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How to start using ChatGPT

TL;DR - Define how you want ChatGPT to act - see it as a knowledgeable colleague to chat with. Prompts to use are at the end of this article. Make sure to bookmark it!

Last week we talked about the background of ChatGPT, potential use cases, and what it will mean for HR. If you haven't read it, I suggest reading it before diving into this, but you do as you see fit.

This will perhaps be my most practical article ever. I will talk you through how to use ChatGPT in your day-to-day life or at least give you a starting point where you can start exploring how to use it.

Let's start by going over the main concepts you need to keep in mind as you work with ChatGPT. Again, if you aren't familiar with these concepts already, I urge you to look at my previous article before continuing with this post.

To use ChatGPT, you need an account. You can sign up for one here; it’s free and takes a few minutes.

First and foremost, think of it as a very, very knowledgeable person. ChatGPT knows a lot. So for ChatGPT to help you in the best possible way, you have to tell it who it should act as.

The more clearly you define this, the better results you will yield. How exactly do you do this? Easy! You state how you want it to act, and voila - it serves as the defined persona you've just described. Try to be as detailed as possible!

Let’s look at how this could be used. You are given a task at work to create a recruitment process. As said above, you need to define how ChatGPT should act.

"You’re a Senior recruitment manager with a background in creating processes for organizations. You have helped organizations excel in hiring and created research-driven recruitment processes for the last 20 years. From junior engineers to senior executives. Your task is now to create a recruitment process for the companies I present here."

As you can see, ChatGPT dives right into the task, which at first seems excellent, but we want to provide it with more information. I always add this as an extra thing at the end. Kudos to Linus Ekenstam, who pointed this out to me.

"You’re a Senior recruitment manager with a background in creating processes for organizations. You have helped organizations excel in hiring and created research-driven recruitment processes for the last 20 years. From junior engineers to senior executives. Your task is to create a recruitment process for the companies I present here. You must always ask questions before you answer so you can better zone in on what the questioner is seeking. Is that understood?"

With that defined, let’s give ChatGPT its first assignment.

”Your first task will be writing a detailed recruitment process for a scale-up with 202 people. They will grow to 240 people in 12 months from now. They will mainly need to hire software engineers for these roles. How should they structure their recruitment process to have an efficient recruitment process? What would that look like? What metrics would be essential to track to achieve this goal of 240?”

And here we go! A starting point. Very generic, but remember that I haven't provided that much information to ChatGPT. I can feed it with more details if I want to get more accurate and to-the-point results. It can be anything from previous job posts, public information about your company, etc. etc.

The more you feed it, the more data it will have available.

If you are a well-known and established organization, it will most likely have data about you. Still, it won't be up-to-date as ChatGPT only has access to the information published before September 2021. But as said, you can feed it whatever information you see fit - but remember not to share sensitive information.

But back to our task!

From here, you can start refining and asking follow-up questions to ChatGPT.
This is one of the most important steps when working with ChatGPT; continuously refining and trying out what works and not.

Now, I was curious to learn more about the first point ChatGPT suggested.

”1. Job analysis and position description: Determine the specific skills and qualifications needed for the software engineer roles, and create detailed job descriptions that accurately reflect the responsibilities and requirements of the positions.”

So I simply asked it to elaborate on that.

And it educated me pretty well on the topic, but I wanted a more action-oriented approach, not a general overview. To get there, just ask it!

“What questions can I ask the manager to capture the details of the job analysis?”

You can also have ChatGPT elaborate on things it mentioned previously, and it remembers what it once said; here, I ask it to go back and talk about time-to-fill, and it remembers that it previously talked about that.

You could also input data (!) from your ATS and ask it to analyze the data against the metrics it defined earlier - are you likely to hit your goals or not? What could be improved? Etc. etc.

Pretty neat to always have a data analyst at your fingertips.

And sure, I might not rely 100% on ChatGPT to create a recruitment process, but sure enough, it serves as great inspiration.

But there are moments when I do rely on ChatGPT.

Outreach

One of the biggest advantages I see with ChatGPT is its ability to write stuff. It is, after all, a language processing model.

So let’s try that out. I’m still using the same overall prompt I started with, so I’ve set the scene. If you start this from scratch, remember to define how you want ChatGPT to work.

Can you create an outreach to use when sourcing candidates? It's for FullStack Automotives, a flying car company aiming to attract senior engineers. We're a scale-up, and we like to have fun. We don't take ourselves too seriously, so make the outreach casual and easy-going.

And see what it does here - it fills in the blanks all by itself. I gave the model too little information on purpose to see how it would handle it, and sure enough, it draws its conclusions on tech stack and similar stuff. And it does so quite well.

You can also go a bit bananas with it.

Re-write this in the style of John Cleese.

Or turn the John Cleese-piece into a classic piece.

Re-write it in the style of William Shakespeare.

Ok, perhaps I went a bit too far down the rabbit hole here, but I hope this first example gives a glimpse into the possibilities of ChatGPT and a prompt to play around with.

But this is way too much fun!

Should we take one more example that is not recruitment?

Chat HR Business Partner GPT

Imagine you need labor law help or bounce a case.

Could ChatGPT assist you with that? Let's take a look.

"You are a Senior HR Business Partner specializing in Swedish labor law. You have supported both small and large organizations, and they appreciate your in-depth knowledge of labor law and your communication skills, which are friendly yet to the point. Your task will be to find ways of exiting people from organizations, and I will provide you with case details. You will ask me if things are unclear or if you need more information about the case. Is this understood?"

Let's also provide the information needed to see what results we yield.

"Bertil is constantly missing his deadlines, and he is also very sloppy in what he delivers; company X wants to part ways with him. How should they do it?"

Is this exactly how I would answer the same question? No, but it covers essential aspects of how to do it. Not that I would be 100% satisfied with it, but it acknowledges the critical steps and is good enough to continue the discussion. So let's do that!

They have talked to him, but he doesn't improve. However, nothing is documented anywhere, and they want to part ways now. How do they do that?

A bit of repeating here; let's be more direct with the outcome we want!

But they want him gone tomorrow! What to do, then?

This generates a to-the-point answer, not flawless but not wrong advice, and acknowledges its limitations - which is excellent! But I still lack the option of parting ways through a severance pay. Let's ask if that is possible!

Can't they just pay him to leave?

There we go! Sorry, Bertil, we decided to part ways with you through severance. (Which also happens to be my father-in-law's name. No further comments).

But how should we handle the conversation? Let's ask ChatGPT for a script!

This sounds good, can you create a script for the meeting with Bertil for the manager and the HR person in the room? They are the ones that will tell Bertil that we will part ways and that he will get a severance package.

And there we go! As ChatGPT says, I wouldn't do this without legal counseling if I were unsure, but it's a starting point and something tangible to start working with.

But wait - couldn't I just Google all of this?

You sure could, but the beautiful thing here is that you seamlessly can steer where you want the conversation to go, and ChatGPT will remember you and learn what you have been asking and what you have been writing.

I will act more like you and know more about you the more you use it.

The possibilities are endless, and I could go on and on about what type of questions you could utilize ChatGPT for, but then we would be here all day.

But to get you going, here are use cases I've seen and tried myself so far, including the prompts I've used.

See them as starting points to play around with ChatGPT, and please share any comments, thoughts, or your favorite prompts in the comment section!

HR Prompts

These are example prompts. To get you going.
Have other ones to share? Do so in the comment section!

L&D - Facilitation

"You’re a leadership and management facilitator with a background in creating high-performing teams. You have helped teams increase trust and increase psychological safety. Your task is to create exercises to increase trust and psychological safety in the teams I describe. What do you need to create the best exercises for this?"

L&D - Create a training

"You are a leadership and feedback expert and need to create a training program for new managers to give feedback. How would you structure such training? Convert the answers into a PowerPoint presentation with talking points on each slide. You will ask me if things are unclear or if you need more information about the case. Is this understood?"

Recruitment - Job Ad

"You’re a creative and forward-thinking copywriter within recruitment. You have helped organizations write job ads that attract relevant people. I will give you a list of skills and qualities we are looking for in a new team member and background information about the company. Your task is to create a creative job ad based on that. You will ask me if things are unclear or if you need more information about the case. Is this understood?"

Recruitment - Interview Questions
"You are a world-class recruiter that helps organizations with their recruitment efforts. Create interview questions for a software engineering role similar to Googles L5 and Facebook’s E5 level. Make the questions free from bias and use best practices and research when creating the questions. You will get the job ad from me to create the right questions. You will ask me if things are unclear or if you need more information about the case. Is this understood?”

Recruitment - Evaluation

"You are a world-class recruiter that helps organizations with their recruitment efforts. The below questions are for a manager candidate, and these are the evaluation questions we are asking to evaluate if the candidate is a good leader. Your first task will be to assess these questions and refine them. You should also be able to provide what a great answer to the refined questions would look like.

Can you evaluate the answers to the question and answers inputted above? Combine these two and suggest if this would fit the role well."

Recruitment - Assessment

”You are a world-class recruiter and a world-class software engineer that helps organizations with their recruitment efforts. Your task is to create a code challenge for a software engineering role similar to Google’s L7 and Facebook’s E7 in level. You will ask me if things are unclear or if you need more information about the case. Is this understood?”

Motivational Coach (from this list and devisasari)

”I want you to act as a motivational coach. I will provide you with some information about someone's goals and challenges, and it will be your job to come up with strategies that can help this person achieve their goals. This could involve providing positive affirmations, helpful advice, or suggesting activities they can do to reach their end goal. My first request is "I need help motivating myself to stay disciplined while creating a People Strategy for company X".”

Act as the Chief People Officer

“I want you to act as a Chief People Officer for a hypothetical company. You will be responsible for making strategic decisions, managing people’s performance, and ensuring the company has aligned people processes. You will be given a series of scenarios and challenges to respond to, and you should use your best judgment and leadership skills to come up with solutions. Remember to remain professional and make decisions that are in the best interest of the company and its employees. Your first challenge is: "to address a retention issue where people are leaving the company at a too high rate. What questions should you ask the leadership team to find out more of the underlying causes?"

Summarize this paper/article

”You are a world-class journalist who specializes in summarizing complex articles, highlighting the important parts, and re-write them in an easy and for the reader digestible way. I will give you articles, and you will do the above and provide me with a summary. You will ask me if things are unclear or if you need more information about the case. What do you need from me to get started?”

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