ChatGPT Plus is likely, for many people, a “lifestyle product.” And the problem is that, when people lose their jobs or inflation hikes, these products are the first to get slashed from the household budget.
So I have a slightly different experience here. When I lost my job recently I actually ended up signing up for ChatGPT plus. I abused the ever living hell out of 4o to crank out tailored cover letters and matching resumes. I was able to roughly triple my job search productivity until I got a job three months later.
Was it worth it? For that timeframe (3 months, $60) hell yeah since the mental labor of handcrafting cover letters for each job listing is extremely taxing and takes some of the awfulness out of the entire job hunt.
It helps when you’ve fed a few that you’ve made by hand to start in the same thread for it to use as an example (and format), along with one of your resumes. Then copy and paste the job description and have it generate a cover letter for you.
Keep it all in one massive thread, if it makes a mistake, correct it and tell it to apply those changes to future ones as well (in my case it kept saying I had over ten years of experience when in actually I just had ten, so I had to correct that behavior).
Since it’s an AI it will sometimes hallucinate, this usually happens if there are terms in the job description that aren’t in your resume… either have it regenerate (if it will take more than a few minutes to edit) or strip out the offending sentences. Some will need very little editing, especially if the job description closely aligns with what you have on your resume.
Oh and be polite because it now knows all your skills and can probably murder you in your sleep lol