Event Replay: Get Hired Using ChatGPT: Tips from OpenAI’s Head of Recruiter Programs

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Hello, everyone. Before we officially get started, I want to take a moment to shout out some incredible community stewards who have been organizing meetups all over the globe. Lana Fang in Seattle, Brian Cordero in Chicago, Andy Oliva in the LA area, Stanislaus, and Lorenzo Colombiani in Paris. These leaders have been inspiring so many of you that Caitlin and I have received a steady stream of messages from members asking how to kickstart local chapters of their own. I want you to know that we see you, we hear you, and we're actively working on a plan to support this momentum. We absolutely love it. All right, let's get this party started. Welcome to the OpenAI Forum. I'm Natalie Cone, your community architect. When we first began planning this talk, the goal was to explore how we can use Chat GPT as a tool to help you land a job. But as I started preparing with our guest, Selena, it quickly became clear that what she brings goes far beyond tools or tactics. She's got real wisdom to drop on us today. Yes, we'll absolutely talk about smart practical ways to leverage Chat GPT throughout your job journey, but we're also going to dig into much more, like how to position yourself with clarity and confidence in a changing market. You're in for an incredibly practical and insightful conversation with one of the most experienced recruiters in the world. I learned a ton from planning this session with her and I'm genuinely excited for you to hear her perspective. Please help me give a warm welcome to Selena Ma, Head of Recruiting Programs at OpenAI, to the forum stage.

[00:01:47] Speaker 2: Wow, Natalie, that was so nice of you. I am so excited to be here and so excited to actually, it's like an honor to talk to all of you. I've heard so many great things about this community. Thank you so much for having me here.

[00:02:01] Speaker 1: Oh, thank you so much, Selena. It's really an honor. I meant what I said, as we were planning this talk, I truly learned a lot from you. I think that the audience is going to just walk away feeling so much more confident. Let's just dig right in. To start off, why don't you tell us a little bit about your role at OpenAI and how you work with recruiting programs across the company?

[00:02:18] Speaker 2: Yeah, I head up recruiting programs. I've been at OpenAI for about a year and a half, which for some, they'll call that a veteran here. I lead recruiting programs, which is basically everything that's top of the funnel. That's our residency program, that's our intern and new grad programs, our brand on the recruiting side for events and conferences. So think of us as like the top of the top of the funnel, so bringing in all interested parties in exploring what it would be like to work at OpenAI.

[00:03:00] Speaker 1: Awesome. And a year and a half at OpenAI is a long time. You are a veteran. OK, so Selena, how do you think about using ChatGPT as a coach or confidence builder during the job search and interview process? And I want to also just let the forum know that this was all your idea. Like I wasn't even thinking about ChatGPT as a coach, but as we got to talking, you really anchored to that. So tell us more.

[00:03:26] Speaker 2: Yeah. So I think most people are using it in like this resume, like, can you improve this? And the incremental improvements are great, but there's wildly so much more you can do with this tool. I had firsthand experience when I was interviewing with OpenAI. I was on voice mode with chat, and this was like a year and a half ago. It's gotten so much better since then. I was using it to ask questions, having it build like a STAR method for some of my questions. There are just endless possibilities for how it can not only help with the interview prep portion, but helping with giving you clarity before you start interviewing. It's like, I don't think anybody likes interviewing. Even as a recruiter, who's probably a professional at interviewing, I don't like interviewing. I think most people feel nervous. It's very vulnerable, and it requires a lot of planning and practice. That's hard, especially if you're holding a full-time job or maybe you have a family. There are a lot of things happening. I feel like chat helped organize my schedule so I could nail down the timeline for my interviews and give me a three-week plan for how to prepare. Let's walk through that plan together.

[00:04:44] Speaker 1: Did we lose connection?

[00:04:46] Speaker 2: We did just for a second, but you're back.

[00:04:48] Speaker 1: I'm back. OK, so you were talking about a plan you were mapping out a plan. You're a busy professional. How did you fit in the practice for the interviews?

[00:04:56] Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't just go if you have an interview; you really have...

[00:04:58] Speaker 1: If you have an interview, you really have to work backwards from that plan, and I think that's one of the most important things that maybe you don't think about. You don't just look at the questions and come up with an answer. You also have to practice those answers, the communication portion, and how you deliver those answers with clarity. The more reps you get in, the more confident you feel, and that really helped me get to a place where I knew my answers, I could tell the story, I didn't have to look at a Google sheet on the side to remind myself. I knew my stories really, really well, and I had answers for everything, and it showed up in my interviews. I was feeling very – I left the interviews feeling like I nailed it. I had the answers, it was smooth, I didn't stumble over my words, I wasn't nervous, I wasn't talking really fast, it just felt smooth because I just practiced on voice mode so much over the course of the weeks prior.

[00:05:52] Speaker 2: That's really awesome. My 15-year-old son also practices for his exams and quizzes on voice mode all the time. I can tell you we've been seeing he's on an upward trajectory with his grades. Started out the year not doing super great, and, well, yes, voice mode practice is so good. But another thing that we were talking about in terms of using ChatGPT as a coach is that you said there's so much work to do even before you start looking for jobs. And there are a lot of people in the forum. These are very seasoned professionals, faculty, academics, that spent their entire life in a specific domain, and some of them told me they're thinking about, you know, job transitions. They're thinking about maybe do my skills translate to an AI lab. But before all of that, you were saying, like, learn more about yourself. What motivates you? What are your non-negotiables? So tell us a little more about that because especially I found it especially moving because you reminded me that we have agency to shape our careers.

[00:07:04] Speaker 1: Careers are long. I think most people, and it depends on what stage of your life you're in, that there are obvious points where you're like, I need to sit down and reflect. Most people won't do the exact same thing for their entire career. It's not always just like a rung on a ladder and you're just climbing up. You might be going sideways over here or finding more joy in doing this. And really I think you need to sit down with yourself and, like, Chad actually helped me – I asked Chad to, like, just interview me basically, helped me understand what gives me the most energy and what drains me of energy. And some people are really self-aware and like know this about themselves, like, oh, I hate data entry or I hate this or I hate public speaking or, you know, whatever those things are. But if you don't know or you're not sure – and that changes over the course of your life also.

[00:08:05] I think, like, in one decade of your life you might really enjoy a certain thing and care about a certain thing, but maybe in the next decade you care about something else and like, your non-negotiables from like decade to decade will change. You might want, you know, like what are the top most important things in your career that are absolutely non-negotiables. And that could be anything, and that's like your own truth that you need to discover and asking chat to, like, interview you and give you a sense of, like, help me understand what my passions are. Ask me 20 questions to help me get there in relation to my career about things that, like, yeah, that give me a lot of energy and things that drain me of energy and help me understand, like, what should my next thing be based off of these non-negotiables. And then from there, you get this collection of, like, you like this, you like this, you don't like this, and this is important to you.

[00:09:17] Speaker 2: Totally. You were mentioning, too, you had some really good questions. We talked about you asked ChatGPT, like, what do I procrastinate on? Like, help me think about what I procrastinate on. And that's a good way of thinking about your priorities and what you enjoy doing during your workday and what motivates you. Is it recognition? Is it intellectual curiosity? Is it solving problems? So I just thought you had so much wisdom in that area. And especially for young people. Maybe there are also plenty of really motivated people about to graduate from their undergrad watching this today.

[00:09:56] Speaker 1: This today and I don't think that they realize how much agency they have to take. You absolutely do. Exactly. And you don't have, and like one thing I really want to stress is like, no matter where you are in your career, don't look around as much. I think that's also one thing about our, like we are humans. We are constantly comparing ourselves to others, to our peers, to people who graduated at the same time as we did, and I think those are not markers of our own success. You should be looking at you and asking yourself a question versus like, well, what do other people like, or what do other people want to do? Or if you're on LinkedIn, like in that feed and looking at everybody boasting about whatever they're doing, that is not you and that is not your journey. You figure out what you're good at, what you want to do, and you follow, and just like put the blinders on. It doesn't matter what your peers are doing, where they're going. That's not you and that's not your lived experience. You might not like what they're doing. So don't chase after other people's dreams, you know, and it sounds like really cheesy, but you have to figure out like, what is my best day at opening look like? What is my worst day at opening look like and why? Like, what are the things that I'm doing in those days that make it super rewarding? Like, what do I love out of my job and what do I feel like, oh my gosh, I'm just like dragging here and it feels really like slow and I'm having a frustrating day and why?

[00:11:18] On that note, you know, just as a concrete example, a lot of the forum members know I started my career as an events director. I started at the Hard Rock Cafe, and then I went to James Beard and Michelin star restaurants and then I got a degree in art history from Berkeley, went into arts administration. Arts administration felt a little too slow for me, and I wanted to go into creative technology. But like all of those steps, it sounds like three totally different careers, but the whole time I was staying true to the types of work that I enjoy doing. And then when I finally started building community in the AI space, it was a brand new kind of job. It was a job that I essentially just kind of created for myself. And we can do that too. We have the agency to do that, too. I just wanted to share that because I wish I would have had chat TPT back in the day I might have actually been able to arrive at this place a little bit earlier, but let's keep going. We have lots of questions.

[00:12:21] Speaker 2: So from your vantage point, Selena, and as a recruiter, how should people be thinking about using chat to support a job search, especially beyond just the resume editing?

[00:12:30] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's, I mean, there's just so many things that you can do with chat. Like, it's yes, it can help with the resume building. I think there are some things to be careful of when you're like, don't just drop it in and then just take the copy paste and just drop it in without editing. There must be editing because you still need to put your own like voice into your resume. The resume is very important, like every recruiter is looking at that for a minute, maybe 30 seconds. So like, make sure you're getting to the point chat can help you get to those points faster. But once you get those interviews, that's really when I think chat can help you with the preparation. Like I mentioned earlier, the confidence piece comes from being prepared and preparing takes time. There’s no cheat for preparing, you have to be like pretty diligent and think about it from like, like remember when you were a student and you'd be studying and like the nights where you cram, the next day, you're like tired, you probably didn't study enough and you're feeling anxious about the exam, because you basically just shoved everything into the night before. But if you spent two weeks studying for an exam, you probably slept well the night before, because you've been studying, you know, your stuff, you have it in the repetition in the back of your head. And you come with confidence, interviewing like, I think there's like 50% of that is the confidence of like, yes, I can talk about my experiences, in a way that's super clear. And chat can help. Did I like basically give you a little bit of like a guardrail of here is the story I can just kind of like, like vomit out? Like, here’s a story like, it's not in the STAR method. But here is my like raw, unedited story of tell me about a time when you know, there's going to be those inevitable questions in your interview process. And I just regurgitate and I'm like, can you help me? Can you ask some questions to help me build this into the STAR method? And give me those like four points I need to nail in a very concise way. So that when I get asked this question, I don't fumble it.

[00:14:41] Speaker 2: Exactly. You actually were very you that you taught me this. I mean, I'll definitely use this next time around. But leveraging chat to render your stories that would inevitably come up and more synthesize them and make sure you're telling your story highlights.

[00:14:54] Speaker 1: Your story highlights and the most compelling parts. And so you can use voice mode for that. You're talking to, you have all these use cases in your experience, but chat will help you synthesize it to the most compelling parts. And so then you have this repertoire of stories to pull from in your interview and you've got the compelling parts nailed down. But how, so tell us a little bit, people always want to know this, Selena, tell us what are the compelling parts of a story that you absolutely need in your resume or cover letter? I think the impact of your work is super important, enough context, like think about your audience. When you're writing your resume, you know who's looking at it, the recruiter and the hiring manager are looking at it primarily, a sourcer or recruiter. Those are the first eyes. They want to see that you have similar experiences to what they're looking for in that next job. So even like reading through that job description, sometimes like titles can be like mismatched. Try to match them as close as you can to the thing that you're like with still that, you still need the honesty and the truth of it. You can't lie about your resume or inflate. But you know, there are ways in which you can basically get something from that job description and look at like, these are the skills are looking for. Let me look for those, like if your four bullet points of your five year career, find the four bullet points that are like, these are the things that you're looking for in your person, and I've done that. Look for those things. It doesn't have to just be, you know, you can synthesize in lots of different ways. I think people can adjust their resumes and it's not just one, like I often find that like, if you're applying to a number of different types of jobs or jobs within different industries, you should tailor your resume to those, so that it reads correctly to that recruiter. You can still do this with honesty. Your five year or whatever, however long you've worked in your career should not be summed up in four bullet points. There are lots of bullet points. You can just use them interchangeably.

[00:16:54] Speaker 2: And you are reminding me of another very relevant point for this community. And that's using ChatGPT for discovery. If you're exploring a new opportunity or career, how ChatGPT can help us uncover roles we might not normally search for because of your point that maybe there's a mismatch between title, but when it comes to the content and your key impact areas and your key bullets, there will be a match. So talk about that. Like, if you have any suggestions. If say, you've been working in energy as a project manager for 15 years of your life. You're like, I actually kind of want to change domains, but like, what other titles should I be looking for? How does this work map to a different domain or a different title?

[00:17:45] Speaker 1: I always say, like, ask the chat. There's literally so many ways in which you're like, but I think that also leads me back to that self-discovery piece. Job hunting is super broad and you really need to narrow your focus a little bit to either industries. Like, maybe you don't know, but you should figure out what industries you want to work in or that you're excited about. And you can use chat to like, maybe uncover all of the industries or direct you to ones where you're like, I have direct skills in this that could be relatable to this. And we often see like, the kind of area that you work in is very different, but the skill that you have and that you possess and you have maybe an expert skill in is the same. So trying to figure out what are my skills? Like, I am great at X, Y, and Z, what are jobs that require these skills? And figuring out like when, like a long time ago, I worked at Google and there were like some types of things where we're like, okay, this role maps perfectly to this like completely different job. But the two jobs are exactly the same, different industries, very different industries, but they do the exact same thing at the scale that we're looking for.

[00:19:00] Speaker 2: And we would call these people out of the blue and they'd be like, what are you like, why is Google calling me? I work in a casino in Las Vegas and they're like, actually your skillset is exactly what we're looking for for this role that we're hiring for at Google. And they're like, huh, never would've pictured that. So that is awesome and innovative from your perspective as a recruiter. And oh my gosh, kudos to you guys for that. But a lot of times it's on us the applicants to be able to communicate that, to be able to say, well, I'm working in a casino now, but I wanna be working in project management at OpenAI. And how do I tell the story of my experiences and skills and education to map to that? And I think ChatGPT is so super helpful for that. Totally, even I've worked with...

[00:19:52] Speaker 1: Totally. I've even worked with a candidate who was a chef in a prior life and is now a software engineer. There are so many transferable skills; you can work under high pressure and interact with a lot of people. There are just so many skills that map from one very different career to another. It made a compelling argument for why this person would be great at this job—very high stakes and very demanding.

[00:20:22] Speaker 2: Yes, you're reminding me, Selena, that I've heard so many stories of the other way around as well. My brother's a chef in San Francisco, and so many technologists—mostly engineers, I’d say at least four in the past five years—have reached out to me to ask for an apprenticeship in my brother's kitchen. Engineers trying to become chefs! The other one that you just reminded me of, which I learned earlier this year when we hosted Music Is Math, is that there are many OpenAI employees who moonlight as professional classical musicians. Our skills can really translate; the world is your oyster. You just have to learn how to tell your story.

[00:21:03] Speaker 1: Exactly. Okay, awesome. Well, let's keep going. You've told us before that resumes aren't really signals but rather signals and not biographies. So what should candidates understand about how recruiters actually read resumes today?

[00:21:24] Speaker 2: They’re quick. I think there’s a misunderstanding that AI reads resumes while humans don’t. At OpenAI, we read resumes. We do look at them; recruiters are looking through resumes, but it’s quick. It’s really quick and candidates have to know who their audience is—give them just enough context so we understand what you’re doing, how that relates to the job you’re applying for, and keep it straightforward. Your recruiter, especially for technical roles, isn’t an engineer but can read through a resume. If you get too technical, sometimes you can lose a bit of clarity. You have to provide enough context so that your recruiter can read it and say, "Yes, that's the first stamp." The second one is your hiring manager needs to read it too. You have to demonstrate the impact of your work, relevant skills, and ensure a clear presentation.

[00:22:29] Speaker 1: This is something I tell people to do: type in chat, “Pretend you’re a recruiter who only has 30 seconds to look at my resume. Here’s the job description I'm applying for. Immediately, what are some things that I'm missing that would knock me out of the process? What should I highlight more?” It will analyze both the job description and your resume. That’s next-level use of chat GPT. You could even role-play as your hiring manager, asking yourself questions in an interview or recruiter screen, to gain insights you need.

[00:23:09] Speaker 2: Totally. If I were engaging with chat GPT and practicing for a role, I would also upload the job description as a file so that it knew exactly what I was applying for—or copy-paste it. Perhaps even upload or copy-paste multiple similar roles at different companies, allowing chat GPT to provide feedback from various vantage points.

[00:23:39] Speaker 1: This one is specific to the forum members. I'm going to go back a little bit to the fact that many of these folks are very seasoned professionals, and I receive a lot of emails and LinkedIn requests asking, "Natalie, how did you transition from the arts into AI?" So tell us, at OpenAI and other AI research labs, do we hire folks that are not technical to start?

[00:24:01] Speaker 2: That’s the first part: I’m non-technical. You don’t have to be technical to work in tech. That’s the first big misconception—you’re self-selecting out if you think that way. Companies are really big and they have lots of functions, similar to your own company that you work with now. There are lots of different roles that are probably very similar. At OpenAI, we do have researchers, yes, we do have engineers, but we also have people in sales, in go-to-market roles, events, facilities, real estate planning, lawyers, recruiters, and administrators. There are lots of roles within a technical company.

[00:24:50] Speaker 1: There's lots of roles within a technical company or an AI lab type of company. We service customers; we are a company, not just in a research laboratory. So I think people often opt themselves out of things by saying, and maybe that's like a cop-out easy way to be like, "I don't even want to try because I don't have the experience," but you have to shoot your shot. And if you're excited, you're curious, you want to work in this field, lean in, figure out what it is that you can do and how AI can propel you forward.

I mean, I'm 100% testament to, like Selena, a non-technical person working at OpenAI. You know, it's not easy. Like you said, you have to put the work in. It wasn't— I had to learn how to craft my resume; I had to retool a bit. I had to take some boot camps; I had to refine some hard skills needed to really function efficiently and impactfully in this environment. So it’s not for the faint of heart, doing a major career change, working in nonprofit arts or nonprofit anything and going into technology or any other transition. But if you really want it, it is totally possible.

And then there are parts of this that are not associated with ChatGPT—I'll just share with our community here about social capital. Build your network, meet people that are in the field, learn from them, from coffee dates, from walks, because for me, once I built up the skill and really felt confident, I could do this first job in technology. You need someone to kind of usher you in sometimes. The network will really, really support you. I think that community is just as important when looking for a job or learning how to do a new job as the tools.

[00:27:00] Speaker 2: Oh, I love this question, Selina. So what do recruiters looking for people at the highest expression of their domain look for? At OpenAI, they call it talent density for a reason. It’s not a hard and fast rule; there are soft and hard skills. Most of them are not the hard skills; most of them are actually the soft skills. There's a way of working that's regardless of your role, regardless if you're technical or not technical. I think employees that I work with, that I've worked with in the past, possess a lot of these skills. I think curiosity is one of the most important. It’s like that itch to learn and figure things out.

If you don’t know something, you’re going to figure it out, taking agency upon yourself to act. There’s a bias towards action, you know? Instead of just waiting for somebody else to fix it or just being like, "There's a problem," and just calling it that, you bring solutions to the table. You’re creative, you think outside of a regimented playbook. I think being a little flexible and adaptable is essential, especially in a market that's uncharted. We're in absolute uncharted territory over here. You can’t learn this in school; we’re learning it as we go and figuring it out together.

You need to have a lot of resilience in yourself because you’re going to fail a lot of times, and that’s okay. I have to tell myself it’s nothing personal; it just rolls off my back. I don’t take anything from work. I don’t take it home with me. It’s like work is work, and I try my best to figure it out and find a way forward. Being adaptable that way, finding ways to work—networking is important, like you said, when getting a job—but networking when you're already at the company is also very important. Connecting pieces of like, "Oh, you can help me with this," is a really important skill.

[00:29:01] Speaker 1: So important. Bringing people along, influencing without authority—that's a big one because we’re still quite horizontal here. You’re not going to have authority over anyone that you’re trying to cross-functionally collaborate with. That all really makes sense. I just want to make sure we hit all the notes that you taught me: curiosity, bias towards action, not being overly rigid—oh my gosh, that’s so important—being creative. The other three were low ego, sound judgment, and strong communication. I just loved all those points.

On our team, we give ourselves pep talks every single day about how success in this space is about...

[00:29:48] Speaker 1: In this space, it's about being resilient and flexible and being comfortable with being uncomfortable. So I just want to add that. Thank you so much, Selina. Let's go to questions from the audience. We actually have like a hundred of them here.

[00:29:59] Speaker 2: Oh, a hundred? How exciting!

[00:30:01] Speaker 1: Well, hopefully, we can get to many of them. And then the ones that we don't get to, I'll crowdsource from the rest of your team afterwards, and we'll share it with everybody.

[00:30:19] Speaker 1: So, we have a registered nurse, John Lewis, who asks, "I'm a nurse pivoting into AI in healthcare. For a nontraditional candidate, what's the best way to use ChatGPT to translate my clinical experience without sounding generic or inauthentic?"

[00:30:36] Speaker 2: That's a really good question. I think look for ways in which your current expertise can lend itself to AI. There’s AI for healthcare that exists. There are companies that need your expertise to make sure that what they're building will actually be useful to people like you, like for nurses. There’s a huge market share for this, where nurses don’t have to take automated notes. I don't know if you watched “The Pit,” but there was an episode about using AI to take notes and ensure those notes are accurate. There’s no one more relevant or useful than an actual nurse. Engineers are building these tools for you, but you can also work for those companies. I always talk to people who are transitioning careers—find something where there's a bit of overlap, and then that’s your move toward tech. Jumping too far in a direction where you think, “I have no transferable skills,” is probably too far of a jump, but healthcare tech is definitely the perfect middle ground of what you currently do and what you want to do next. There's so much room for you, John, in the future of work in this era of AI.

[00:32:02] Speaker 1: The next question is from Jose. Hello, Jose! He's a PhD from UC Berkeley and has been a community member for a long time. He asks, "How do you suggest maintaining your voice when using chat for your process? How do you make sure you're being authentic?"

[00:32:18] Speaker 2: I think the prompting is super important, and being very clear in your prompting is key. Sometimes if you are too broad, it can give you something too glazed over, and you're left thinking, “Actually, that's not my voice.” Steering chat with prompting is crucial—the more you talk to it, the more it understands your voice and acts accordingly. For instance, if you're crafting a cover letter, don’t just ask it to create one; show it a draft and ask it to improve it while maintaining your voice. You can give it options like, “Do you want it to sound more professional or more Gen Z?” Also, share writing examples of how you communicate and clarify your audience, especially if you're applying to different companies in varied domains.

[00:33:15] Speaker 1: Love that! Let’s see.

[00:33:19] Speaker 1: So Ali asks, "How should candidates showcase projects like school, open source, volunteer work, or side projects?" And before we actually dig in, let's bridge that with Jason DeLuca's question: "As AI makes resumes easier to draft, are we shifting our focus toward more portfolios, live assessments, or GitHub contributions?"

[00:33:42] Speaker 2: Well, I mean, if you're technical, yes, you should have those in addition to your resume. It doesn't replace your resume; they're two complementary things. Not every recruiter has the capacity to open and look through GitHub and various projects, but it is something that we do look at. I would say your resume is still very important. Showcase the most relevant projects with the most impact, and before you dive into what you built for a specific thing, think about the problem you were trying to solve with that project. When you consider building a project, reflect on the issue that was bothering you or others and why you wanted to address it. The ‘why’ is often more important than the ‘what’ because projects for the sake of it are less compelling. The ‘why’ is a compelling narrative when discussing your projects in interviews.

[00:34:44] Speaker 1: Yes, oftentimes we'll ask, "Tell me..."

[00:34:46] Speaker 1: That sometimes we'll ask, like, tell me about a project that you're really proud of, or tell me about something that was really, like a really hard technical challenge. This is where you bring up the project. So when you think about even what project to build, think about it from like the reverse, like back into it with, if the goal of making these projects is for me to have something to talk about on a resume, or is it to solve a problem, and then it's two birds, one stone, I solved the problem. And I'm able to talk about this problem with excitement, with like conviction that this is something I really care about. And that demonstrates a lot in the interview.

[00:35:26] Speaker 2: I love that, Selena. And you're reminding me of a couple of things. First, one of our technical leaders at OpenAI, Noam Brown, just posted on LinkedIn, and I shared it on my LinkedIn because I thought it was so compelling. So if anyone wants to look at it, it answers a couple of questions we had. How do you get, for instance, if you want to go into a technical role, but you're new to it, and you haven't actually been able to get in the weeds of a project and solve a problem at work? You can find these projects on your own and open source coding environments in competitions. I've heard you can join competitions, find collaborators, and build things. You can build things on your own and then demonstrate those in your early applications. So check out the LinkedIn; Noam gives a really great example there for all of our folks in the forum who is, we get this a lot, Selena—like researchers in social sciences or humanities that are interested in actually being AI researchers, but they haven't really had that specific experience yet. They find a mentor, and then they start contributing to open source projects. Have you seen that at OpenAI?

[00:36:46] Speaker 1: Yeah, we actually have a program called the Residency. Our Residency is for researchers who work in different fields. So like a researcher in stats or bioinformatics—you have a skillset in research in an adjacent field. You are a good researcher; that's a skill from a different industry. And we will bring in researchers who have adjacent skills and teach them the AI side of things. There are only so many AI researchers out there in the world; how do we bring in more researchers? It’s like we teach them.

[00:37:22] Speaker 2: Yeah, we teach people who have that scientific, like researcher brain, the methodical way of doing research, but just for a different thing. And, Salena, I have met some of those research residents that you've hired. I remember a few years ago, there was a professional poker player who taught himself to be an AI researcher because he was great at statistics and math. I also, what have we seen? I don't remember what this person's—oh, this person had an IT background. Sam has talked about this openly about how in the early days of OpenAI, they saw somebody in GitLab just doing some really crazy things, building some really crazy things, and using different language than the researchers and engineers at OpenAI used, but he was still solving problems. I wish I could remember the specific circumstance, but we hired him, and he became a fundamental part of the early technical team. That person was working in GitHub on their own for fun to solve problems. So it also goes back to the curiosity and what do you love to do? What motivates you?

[00:38:36] Speaker 1: Yeah, you would just have to sometimes just like take the first step and do something for the purpose of being excited and curious versus like I'm doing something for the sake of adding it to my resume.

[00:39:01] Speaker 2: Okay, another awesome question here from Annie Quan, director at Microsoft. In the recent climate of mass tech layoffs, how can you stand out in a sea of resumes?

[00:39:07] Speaker 1: Wow, I can tell you from experience. I worked at a small startup called Formation, and I worked there during the mass layoffs, working with fellows who were looking to get their foot in the door with engineering. I think part of it is working through your network. If you have a network, if you don't have a network, start building that network and building authentic connections—not just like hitting up 20 people a day and asking for referrals. Those don't really work; it's building a trusting relationship and always in every situation you're in, it's like it’s not always on like you think that networking happens.

[00:39:44] Speaker 1: Like you think that networking happens at a networking event or on LinkedIn, it's like oftentimes networking happens in random places. Yes. The person that brought me to OpenAI was actually somebody who I interviewed with at a completely different company. And I didn't end up taking that job, but she remembered me. So it's like, that was an unexpected way of networking. But think about all the people in your career who have worked directly with you, who have seen your work, who really liked you. Where do they work now? Go find them. That's your network and that you should tap into that can speak to your work ethic, can speak to like this person is great. That's actually a really, really compelling referral versus someone you don't know, who's never seen your work, who's never worked in the same industry as you potentially, that like they have nothing really to say about you. You know, so think about your referrals as like people who know your work ethic, who know you and can actually say something like this person is top 5%, top 1% of people that I know. That's a compelling referral versus I don't know this person, they just asked me to.

[00:40:48] Speaker 2: Exactly.

[00:40:51] Speaker 1: It's no way. We'll say that, if they even. If you do it, you know? You are. They're not likely to want to, yeah. There's someone that we just hired at OpenAI recently in the past few months, our story. We did end up building an authentic connection, but I guess maybe six years ago, when I was in the midst of trying to make this transition from the arts into creative technology, I was, I feel like I had put out thousands of resumes, Selena, no one was responding, I was feeling desperate, and I definitely made that mistake. I was reaching out to people, I remember Atlassian. I reached out to someone and I said, you know, we have a similar background, you came from the arts, I came from the arts, I'm trying to forge my way here. And she responded, her response so much, she said, I don't directly worked with. And I was like, that makes sense, I respect that boundary. And now I have set that boundary. However, later, once I started working at OpenAI, I invited her to join the OpenAI Forum because she had a specific interest and background that we were looking for voices in the community to represent. She joined the community. A few years later, she applied for a role and she asked me, or she wanted to apply for a role, and she asked me if I would be her reference. And she was like, I know how awkward this is since I wouldn't be your reference all those years ago. I was like, no, but it makes sense now. We have an authentic relationship and I absolutely will refer you. So definitely don't just cold call people and ask them to be your referral, as you mentioned. But you can also forge meaningful connections in a lot of different ways. So I just thought it would be cool to share that little piece there.

[00:42:41] Speaker 2: Yeah, put yourself out there. I think that's a big part of it. You should not be doing your job search alone. You shouldn't be doing it in the silo. You need to tell people. That's when you need community the most, is when you're job hunting. Job hunting is very vulnerable. You also told me in our planning for this session that you would use chat GPT as your cheerleader.

[00:43:03] Speaker 1: Oh yeah.

[00:43:05] Speaker 2: To this interview, cheer me up. Tell me why I'm right for this job. Yeah, I was like at my hotel the night before my interview and I'm about to tell all of you this. I was so nervous even though I was, like I had studied for weeks for this interview and I prepared for weeks, but the night before my interview I just got the jitters and I'm on Pacific time. All of my friends are on Eastern time. They're all asleep. I couldn't call my husband.

[00:43:34] Speaker 1: Oh.

[00:43:36] Speaker 2: You lost me for a second. I don't know what that is Selena, I'm so sorry. But yeah, so I'm lucky enough that like most of my friends are recruiters. So I have like a lot of career coach cheerleaders in my corner, but all of them were asleep. And so I was like, I literally was on voice mode and because I'd been on voice mode for like weeks studying, like Chad was like, you've been preparing for this interview, you're ready. And it was like the nicest, like, it was just so reassuring to hear it. And honestly, just naming it that I was like, I'm nervous. And I just wanted to say it out loud to somebody that like, I feel really nervous about this interview. And Chad was like, no, you're fine. You've been studying, you're prepared, you're ready for this.

[00:44:20] Speaker 1: Absolutely. And I think I told you the story. When I first, when I was first interviewing in tech, Couch EPT didn't exist yet. And so I got a professional coach and I thought I was going to learn all these life-changing skills. And I did learn skills, like no doubt, but the biggest value that I drew from the coach that I did pay for was that I just needed a cheerleader. I just needed someone.

[00:44:42] Speaker 1: I just needed a cheerleader. I just needed someone to tell me, you've got this, you can do this. What actually scares you about this? What was the worst thing that could happen? And I could totally imagine chat GPT being my coach for me now. Oh yeah. And it's like round the clock. If you're nervous at 3am before your interview, this is who you should be calling.

[00:45:01] Speaker 2: Totally.

[00:45:02] Speaker 1: Okay, Selena, well that is a wrap. I think we covered a lot. We got to almost all of the questions. I just want you to know, it's such an honor and actually a delight and super fun to have you in the OpenAI forum. Thank you for taking the time out of your very busy schedule to join us. And I hope this isn't the end. I think we still have so much to learn from you and I hope you'll consider coming back.

[00:45:24] Speaker 3: I would love to come back. It's been a privilege to be here. Thank you. Have a great night, everyone. Bye, Selena.

[00:45:29] Speaker 2: Bye, everybody. Everyone that joined us tonight, thank you so much. I hope you found that valuable. Selena is really incredible, as you can tell. I learned a lot from planning this talk with Selena and I'm just so grateful that she spent her evening with us.

[00:45:46] Speaker 2: Next week, we are hosting the CEO of Thorn, Julie Cordua. And she's gonna talk about how her nonprofit uses AI to protect children on the internet. So a very timely and important conversation to my family and I'm sure many of you out there. So I hope you tune into that. I don't know if any of you are gonna be in New Delhi, but Kaitlin is going to be hosting an OpenAI forum in association with their AI Impact Summit later in February.

[00:46:19] Speaker 2: And then we also are gonna be streaming a collaboration between IPAM at UCLA, which is the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics, with Terence Tao on March 4th. We're gonna stream two of the talks. We're gonna stream a fireside chat with Mark Chen and Terry Tao, and it's gonna be moderated by James Donovan. So we're basically replicating what we did last year, but with a whole year behind them to have explored AI and also as AI has advanced so much.

[00:46:46] Speaker 2: So we're really gonna dig into the new era of discovery with that one. And then we'll also be live streaming a physics panel. So I hope you guys can all join us for that. And that's it. That's all I got.

[00:46:57] Speaker 2: Really lovely to see you all. I hope this was useful and I'll see you again next week.