← HerMoney with Jean Chatzky
HerMoney with Jean Chatzky
Mailbag: “I was recently laid off. Can AI help me figure out what to do next?”
00:16:24
And more questions about how AI can help with resumes, home maintenance, and travel.
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Transcript25 lines
- [00:00]
Jean Chatzky
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- [00:57]
Celia Quillian
Or if you have a question that's at the top of your head that you just can't quite sort through that maybe can't be solved with a simple Google search. Opening up an AI tool and just starting with a simple question is the best way to get started. And the more you get used to that conversational nature, the stronger you'll get at learning what these tools are capable of.
- [01:17]
Jean Chatzky
Hey everyone, I'm Jean Chatzky. Thanks so much for joining us today on HerMoney for a special AI themed mailbag with Celia Quillian, author of AI for Life. I hope you all caught our earlier episode with Celia where we covered how to use AI for everything from resume writing to taxes to buying your next car. We heard from many of you who have follow up questions about how we can use AI in our everyday lives. So today we are going to dig into a few of those. Celia, first of all, thanks for coming back.
- [01:53]
Celia Quillian
Yeah, it's great to be back again.
- [01:54]
Jean Chatzky
Are you ready to tackle some of these?
- [01:57]
Celia Quillian
Let's have at it.
- [01:58]
Jean Chatzky
Okay, first question from Michelle. She writes, I was recently laid off after 20 years at the same company. I'm so sorry to hear that, but we are going to, we're going to help. I was really out of practice with resumes and I want to put my best foot forward when applying. I'm also wondering if I should be making a career shift. How can I use AI to create an impressive resume and cover letter and get past the the ATS bots? That is key. And is there a way to prompt chat GPT where I can put in my skills and desires for my next role and it gives me some new career suggestions. Great question. What do you think?
- [02:41]
Celia Quillian
Absolutely. AI can definitely help with this. I'm going to start with the second Question about Career Kind of Navigation if you go to any generative AI tool like ChatGPT and provide context on this is the work that I've done in the past. This is what I've always been told I'm very skilled at. Maybe these are the things that I'm less good at or less excited about. These are the industries that interest me. These are the industries that I've been in. Here are some personal passions. Can you please Coach me through 10 potential career paths I should consider that would pay between this much and this much, you know, dollars a year in salary in this particular area of wherever you live or wherever you would like to be living. It will provide you some suggestions. Take account all of that context and you can ask follow up questions as well. What skill sets would I need to advance into this career that I may not have currently? And provide a outline of how you might acquire those skills if you don't have them yet. So it can be a great career coach of discovering new opportunities that maybe you didn't know were out there or existed and according to the goals that you have. So yes, it can absolutely help with that. Now, on the resume standpoint, obviously applying to jobs is a grueling process. There are so many different things you have to do and we know that the best practice is to customize your resume a little bit for every job you apply to according to those keywords that are in the applicant. Tracking systems companies have been using these forever, have been using AI to parse through resumes. So now it's the time for us to use AI to get ourselves to the top of the stack. How I would approach this is use a tool that allows you to do attachments. ChatGPT on the free version does let you do that a couple of chats a day, as well as Perplexity and Claude. If you attach your current resume or if you don't have a current resume, speak out loud. Anything that you can provide about what you've done over the past year. Ask IT to give you suggestions on how you can craft those into really well structured, action verb oriented data rich bullet points for your resume. And you can also attach those job descriptions and then ask it to recognize what keywords are within this job description that are perhaps lacking in my resume. How do I best incorporate them? And you can also say what keywords are in the job description that I may have more difficulty weaving into my existing resume. Ask me 10 questions about my career that I might be able to help fill in those gaps with and through this collaborative process, you can end up with a really stellar resume that you know you vet for accuracy to make sure it speaks to you through that collaborative process. And once you have it started for every job you apply for, you can repeat that process. Here's the job description. What are the keywords that are showing up the most that I should use to get through APPLIC tracking systems, the top of that resume stack, and how do I adjust that resume from there? And finally, from the COVID letter standpoint, you can even ask it to write you a rough draft of an early cover letter. You can include as an example in quotation marks some writing samples that you've done in the past or a cover letter you've written in the past so it sounds like you. And then of course, always read through and make sure that it is something that you want to be sending off. And it'll just accelerate your process so much.
- [05:54]
Jean Chatzky
This may be a ridiculous question, but does ChatGPT ever make typos or grammatical errors?
- [06:01]
Celia Quillian
Only if you ask it to. So, so very, so very, very rarely. The biggest thing to be aware of is it's guessing, it's predicting the best possible answer. So you just want to make sure that all of the bullet points that do appear in that resume that you've generated are actually things that you can say that you have done.
- [06:16]
Jean Chatzky
Amazing. All right, our next question comes from Brianne. She says, how can I use generative AI to keep track of home maintenance and chores? I don't necessarily need to track daily chores like loading the dishwasher, but more things like cleaning the gutters, rotating the mattress, deep cleaning the baseboards, changing filters, and wiping the fronts of the kitchen cabinets. Our Google Calendar is so full I don't want to add tasks there, but I want a way to check the task off when it's complete and ideally be able to see it on a recurring annual base basis. That person is a lot more organized than I am.
- [06:55]
Celia Quillian
Same same. While I expect very soon, if there's not one already, that there is probably a tool that has an AI powered tool that has those checkbox processes. Generative AI can't do that full flow unless you want to code your own app with it, which is possible, but that's a little bit higher tech than I think I'd like to go. But I can talk through a couple of capabilities that ChatGPT and these other tools have. So first, to start, you can ask it to create you an annual schedule. What tasks should I be doing on a weekly, monthly, biannual annual basis to maintain my home to the best possible and cover these rooms, cover these scenarios, make me a schedule. From there you can ask it to convert it into a table format that you might then copy paste into a spreadsheet where you can add a little column or you can have the checkbox and do all your little formatting. You can ask ChatGPT how best to format that spreadsheet to your liking. And another capability that's newer that ChatGPT has is actually scheduling scheduled tasks, which could be interesting. This is a capability within the app that will actually send you a notification to your phone at the date and time that you request, at any frequency request that also includes any kind of context within the starter chat that you might have asked for. So for example, if you say I want to clean my baseboards once a month, every month, on the third Friday or on this day of the month, send me a reminder to do that. That also includes some special tips and tricks that I should keep in mind when approaching this task. It will literally do that and send you a reminder to your phone that you can tap into and read off.
- [08:28]
Jean Chatzky
Will ChatGPT interface with my calendar?
- [08:31]
Celia Quillian
Not at this time directly, but there are probably tools out there that are new generative AI tools are popping up regularly. So I imagine we're not too far off, if there's not one already, that will allow you to work with your calendar more directly. But I don't use one currently and there might be one. I'm just not familiar.
- [08:49]
Jean Chatzky
Before we take our last two questions and take a break, I just want to know how you got so good at this and how much you had to practice in order to get good at this, and how much you think regular people need to practice in order to just be proficient.
- [09:05]
Celia Quillian
Sure, I started using ChatGPT pretty much the week or two after it came out and then became just utterly obsessed. You know, I had those moment of fear of oh my gosh, this is going to change everything. But this is also so cool. And I literally could not stop, I mean the curiosity of figuring out what was going on with it and how, what it could do. I probably spent an hour a day at least just like engaging with it in those early days. Since then I started my smart work AI channel and have kept pulse with what's going on in the industry. But I will say the main thing that you, as a normal individual that may not have this unhealthy obsession, perhaps that I have with these tools can do is find an app that you like all of these General purpose tools like Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude have amazing free versions where you can start to change a habit. If you would normally go to Google, or if you have a question that's at the top of your head that you just can't quite sort through that maybe can't be solved with a simple Google search, opening up an AI tool and just starting with a simple question is the best way to get started. I did not start with very long and robust prompts. Starting with questions is a great way to begin. And the more you get used to that conversational nature, the stronger you'll get at learning what these tools are capable of. So in terms of what we need to get ahead, I think if you start with that foundation and approach it with curiosity and oh well, that was interesting. I wonder if it could help me with this. The further and further you'll progress in learning how to interact with them.
- [10:35]
Jean Chatzky
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- [13:22]
Celia Quillian
Sure. So as I just said, I did a lot of learning by doing, which I think is a great way to start. But there are a lot of great free, very robust, modularized generative AI courses offered by a lot of the kind of like the leaders in the AI industry. So if you go and search for Google has one as a generative AI foundations course, not overly technical, starts with the basics. A total beginner can start with it. Microsoft has one. Amazon Web Services as well. I have not taken any of them, but I have seen many people that have said that they're great and I imagine because they're coming from these companies that are kind of leaders in the space, they would be great. So there is a plethora of available free courses out there. I would not start by paying for anything because there are things that are free out there.
- [14:08]
Jean Chatzky
I love that you have so many free resources. Last question, Celia. This is from Mary Lee. My husband and I have recently retired. We're planning a trip from the Twin Cities in Minnesota to Portland, Oregon. We both like to get out and walk around and see interesting sites and we aren't on a super tight timeline for the drive. We're in our mid-60s, so frequent bathroom breaks are needed. I've heard AI can be helpful when planning a trip, but I'm not sure if I can trust it for things like deals on hotels or ideas for routes to use.
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Celia Quillian
What do you think you can at least for the Definitely for the ideas for routes to use for deals on hotels. Hotel prices change regularly and daily. It can give you a good sense of this is the price range different hotels along your route might be at but then of course you'll want to go and check and make sure that that's what you want and book them your but the great thing about that request right there, Jean, that first half of all of those desires and wants and needs and where we're going and what we like to do. Perfect starter prompt. Ah you take that, you put it into ChatGPT and say I would like you to create an itinerary for me that roughly lasts you however many days you want to be on the road and suggest places to stop off, suggest hotels to stay at in this price range based off of historical prices or based off of what your estimated current prices are and it will give you and itinerary that then if you're using web search you can click through on and read more about so we're talking about you know how to effectively prompt those tools. That question right there was a perfect prompt.
- [15:45]
Jean Chatzky
Love it. Celia, where can we go to find more of you and more knowledge as this field just changes by the day, week, month or year?
- [15:55]
Celia Quillian
Absolutely. I'm on TikTok and Instagram as smartworkai as well as YouTube on LinkedIn. I'm Celia Quillian and if you're interested in AI for Life, it's available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Target.
- [16:07]
Jean Chatzky
Amazing. Thank you so much for being with us today earlier in the week. We just so appreciate the education.
- [16:14]
Celia Quillian
Thank you. It's been a pleasure. It's been great talking about this with.
- [16:17]
Jean Chatzky
You and thanks for listening everybody. We'll see you next time. If you love this episode, please give us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. We always value your feedback and if you want to keep the financial conversations going, join me for a deeper dive. HerMoney has two incredible programs. Finance Fix, which is designed to give you the ultimate money makeover, and Investing Fix, which is our investing club for women that meets bi weekly on Zoom. With both programs we are leveling the the playing fields for women's financial confidence and power. I would love to see you there. Her Money is produced by Haley Pascalides. Our music is provided by Video Helper and our show comes to you through Megaphone. Thanks for joining us and we'll talk soon.