Andy Hibel 0:06
Welcome to the High Jobs podcast. I'm Andy Hibel, the chief operating officer and one of the co-founders of HigherEdJobs.

Kelly Cherwin 0:11
And I'm Kelly Cherwin, the director of editorial strategy. In today's conversation, we'd like to discuss some artificial intelligence best practices, including practical and responsible ways a job seeker can use A.I. prompts to assist in their job search. Joining us is Evan Walsh, a career advisor at Harvard Medical School. He started his career in student services as a residence hall director at Cornell University. Evan networked his way to Boston, leading programs and leadership development for students, faculty and staff at a charter high school. He pivoted to working in career education for the City of Boston's Office of Workforce Development and Chegg, Inc. He was a professor at a private college on the north shore of the city before joining Harvard Medical School. Thank you so much, Evan, for joining us today.

Evan Walsh 0:52
Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here. And I'm Evan Walsh, and I'm here today representing myself and not the views of Harvard University or Harvard Medical School. And thank you for that overview. It's very humbling and just a nice, positive reminder to myself of how much I've come in my career. So thanks for that.

Kelly Cherwin 1:10
So, Evan, obviously you have a strong interest in the use of AI and how it can enhance a person's job search. And when we recently spoke, you actually mentioned that you use AI every day. So how has it changed the way you advise students today?

Evan Walsh 1:23
That's a great question. I do use AI every day. You you're absolutely correct. And, you know, to be honest, I know we're going to talk a little bit about this later. I was very apprehensive to start using AI when it first came out. You know, I was a little afraid of what it could do or the data that it's storing and sort of the ethical implications of using it. And once I sort of educated myself and got over that a little bit of the ego right within those thoughts, it's really transformed the ways that I show up for myself and the ways that I can show up for my students. You know, when we think about this is the academic in me, right? Like when we think about career advising across time, there's been pivotal moments in history that have shifted the ways that we approach career advising. So like, you know, back in the late 1800s, it was vocational training, you know, post-World War two. That's really when career development was born. Given the jobs and the demand and the new jobs that were being created and then sort of the 2000 to now, we've seen more of the life design, design, your life practices, those types of workshops and approach to advising and counseling because of the globalized world that we live in. I think that AI is the new sort of industrial revolution of our generation, and that's going to be changing the ways that we approach advising. So I think it's great in terms of increasing career education and support and accessibility. You know, have students unable to meet with me. I in a very short period of time, I can very quickly showcase to them how to prompt ChatGPT to get similar advice or sort of frameworks to think about problems or solutions that they would get while meeting with me. And you know, I'm a very general career advisor for my students and for my clients, so I don't know every single job and every single career path. So I'm very transparent and like, you know, let's just ask you that question because I'm not fully, fully aware of that. So it's helped me learn a lot in terms of being able to create more personalized career experiences and advising sessions for my students. And like I said, I'm very transparent with students when I am using ChatGPT, they love to have me share my screen and go through it with them in real time. It has really changed the game and making my work. I'm able to make more of an impact and work smart, not hard. And there's always a hard to work, right? It's always hard work. It just looks a little bit different, but it's really maximized my ability to help the personalized career advising.

Andy Hibel 4:03
Thanks, Evan. That's a wonderful way to set the table for this discussion. Some of the questions really kind of tie to their initial apprehension that you were just speaking of. People look at it and we recently surveyed some of our community here at higher ed jobs, and there was definitely suggestions of, well, you know, we need to realize that I might turn us into robots or maybe AI is a way of cheating when it's used to do certain things. Now that you've kind of gotten over some of those initial apprehensions, I think you used the words set my ego aside, or some might say in this instance, handed your ego to AI. How do you respond to comments like these that we've been receiving from some folks?

Evan Walsh 4:44
Yeah, I think that that's completely normal. I think whenever we have a big sort of paradigm shift in the way that we approach something, and I do think that A.I. is going to only continue to get more normalized, continue to impact all industries, all jobs in sort of a way that's like we're going to be probably forced to use it in some capacity. So I think there's a learning curve when we experience a paradigm shift in society with the way that we approach different things. But I would say, you know, AI is a collaborative tool. It is not a shortcut. I tell my students, job seekers, right, You're not using AI to copy and paste what it says. It is not God. It is not like right all the time. I can be very biased in its responses as well, so it takes a bit of critical mindset, critical thinking and intentionality to be able to take what I gives you as a brainstorming tool to inform the ways that you're enhancing your resume or you're approaching writing an email for an informational interview, for instance. So it supports creativity and productivity, but it's not there to replace genuine effort or critical thinking or who you are as a person in the way that you think. It's just an alternative perspective. And there's as I said earlier, there's there's transparency and intent in using it. Right? So, you know, I encourage a lot of transparency in that, whether I used it to help find trends in something that I had been analyzing. So it's more of a thinking partner. It helps generate ideas, but it's important to define those ethical boundaries for yourself as well. And if people don't want to use it because they think it's cheating, then that's fine. That's your choice, right? Let's not pass judgment on others that that do embrace it and enjoy using it. Right. I think it's normal and natural to do that as humans. But that speaks a little bit more about you than than the other people.

Kelly Cherwin 6:38
Evan, in previous conversations, I know we've talked about how important it is to you to be your authentic self. And I know Andy and I often talk about being, you know, authentic in your job search, authentic in the workplace, just being that true, true to yourself. So how can you ensure your authentic self is still in front and center when using AI?

Evan Walsh 6:57
That's a really great question, and I'm very passionate about authenticity. You know, I'm a gay individual and, you know, I show up as myself in all of my spaces and and challenge a lot of that. Especially, you know, when we think about intersectionality with the job search and we're dealing with humans, with biases and things like that. So for me, utilizing AI and continuing to show up authentically is the more that we take time to reflect on ourselves, our interests, our values, our experiences, how we're communicating that in different contexts for different types of jobs. For instance, the more we learn about ourselves and the more we can continue to align our authentic selves. And AI provides, you know, generative AI, you know, like ChatGPT not getting paid to promote ChatGPT. If I did, I would be, you know, pretty wealthy, I'm sure. But, again, it's as a brainstorming tool that's going to give you the ability to reflect on what it's saying, what resonates with you, what doesn't resonate with you. It helps you think about new things in a different way related to yourself in your career. And that helps continue to bring us closer to our authentic selves, which is a journey within itself for a lifetime. Right? But I think the important part is that reflective piece, and it's very asynchronous. It's very much just you in ChatGPT, right? So it's it's a very individualized experience. So I think it's just the intentionality behind taking that extra step that I think even subconsciously can help us continue to center our authenticity.

Kelly Cherwin 8:34
I wanted to do a little side note here, and, you know, I was going to bring this up, but I was actually doing a little reviewing of your your background in a Q&A. You did for your bio online about your career path. You said, I've never worked in an environment quite like HMS Office for graduate education, where I feel authentic, celebrated and utilized. We collaborate, support one another in championing the personal and professional development of our colleagues. So I just wanted to say that's fantastic. That's fabulous. Kudos to you and kudos to your department.

Evan Walsh 9:01
Thank you.

Kelly Cherwin 9:03
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Andy Hibel 9:35
But take just a brief moment, just because I think part of where we are in this conversation is trying to kind of just put the building blocks of life out there for somebody who is not quite familiar with it. A lot of people might be familiar with it. Yeah, but you just used the term generative AI.

Evan Walsh 9:50
Mm hmm.

Andy Hibel 9:51
For folks out there who do not know what generative AI is, could you just give them a quick glimpse as to what it is?

Evan Walsh 9:57
Yeah. So generative. AI You know, and I'm not like a software engineer who understands machine learning and algorithms and things like that. That's all the people that I work with. But it's taking large datasets. So like with ChatGPT, sort of look at the information that it's been fed as well as the information it has access to on the web, and it generates a response based upon what you prompt given those specific algorithms. So it's like a thinking partner in that way where you can have that type of conversation where, as I feel like with other types of AI, they can do very specific tasks, whereas generative AI is more general. AI is kind of how I think about it.

Andy Hibel 10:41
I thought it might be fun. Do me a favor and ask ChatGPT what they call generative AI.

Kelly Cherwin 10:48
I kind of like that.

Evan Walsh 10:49
Here's what ChatGPT says Generative AI is: a type of artificial intelligence that creates new content such as text, images, music or code by learning patterns from existing data and generating unique outputs based on that knowledge. So part of what ChatGPT does, and I think this would also be important for the listeners to know as well, because a lot of people like, oh, it's going to it's going to keep what I put into it and it's going to learn because, yeah, it's trying to learn how to be, you know, act like a human right. So there is a privacy setting that you can do in your settings where it talks about like you clicked on your little profile, you go to settings and it's under data controls and it says improve the model for everyone. And you can turn that off. And what that does is it doesn't store your data and what you put into it, into the algorithm. So it's not learning from you. It's just taking what it's learning from other people and what it already knows.

Kelly Cherwin 11:45
Evan, I was just going to ask a follow up question to that privacy. Yeah. I'm assuming that you advise your students and job seekers to not put in their name and address and Social Security number and all that information.

Evan Walsh 11:58
Oh, yeah, 100%. Like, I think that it's very important to, to not utilize anybody's names. Right. So whether for yourself or for other people, you know, when you are a job seeker and you're trying to network, right? We talk about networking ad nauseum and you know, you want to make a connection with someone on LinkedIn or you want to write them an email to try to set up an informational interview. You know, you can copy and paste all of their experience, their education, their about section, right? Just anything outside of their name or their contact information or anything like that. And it still makes the same impact. It'll just say like, dear insert name here, it'll just come up with a fictitious person. So that is very important and that's definitely something that from the beginning when ChatGPT came out, you know, Open AI, I believe they were telling people to, to not do that as well. So I think there is a level of transparency with that too, which is appreciated.

Andy Hibel 12:55
Let's kind of continue with that thread of the conversation and let's really get into kind of one of the things we promised upfront, which is really talking about AI prompts you can use in the job search. Mm hmm. Whether you're talking about networking, your elevator pitch, informational interviews, preparing for networking events, other than typing, preparing for networking events, or how do I network, what are some of the prompts when you're out there working with students and clients that you think are most effective for folks to use in their job search using AI.

Evan Walsh 13:29
Yeah, that's that's a great question because depending on how you prompt generative AI depends on what you get right. And it is sort of a continuous thing. You may not always get what you want the first time and you may have to, you know, ask a different follow up question, but it will remember everything that you're putting into that one thread, which is pretty useful. So, you know, you really want to almost become like a prompt engineer, right? Like you're there is a little bit of a science to how to do that. And I think like context is very important right outside of your name and, you know, things like that, locations and what you're doing and why you're doing it as much information as you can, give it about yourself, about another person. If you're trying to network, for instance, is going to be really valuable. So like, who are you? What are you looking to do? What about you is important for ChatGPT to know to help give you the most personalized and best sort of response. And you want to tell AI how to think. So act as my career adviser or act as a hiring manager or act as a recruiter at a Ivy League university or a liberal arts college or a large consulting firm. Right. Like fill in the blank of where you're trying to do your job search that it's like the very first part. Right. And then providing that context is important. So to give you an example, say you want to reach out to someone in network to do an informational interview, Right. Set it up for like 20 minutes. Right. You could say act as my career advisor using my LinkedIn profile. Insert your LinkedIn profile. Right. Just copy and paste and this professional's profile, insert copy and paste on the same thread. Draw my attention to our common experiences using the common experiences between the two of us. Craft an invitation to connect for a 20 minute informational interview where I want to learn more about them in order to explore a career in academia or explore civic engagement with in higher education, or learn more about their experience working at insert the institution name, you know, and you'll be amazed at what it comes back with. It's very, very detailed and it's very inspirational to like, that's a great thought to have about this person like, you know, So it is kind of like it helps build your confidence too. So that's good in terms of like informational interviews, right? You talked about elevator pitches, so, you know, I'm going to online career fair or I'm going to a networking event with X Organization. I'm looking to connect with professionals within that company to learn more about their experiences. Can you write me a 30 second elevator pitch incorporating that organizations or this employer's or this person's experiences, interests, values mission while highlighting my experiences as well? Copy and paste your resume. So it's really all about setting the context, the stage and the foundation to be a prompt engineer to get what you want.

Kelly Cherwin 16:38
That's great. So if I'm hearing everything right, you provide ChatGPT or, you know, I your information and the information at the event or the information like you say, you're trying to connect with someone else on LinkedIn and then I will connect the dots for you and provide information and the kind of like the best approach or best practice of how you could reach out to this person or things like that.

Evan Walsh 17:00
Yeah.

Kelly Cherwin 17:01
So the more the more information you give upfront, then probably the better the output is going to be.

Evan Walsh 17:07
Yeah. Okay. Well and I think you know, and another thing I would love to highlight here is especially when you're looking for jobs in higher ed, you know, a lot of student affairs practitioners have a lot of experience in different departments within higher education, whether that's in academia or student affairs. You know, you may work in houses like I did. I worked in housing, and then I moved to operations management. Now I'm in workforce development. So there's a lot of ways that you can utilize generative AI to help you understand the ways that your experiences are transferable to other parts of higher education. So my copying and pasting a job description and asking transcripts to highlight the most relevant keywords and skills from this job description and then copying and pasting your resume and saying, How can I reframe this experience section in the realm of this job description? It will take what you've done and provide an alternative perspective to the work and the impact of the work through the lens of that new job, the lens of the work that you would be doing in the language that that part of higher ed uses. So it's really great to help broaden your your experiences and the way that you think about your transferable skills.

Andy Hibel 18:21
Thank you, Evan. Building on that, but shifting slightly to a different prompt gear, let's talk about the salary negotiation process, which sometimes can feel a bit unknown or often uncomfortable territory for a candidate. How can one use generative AI prompts to navigate this process and do so with data and confidence that they're putting their best foot forward?

Evan Walsh 18:44
That's a really, really important question. Every student client that I work with, I always nicely pressure them to negotiate salary, especially for the women listening, Right. We know that still data shows that women make less than men. It is extremely important to negotiate your salary and employers expect a negotiation. They don't want it, but they expect it. And you're not going to lose the job over that. You are advocating for yourself. And that is very empowering. And as different research engines on on the Internet, like Glassdoor, for instance, like they have a little bit of blocks to getting the research about the salaries, you have to post a review about a company that you worked for and the salary that you made. I think that gender of AI again increases the accessibility to that information because it's utilizing all of that data. So going into a salary negotiation, even before you start your job search, right, like you've applied to this job, you're getting ready to meet with a recruiter. They may ask you what are your salary expectations? So, you know, the career advisor to me is like, you want a number from them. Like you don't want to give them a number, you want them to give you a range. But in the case that they really want a number from you, you can ask ChatGPT to act as my career advisor, right? Or act as a hiring manager and act as h.r. What are the general salary ranges for title in specific location? Right. Because it's all location based for someone with my experience, copy and paste or resume. And i just did this today with one of my students and it broke out like, based upon experience. I said, can you please break down by experience level and education level? And it said, Someone with 0 to 2 experience someone with 3 to 5 years of experience. Some of the five plus years experience based in Boston, Massachusetts, the salary ranges for each of those. And it did cite its source, right? I asked, Can you please show me where you got this? And they got it from this website called PayScale. And the student had done a little bit of research before, and it was right on par with what the student's research had been. And they felt more empowered to ask for more money because it showcased, okay, I do have a little bit more of experience and that is a little bit higher than what I thought I could potentially ask for. So it can give you numbers based upon the market that you're in and your level of experience that you have and that is what you need to go into interviews knowing that's great.

Kelly Cherwin 21:21
So continuing on with the prompt conversation, I think we could probably talk all day on the types of prompts, but it kind of boils down to practicing, creating the best prompts and how you can use general AI. So Evan, just wondering if you have any other words of wisdom or best practices you can share in general to a job seeker using AI or if you have other resources that you want to share?

Evan Walsh 21:44
Yeah, that's a really great question. I think, you know, I hesitate to use the word like perfect prompt. I'm sure that there is some sort of like magic formula, right? Like for me it's just sort of telling ChatGPT or generative AI how to think, right? Act as blank, giving it context about you and then what you're asking it for the output. And you can be very specific too, with, you know, write a LinkedIn note for a connection request in 200 characters or less. You can be very granular with it, and the more specific you are, the better the result that you get and the easier it will be to sort of play back and forth. So that's also, I think one of the best pieces of advice I could give is don't take the first prompt as the best prompt, continue to ask questions and it'll continue to remember. And you can take bits and pieces from different answers and put it together for what resonates with you the best. You know, the Central Career Office at Harvard University has a really great free, public, accessible resource on their website, the Bhagnani Center for Career Success. And it's all about generative AI for career and professional development. And they have lots of great example prompts in how to utilize generative AI for all different types of career exploration, job search, networking, resumes, CVs, cover letters, LinkedIn, informational interviewing, interviews, and salary negotiation. Also find some free resources, play around with those prompts and see what works best for you that you are your own prompting person. So what works for you and what you get may be different from what works for somebody else.

Kelly Cherwin 23:24
That's fantastic advice and we'll make sure that we provide that link on our podcast recap. So thank you for that.

Andy Hibel 23:28
That's great. Thanks, Evan. We don't want to end the podcast like every bad 1950s sci fi movie where robots take over the world. So, Evan, please, in this last question, please tell us what's still important for the job search process that we humans can only do.

Evan Walsh 23:48
Yeah, that's a heavy question. I don't believe full heartedly that we're going to be replaced and made into robots. I really, I really don't.

What we have that generative AI does not have is the human experience. We have our experiences and our ability to relate and empathize with other people. And the job search process is very dehumanizing. It tests your ego, it tests your self-esteem, your self-worth, your self-confidence. I don't think it's necessarily designed in a capitalistic society to center our well-being. Generative AI can help you stay motivated because you're working smart, not hard. But when you have real connections with people you know you use generally bad to set up an informational interview. It's not going to be in that informational interview. Right? You're in that informational interview with another human being and you're making those connections. And that's what's still powerful about this process. And what I don't think will ever go away is sort of the empathetic communication, the empathetic listening, the vulnerability that we experience as human beings. I will never know what that's like. Only humans can know what that's like, and that's a really beautiful thing. So don't lose hope. You know, I believe in humanity and I also believe in innovative technology that can increase our impact and our resources that are available to us as well, and move society in the collective to bigger and better things that we could never have imagined. A.I. is going to open up jobs even in higher ed that we don't know about right now, right? Like they haven't been created yet. But humans will need to fill those jobs and humans will need to connect with other humans to get those jobs. ChatGPT, generative AI just helps you get your foot in the door for those types of opportunities and helps you learn more about yourself to be able to then communicate that to other people.

Andy Hibel 25:45
Thank you. That's a wonderful answer and I love that you kind of in the preface to the answer, you were talking about the emotional toll of the job search process, and I think during the podcast have really tried to kind of like you state the case and not put my thumb on the scale too much. But I kind of think of AI in the job search process when you're at an airport and you have to get between two gates that seem like it's two countries away and you have the option of either taking the motorized pad way or walking it. And if you have to make a long connection and you're just be tired, save your bandwidth, take the motorized pedway. You don't need to be a hero and say, I took every one of those steps. Maybe your Apple Watch gives you a few more steps because you took the motorized pedway that day. Don't worry about it. Take the motorized pad way. Start saving your bandwidth for all the other challenges that as a human being you will be taking. I really love that you connected those two because I think if there's a case to be made for why you need to use it, it's because you can use the energy that you're using to do these other things to handle the stuff that just is overwhelming for most people in the job search.

Evan Walsh 26:57
That is a really, really nice analogy, and I think that it really summarizes just, you know, we're so busy, we are so busy. We're busy in work, we're busy in life, we're busy in our friggin heads. Like we don't have capacity as much now, you know, applying for a job is a full time job, and most times you're applying for full time jobs when you have a full time job. So any way that helps you get to the end result faster, that also helps you grow in a way. If you take the intentionality to do that and to take the time to reflect, you know, that's why that's why I think we're here. We're here to just learn more about ourselves and interact with people better and make the world a better place. And I'm not saying that AI is going to change the world and make the world such a better place, right? Humans are the ones that will make the world a better place. Our intentions behind what we do is most important.

Andy Hibel 27:47
Evan, thank you for just saving the world. We appreciate it.

Evan Walsh 27:52
I don't have a response to that, you know.

Kelly Cherwin 27:55
Drop the mic. Yeah.

Andy Hibel 27:58
So thank you for being here. We've loved spending time with you and really appreciate you sharing your expertise and perspective and knowledge with the HignerEdJobs community. It's been great to have you.

Evan Walsh 28:09
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And, you know, people want to find me on LinkedIn and follow up. Evan J. Walsh. MA, there's a big gay flag next to my name. You can't miss me. And I'd be happy to follow up with anybody if they have any more questions about prompting, especially, you know, within the higher ed community. So thank you so much.

Andy Hibel 28:27
And if you have any questions for us, please feel free to email us at podcast@HigherEdJobs. com or send us a direct message on x @higheredcareers. We thank you for listening and we look forward to talking with you next time.