3 ways AI can help you find your next development gig

From drafting résumés to preparing interviews, there is an increasing number of artificial intelligence tools promising efficiency and accuracy. However, as this technology continues to evolve, job seekers are often left with more questions than answers on how exactly to use AI to improve their next global development job application. A good place to start when it comes to considering an AI-assisted job search is to assess where your existing strengths and weaknesses as a job hunter. “If you’re not great at job searching, it can help because there are a lot of tools that can help expand your search and help you efficiently search and manage your time a lot better,” said Stephanie Mansueto, a social impact job hunting coach and veteran development recruiter during a recent digital careers event. But if your job searching fundamentals are already sound, there are fewer benefits to gain, and you could end up “relying on them too much to the point where your unique voice and your experience is lost in your applications,” she explained. Mansueto covered several areas where AI can play a positive role for those seeking their next development gig. Here are a few key takeaways from our discussion. A jumping-off point for CVs and cover letters “AI is great for a first draft of your application documents like your résumés and your cover letters, but it should not ever be the final product,” Mansueto said. I have not seen AI produce a final résumé or a final cover letter that didn’t need to be edited.” It’s important to preserve your own voice in your CV and cover letter, but you can use AI platforms to give you some well-structured material to start with. Mansueto demonstrated how ChatGPT can help craft a professional summary for the top of your résumé by prompting it with specific instructions, including copy length. “These are things I particularly struggle with because you have to write so much in just a short amount of space on a résumé,” she said, adding that, “you can give it directives like, make sure it’s only four or five lines, or make sure it’s only 150 words. That can help with the actual amount of text that it’s providing you.” Finding new opportunities If you’re searching for a role based only on one job title, you could be missing out on several opportunities, especially in global development, where organizations often differ in how they refer to many positions. Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude, “are great for expanding your list of job titles that you want to search for because we know companies are using different job titles. They have different scopes of work. So you really need to have an adaptive and comprehensive approach,” Mansueto said. These tools are also useful for expanding your target list of employers. A job seeker may know “10 to 15 nonprofits that work in agricultural development. But what other companies are out there doing this work? AI can be really useful for giving you additional employers to consider,” she said. Interview preparation While there are some video-based AI tools that attempt to provide useful feedback on practice interview answers, there isn’t one that provides “realistic, comprehensive feedback on your responses. The AI just isn’t … that sophisticated,” Mansueto said. Still, AI can be “particularly helpful [in] giving you a tailored list of questions for you to prep based on the job description,” she said. In ChatGPT, you can then use its mock interviewer tool to receive suggested answers to these same questions. “You can ask it to give you responses to a question like: ‘What’s a good response to this question, based on my experience and my résumé and based on this job description,” Mansueto said. Watch the event recording below for more details on how to execute these strategies and more to bolster your development job hunt. Ready to stand out from the crowd and get noticed by the recruiters who matter most? Update your Devex profile and start connecting with top global development recruiters now.