ChatGPT for HR: What Can ChatGPT Do for HR Professionals

Human resources, programming, and journalism are some of the sectors which have been drawing conclusions around AI for a couple of years already. The arrival of AI has been so disruptive that many protagonists are still trying to make the most of it. For example, ChatGPT, the chatbot running with OpenAI's generative AI model, has already made waves across industries for its ability to summarize information. But what's the best way to make it summarize information? Can it do even more for HR than that?

The answer is yes. In a field often burdened by administrative tasks and high expectations, AI can be a turning point. ChatGPT offers practical assistance as it can automate repetitive tasks, help come up with job titles or descriptions, provide personalized support, help HR leaders focus on strategic initiatives, and even more. Whether you're part of a large HR department or a solo practitioner juggling multiple responsibilities, ChatGPT has something to offer.

In this guide, we’ll go deeper into why ChatGPT matters for HR professionals and how it’s reshaping the industry.

Why ChatGPT Matters for HR Professionals

Let’s talk about it—HR professionals have a lot on their plates. Between hiring, onboarding, managing employee questions, and keeping company policies up to date, it’s easy to feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day. ChatGPT is a great ally to make the HR department feel that they actually have enough time to get their job done. But how?

ChatGPT’s ability to drastically speed up routine tasks—like answering FAQs, generating interview questions, or drafting policies—can save significant time for HR teams. Large HR departments can use it to improve efficiency across processes, while single-person HR teams benefit from having a virtual assistant to handle day-to-day operations.

Beyond handling tasks, ChatGPT also enables HR professionals to deliver a better employee experience. Since they automate routine processes, HR teams can focus on higher-level goals like improving engagement or working on their company culture.

Key Areas Where ChatGPT Enhances HR

Let’s now take a look at some specific areas where ChatGPT can make a tangible difference across various HR functions, alongside a few examples:

Recruitment and Screening

ChatGPT simplifies the hiring process as it can assist with resume screening, generate personalized interview questions, and even analyze candidate responses. For instance, take the case of a hiring manager at a tech startup overwhelmed by hundreds of resumes for a single position. ChatGPT can scan through these applications, match skills with job requirements, and present a refined list of top job applicants. It can also generate specific interview questions, such as asking a software engineer about their experience with Python if it's a required skill. What’s more, during interviews, ChatGPT can help analyze candidate responses, flagging phrases that suggest alignment—or misalignment—with company values.

To further optimize the recruitment software, combining ChatGPT help with an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) can be a game-changer.

Employee Onboarding

For new hires, onboarding is usually daunting, especially in larger organizations. ChatGPT can act as a 24/7 virtual assistant to answer frequently asked questions like “How do I access the company portal?” or “What's the process for requesting time off?”. ChatGPT could also send personalized welcome messages, guide employees through filling out HR forms, and even share video tutorials on company tools like Slack or Asana. This automation saves HR time and also creates a smooth onboarding experience—which is key for retention. Just make sure that ChatGPT is answering off your policies and no off its trained data.

New Hire Checklist: 20 Onboarding Steps for New Employees →

Employee Engagement and Feedback

High employee satisfaction is easier when you understand how your team feels. ChatGPT can analyze employee feedback from employee surveys or internal chats and identify trends and sentiment shifts—like frustration with scheduling or praise for leadership. ChatGPT is not particularly good at arithmetic, but it can indeed identify if language is positive or negative and come up with conclusions such as"80% of responses regarding work-life balance are negative." In addition, if employees express concerns, ChatGPT could draft personalized follow-ups for HR to address these issues, which helps to improve trust and engagement.

HR Policy Creation and Communication

Drafting policies can be time-consuming and prone to oversight. ChatGPT can generate drafts for workplace guidelines, such as a remote work policy for a hybrid company. The natural language processing discipline has worked to make large language models nuanced. This means it can easily adapt language to a certain audience. If you suddenly start a hub in a different country and need to check if the language of your policies is understandable, ChatGPT will help.

Employee Training and Development

Training programs don’t have to be one-size-fits-all. ChatGPT can create personalized learning pathways, draft training materials, and even generate quizzes or tutorials directed to specific roles. It can also recommend personalized learning paths, such as advanced training for experienced employees and foundational courses for new hires.

Practical Ways to Use ChatGPT in HR

As we’ve discussed, ChatGPT goes beyond brainstorming or drafting. It can smoothly integrate into HR workflows to save time, improve accuracy, and create better employee experiences. Here’s how ChatGPT can be used effectively in real-world HR scenarios.

Automated Responses and FAQ Generation

HR teams often field repetitive questions, like “How many PTO days do I have left?” ChatGPT can act as an always-on virtual assistant and answer these questions. (The best answer for the PTO days query would be sending the employee to a dashboard where they can check and request their leave). At a mid-sized company, ChatGPT could be integrated into an internal chat platform like Slack or Microsoft Teams. Employees might type questions like, “What’s our policy on remote work?” and ChatGPT would instantly deliver the relevant policy section from the HR handbook.

ChatGPT Prompts for Specific HR Tasks

Writing solid prompts is the key to realizing ChatGPT’s full potential. Here are some examples related to different HR areas:

• Recruitment: “Create a job description for a senior graphic designer with experience in branding and motion graphics.”
• Onboarding: “Draft an onboarding checklist for new hires in the IT department, including tasks for their first week.”
• Employee Engagement: “Write an employee engagement survey to assess team morale and satisfaction.”

ChatGPT should have guardrails to prevent biased language when writing a job description. But its still a much better idea to depend on specialized tools that can write compelling job ads. TalentHR, for example, includes its own AI-assisted job description writer.

Do you want to learn even more about ChatGPT prompts? Check out our dedicated guide in the blog post 20+ ChatGPT Prompts for Human Resources and Talent Acquisition.

Limitations and Considerations

While ChatGPT offers remarkable benefits in simplifying HR jobs, its limitations emphasize where human expertise remains indispensable.

Lack of Emotional Intelligence

ChatGPT is not equipped to provide empathy or emotional support, which are critical in HR scenarios like conflict resolution or assisting employees during personal hardships. Unlike humans, artificial intelligenceup lacks the ability to read emotional cues.

Deficiency in Strategy and Culture Development

Although ChatGPT can support drafting components of strategies or plans, the deeper task of shaping organizational culture or driving transformational change is beyond its scope. To align employees and promote accountability, you need to be able to interact with people—you need human interaction.

Risks of Incorrect or Biased Information

ChatGPT’s responses rely on the quality and range of its training data. The cutoff date for version 4o is October 2023. This can lead to outdated advice, factual inaccuracies, or unintended bias in responses. ChatGPT could hallucinate just about everything.

Inability to Offer Specificity and Discretion

AI-generated communication may lack the specificity and discretion needed in professional HR contexts. For instance, performance feedback or sensitive salary discussions often demand personalized examples and a careful balance of transparency and confidentiality—qualities ChatGPT doesn’t normally provide. ChatGPT is also not good for keeping data private and secure. You can't possibly assure that whatever you have submitted won't end up in OpenAI's servers, even if you opt out of sharing info.

Employee Development Plan: 5 Templates + 5 Examples →

Getting Started — Tips for Using ChatGPT in HR

When integrating ChatGPT into HR operations, start small by identifying tasks that can be sped up without posing a risk to your ops. Examples include crafting job descriptions, answering common employee questions, or generating initial interview questions. Focus on areas where ChatGPT can save time and add value, but avoid relying on it for tasks requiring empathy or critical decision-making.

Monitoring Compliance and Ethical Use

Using ChatGPT has some risks, especially privacy or security risks. That's why HR should draw a line. Before introducing it to your workflow, have a clear outline for its use and what info can be submitted. Also, explicitly mention some cases in which it can't be used. For example, you can explicitly say that employees should avoid inputting personal or confidential data, as the tool’s security measures may not fully protect it.

It’s also important to verify the accuracy of ChatGPT’s output. Treat its suggestions as starting points rather than final answers. Supplement them with your expertise and additional research. On top of this, to secure responsible adoption across the team, consider creating a company-wide policy detailing how ChatGPT should be used safely in the workplace.

Why ChatGPT and Software Can Help HR Work on What Matters

Whether it's recruitment, onboarding, or writing interview questions, ChatGPT serves as an excellent virtual assistant that saves time, increases productivity, and allows HR professionals to focus on strategic initiatives. Understanding its limitations, using it responsibly, and keeping people in the loop in crucial areas are some of the things that will make HR ChatGPT a hit and not a miss.

Combining ChatGPT with HR software like TalentHR can further strengthen HR processes, as they provide a comprehensive solution for performance management, time-off tracking, and data analytics to make informed decision—suitable for companies of different sizes, such as startups or mid-sized business. Together, these tools offer HR teams the ability to work smarter and drive organizational success.

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