Since its November 2022 release, ChatGPT has been expanding its mobile app capabilities. The app now allows you to input an image and start a conversation about it. It also enables you to speak to it out loud and get a vocal back-and-forth going.
While the last feature can be used for activities like "a bedtime story for your family" or for settling "a dinner table debate," according to ChatGPT parent company OpenAI, if you're gearing up for a job interview, it can also let you do a mock interview.
It's a tactic Simon Taylor, an ex-Disney recruiter and longtime HR executive, recommends trying. He himself recently used the app in such a way and found "that the questions were spot on." Here's how he recommends doing a mock interview with ChatGPT voice.
It's 'a very natural human voice'
Take the following steps to get the process going, Taylor says:
- "Paste the job description into ChatGPT."
- "Say, 'I want to conduct a mock interview based on this job description.'"
- "Select 'voice mode,' which is an interactive voice command aspect of the app where you can have back-and-forth conversations with ChatGPT."
The idea is you're giving it the big picture information then activating voice mode to get that dialogue going, he says. "The voice on the other end is actually a very natural human voice," he says, so it shouldn't feel too awkward.
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You can leave voice mode whenever you want, and even go the extra step of asking ChatGPT to critique your answers by typing in "evaluate my answers," he says.
'Practice makes perfect'
The app does have its limitations.
"If you've got 50 interviewers, you have 50 different varieties of how to ask questions and how they structure their interview," says Taylor. Every prospective employer has their own method. ChatGPT won't know for sure what they're going to focus on.
And some of its critiques of your answers can be wonky. Taylor fed it one general, unspecific answer like "I took an approach based on my gut intuition." ChatGPT praised the answer, but Taylor says most recruiters wouldn't be happy with it. You want to use specifics when answering questions to give an employer a sense of what you're like as a worker.
Regardless, "even if it doesn't give you 100%, spot-on critique of your interview, it will almost certainly give you feedback that will be helpful," he says, adding that, "I would probably ignore some of the encouragement that it gives me and focus more on where it's saying you missed this or you could have done more of that."
Big picture, the idea is to get practice doing your interview. The more you think about what your potential future boss might ask you ahead of time, the more you can identify the best work anecdotes to highlight and how to concisely tell those stories. Taylor recommends keeping your answers to about a minute each as this shows respect for the interviewer's time.
"It's like the old adage," he says, "practice makes perfect."
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