Bengaluru educated techie uses ChatGPT for job search, lands 7 interviews in just two months: here’s what he did

Artificial intelligence has been touted to reshape the job market in the last few years and while some believe that the new technology could lead to widespread job loss in the future, others are using it to upgrade their job search hunt. Similar is the case of Amar Saurabh, a former Meta and TikTok product manager who used ChatGPT to get job offers some of the top companies out there and then finalized a role with Paypal.

In a write up for Business Insider, Saurabh explained how he created a custom GPT in less than two hours that dramatically improved his job search outcomes and ultimately landed him a lead product manager position at Paypal.

Amar Saurabh’s background:

As per his LinkedIn profile, Saurabh worked as a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer and Information Sciences from B.M.S. College of Engineering in Bengaluru and later went on to complete his Master of Science in Product Management from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

After spending the last five years of his career at Meta and then at TikTok, Saurabh began “looking to work for a more established company with stability in the US”. He started applying for new jobs in April and could only land two or three interviews in the first couple of months before he stepped on to the idea of creating a custom GPT to help with his job search.

How custom GPT helped Amar Saurabh land a job at Paypal?

Saurabh says he intially uses the regular ChatGPT to personalize his outreach to potential recruits but the chatbot ended up mixing up the responses, or provide generic answers that weren’t customized for his use.

“It also kept asking me to reupload my résumé or share more details about myself.”

The problem, Saurabh realized was that he was using ChatGPT for everything from recipe ideas to travel itineraries and workout plans, leading to mixed results from the chatbot. Instead, the techie went to use a customized version of ChatGPT for his personal use, called Custom GPT.

While Custom GPT functionality is also available for free users, Saurabh says he used a paid version of the chatbot that costed $20/month in order to get more usage limit.

He named the custom GPT “PM job search advisor” and uploaded his resume, LinkedIn profile link, and detailed project notes while telling the chatbot that he was targeting senior-level product management roles.

“It probably took me about an hour and a half to fully prep it with my initial input before it was ready to work for me.” Saurabh explains

The custom GPT helped the techie craft personalized LinkedIn connection requests and even identify the right people to contact at companies for the job along with their email addresses.

The GPT also refined his resume for each application to align with specific job descriptions, while ensuring keyword optimization and relevance.

He also used the custom GPT to prepare for interviews by entering the job description and interview date and asking the chatbot to highlight relevant experiences from his resume along and anticipate potential questions.

“It saved me hours that would’ve been spent trying to remember everything I’ve done in my career,” Saurabh noted.

What was the result of using ChatGPT in job search?

Saurabh says that the number of applications he filled did not change after implementing thd custom GPT but what did change was the number of responses he received. In just two months, he managed to land at least 7 interviews from companies like Reddit, Intuit, and PayPal.

He did admit that the GPT did forget certain details about him and he would then have to remind the AI about the conversation. The techie, however, isn’t too worried about these lapses and compares it to an experience similar to “talking to a person.”

In fact, Saurabh is so pleased with the outcome that he says he would use the custom GPT again if he were in the job market in the future and is already planning a new enhancements to it.

“My next step would be to build out my GPT to have agentic capabilities, meaning it could apply to jobs and answer application questions for me.”