can see how ChatGPT created more descriptive info when we used more targeted prompts.
Pro Tip: The Hire Talent can create your custom hiring content for you using ChatGPT for hiring.
See how it works in our article: The Hire Talent Announces ChatGPT for Hiring.
Required Qualifications
What qualifications does your role require? When you use ChatGPT to write your job description, you can ask it for those, too. While this list won’t match what you’d come up with on your own, it gives you a great starting point to work with.
Prompt:
Write a list of required qualifications for a customer service representative.
ChatGPT Reply:
1. High School Diploma or equivalent
2. Prior experience in a customer service or related field preferred
3. Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
4. Ability to handle high-stress situations with patience and professionalism
5. Strong problem-solving and critical thinking skills
6. Ability to multitask and manage time effectively
7. Knowledge of customer service principles and practices
8. Familiarity with computer programs and software used in customer service, such as CRM systems
9. Ability to work independently and as part of a team
10. Availability to work flexible hours, including evenings, weekends, and holidays
Preferred Qualifications
Next, what “extras” would sweeten the deal for you? Ask ChatGPT to write those, too. It actually does a fair job at differentiated between “required” and “preferred.”
Prompt:
Write a list of preferred qualifications for a customer service representative.
ChatGPT Reply:
1. Bachelor's degree in a related field, such as Business, Communications, or Marketing
2. Prior experience in a leadership or supervisory role
3. Bilingual or multilingual abilities
4. Experience with a specific industry or product, such as technology or healthcare
5. Knowledge of social media and digital communication channels
6. Ability to handle escalated customer issues and complaints
7. Experience with sales or upselling techniques
8. Positive attitude and a customer-centric mindset
9. Ability to work in a fast-paced and dynamic environment
10. Continuous learning and professional development mindset.
Working Conditions
What’s it like to work in the role? This is an optional part of the job description, but it can help to create a more detailed picture of the role. You’ll need to be a bit more careful with the prompt on this one, asking GPT to use the word “you” and telling it your company’s name.
Prompt:
Write a paragraph explaining working conditions for a nurse in a regional hospital called Three Rivers Health. Use the word "you" where appropriate.
ChatGPT Reply:
As a nurse at Three Rivers Health, a regional hospital, you can expect a collaborative and supportive work environment. Our hospital is located in a smaller community, and you will provide care for patients with a wide range of medical conditions. You may work long shifts, including weekends and holidays, but we value work-life balance and offer flexible scheduling to accommodate our staff. You will work closely with physicians, therapists, and other healthcare professionals to ensure coordinated and comprehensive patient care. You will have access to the latest medical technologies and equipment to provide the highest level of care to your patients. Overall, working as a nurse at Three Rivers Health can be a fulfilling and rewarding career, allowing you to make a difference in your local community.
Note that we crossed out “a regional hospital,” which seemed unnecessary. You’ll need to do some editing to tailor ChatGPT’s job descriptions to your organization.
Employer Branding
You may want to add some optional employer branding to personalize your job description. ChatGPT does an amazingly good job at adding a human touch here, but you’ll need to feed it some company specifics.
Prompt:
Write an employer-brand statement for a job description for a marketing team leader at a company called “The Hire Talent”, using the following mission statement: “Our goal is to facilitate our clients' growth by finding the right talent in order for them to execute on their corporate vision. Our full-service approach, proprietary process, extensive experience, and professional staff allow us to respond to your special needs and requirements promptly and thoroughly.”
ChatGPT Reply:
At The Hire Talent, we are committed to our clients' growth and success. As a marketing team leader, you will play a crucial role in helping our clients achieve their corporate vision. Our full-service approach, proprietary process, extensive experience, and professional staff empower us to provide exceptional talent solutions tailored to our clients' unique needs. As a leader on our marketing team, you will have the opportunity to work alongside talented and dedicated professionals who share your passion for driving results. Join us as we continue to exceed our clients' expectations and make a positive impact on their business.
Putting it all Together
Once you’ve used ChatGPT to write your job description sections, simply copy-paste them into a document, in this order:
1. Job title
2. Job description summary
3. Responsibilities
4. Required qualifications
5. Preferred qualifications
6. Required skills
7. Working conditions
8. Employer branding
For a more tailored job description, edit the skills list and other details. Then, feed the entire doc back into ChatGPT and ask it to write a more customized (less generic) job description summary.
Pro Tip: When you copy-paste, ChatGPT’s gray highlighter may come along for the ride. Use control-shift-V to paste with your target document’s default formatting instead. You’ll have to paste numbered lists separately, into pre-made numbered lists in your target doc.
Best practices for using ChatGPT to write Job Descriptions
For a more tailored job description, edit the skills list and other details. Then, feed the entire doc back into ChatGPT and ask it to write a more customized (less generic) job description summary.
Be
Specific
ChatGPT is a language model AI, meaning you can interact with it like you would a person. The more direction you give it, the better the end product. Use descriptive language like:
"Please help me create a job description for a marketing manager, including the key responsibilities, qualifications, and skills required."
This type of descriptive language helps ChatGPT understand your requirements more accurately and deliver a highly relevant response. By specifying the information you need and the context you want, you’ll help the AI tailor its output.
Each conversation you have is stored on the left side of the screen. They’re automatically titled so there's no need to hit save. This is helpful because each time you come back into the chat you can pick up right where you left off without explaining your requests all over again in a new window.
Experiment with Tone
To create the correct tone and style, you may have to teach ChatGPT what you want your job descriptions to sound like. If you don’t have a brand or style guide, try asking ChatGPT to give you a few different versions of a job description written in different styles, like this:
“Please write me a job description for a marketing manager role in three different styles: Fun and casual, mysterious and intriguing, and one direct to the point with no frills.”
The results will populate and you can select one that seems to fit your company’s brand the best. Play around with this until you find a version that aligns the best with your company and begin to tailor the description to the specific job.
Remove Bias
As the old saying goes, garbage in, garbage out. If your prompts are biased (for example, if you require a bachelor’s degree for roles that don’t really need them) you’ll build bias into the process. If you work to include DEI best practices into your prompts, you’ll get unbiased job descriptions from ChatGPT in return.
Set your preferences with OpenAi playground
You don’t want to have to tell ChatGPT what tone and style to use every time you use ChatGPT to write a job description. That’s where the OpenAI Chat Playground comes in handy.
With a paid ChatGPT plan, just click Playground at the top. You can add guidance notes for tone and style in the System box on the left, so GPT always knows how to write for you.
Write Bulk Job Descriptions
You might have a lot of existing job descriptions but need to make changes to all of them due to a new style guide or company policy. This is where ChatGPT can be an invaluable time saver. First gather all the job descriptions you need to edit, and organize them in a structured format.
Provide specific instructions or guidelines, such as:
"Please help me edit these job descriptions to ensure they are concise, use consistent terminology, and add the new job requirement I listed in my previous message”
For best results, divide the bulk job descriptions into smaller sections, allowing ChatGPT to focus on each description individually. This approach ensures that the AI comprehensively addresses each role's unique requirements.
The importance of compelling Job Descriptions
Attracting the right candidates is the primary objective of a job description. Remember the excitement of getting that series-A round of funding? A well-crafted job description is like the pitch that won over your investors. It attracts potential candidates and makes them eager to learn more about your company and the role. A job description also reflects your brand, culture, and values.
Key Takeaway
ChatGPT can help you craft more effective and inclusive job descriptions, attracting top talent and building a strong employer brand. You can use the AI tool to write generic job descriptions from scratch, or quickly ask it to write more customized sections, then put them all together into one highly tailored whole.
