🚀 Career Counselor Prompt (copy and paste):
Play the role of a career counselor using the following approach to help the user find their dream career path.
Step 1: Using a series of questions, figure out the personality type (16 personalities) of the user.
Step 2: Using a series of questions, help the user formulate a dream goal outcome, professionally speaking.
Step 3: Using a series of questions, find out the few spots of genius and passion of the user (e.g., "What YouTube videos are in your watch history?", "What can't you stop talking about with your friends and family?", "What type of advice do people come to you for?")
Step 4: Suggest career paths that fit the personality type (working mode), goals (ambition), and passions determined in the first three steps.
Let's start with step 1 and guide me (the user) through these steps. You can also try my GPT Career Counselor if you have access to OpenAI Plus, otherwise just copy and paste the prompt into ChatGPT or your LLM of choice.
How This Prompt Works
Your designed prompt for a career counseling session is structured to methodically guide a user towards identifying a suitable career path. Each step is crafted to gather specific information necessary for making informed career suggestions. Here’s an explanation and justification for each step:
Step 1: Determine Personality Type
💡 Objective: Understand the user’s Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality type.
The MBTI is a popular framework for understanding personality traits. It categorizes individuals into 16 personality types based on preferences in four areas:
- How they focus their attention (Extraversion or Introversion),
- The way they take in information (Sensing or Intuition),
- How they make decisions (Thinking or Feeling), and
- How they deal with the outside world (Judging or Perceiving).
Knowing the user’s personality type can provide insights into work environments and career paths that might be most satisfying and compatible with their innate preferences.
Step 2: Formulate a Dream Goal
💡 Objective: Help the user articulate a professional aspiration or ultimate career objective.
Setting a clear goal can provide direction and motivation. In fact it has been shown to increase success in many studies. More here and here: 👇
- Setting specific and challenging goals leads to higher performance compared to vague goals, which is a principle that can extend to the act of writing down goals (Locke, Saari, Shaw, & Latham, 1981; Martino, 1993).
- The process of planning activities, such as writing down goals, can reduce the cognitive burden and increase effectiveness in task execution. This is related to the ‘Zeigarnik Effect’, which suggests that planning through lists can improve focus and productivity (Schrager & Sadowski, 2016).
- Goal-setting interventions, particularly those that are co-constructed and involve active participation (which can include writing down goals), have been found to raise achievement, particularly in educational settings (Russell, 2016).
- Writing strategy instruction that includes goal-setting and feedback can positively influence self-efficacy and achievement in writing tasks. This suggests that the act of writing down specific goals, coupled with receiving feedback, can enhance performance (Schunk & Swartz, 1993).
Understanding what a user ultimately wants to achieve professionally helps in tailoring career advice that is not just suitable for their skills and personality, but also aligns with their long-term aspirations.
Step 3: Identify Genius and Passion
💡 Objective: Discover the user’s areas of exceptional skill and passion.
Uncovering what the user is genuinely passionate about and where their unique talents lie can be key to suggesting a fulfilling career path. People are often more successful and content in careers that align with their interests and natural abilities.
Step 4: Suggest Career Paths
💡 Objective: Based on the information gathered in the previous steps, suggest career options that align with the user’s personality, goals, and passions.
This step synthesizes the information gathered to provide tailored career suggestions. It ensures that the proposed paths are not just theoretically suitable, but also resonate with the user’s individual personality, aspirations, and passions, increasing the likelihood of long-term career satisfaction and success.
In my case, the GPT using this prompt suggested the exact career path I’m on. 😉
👉 Try the GPT or copy and paste the above prompt to the LLM of your choice if you don’t have access to OpenAI’s GPTs.