Genius B*tchwork - Part 33: How a laid-off writer turned ChatGPT into the $150 an hour career coach she could not afford
She lost her job the same week her therapist said hire a coach. She could not afford one, so she built one out of ChatGPT. Here is exactly how to do it yourself.
Here is the article:
This is a special kind of B*tchwork post.
Most weeks I show you the boring work my own AI did for me. This time I want to show you something genius that AI did for someone else. A real person, a real problem, a real win. Then I am going to hand you the exact steps so you can do the same thing.
I did not get laid off and build an AI career coach. Katie Parrott did. She is a writer. She wrote about the whole thing in a first-person essay on Every.to. And what she built is the kind of thing that makes you stop and think, why did no one tell me this was an option.
Here is what happened.
Katie got laid off. That same week, her therapist told her to hire a career coach. Good timing, right? Except real career coaches charge $100 to $150 an hour. That is the number she cites in her essay. When you just lost your income, that math does not work.
So she did not hire one.
She built one out of ChatGPT instead. She called it CareerGPT. She set it up with context about her background, her skills, what she was hoping for. Then she used it the way you would use a real coach. She asked it hard questions. She worked through her thinking with it. She used it to prep for interviews and get clear on what she actually wanted next.
It moved her career forward.
She is honest about one thing. She treated it as a mirror for her own thinking, not a decision maker. That is the right way to use it, and I will come back to that.
What hiring a career coach the old way costs you
Real career coaches run $100 to $150 an hour. Some charge more. Most work with you over months. You can do the math on what that adds up to.
And it is not just the money. Good coaches book out. You have to find one who understands your industry. You have to build trust fast. You have to get lucky.
Most people who get laid off do not have time for any of that. They need to move now.
Katie skipped the whole thing and got somewhere anyway.
What you get in this one
I broke down her setup so a complete beginner can copy it. By the end of this post you will have:
The exact prompt that sets up your own CareerGPT from scratch.
Questions to feed it when you have no idea what you want next.
Prompts for interview prep and working through an offer.
A clear picture of what AI cannot do here, so you know where to get real human help.
A one-page steal-this cheat sheet with every prompt in one place.
You do not need any AI experience. You need ChatGPT or Claude and a few minutes to set it up.
Quick and honest note before we start
This setup comes from Katie Parrott's first-person essay on Every.to, not from my own experience with it. She is the one who did this. Read her piece. She is clear that she uses AI as a thinking tool, not an answer machine. That framing matters. AI is not a therapist, a recruiter, or a legal advisor. Before any big career move, still talk to real people who know your field. Use this to think better. Not to think less.
Behind the paywall, you get the full how-to:
The CareerGPT setup prompt, copy-paste ready.
The five types of sessions to run with it, in order.
Prompts for figuring out what you actually want next, not just what looks good on a resume.
Interview prep prompts that give you feedback round by round.
What AI genuinely cannot do here, spelled out plainly.
The full cheat sheet of every prompt from this post in one place.
Subscribing unlocks the rest of this exact post right now, not just future ones. If you are between jobs, stuck in a role that is not working, or you know you cannot afford a real coach right now, this is the post that gives you the next best thing.
The full walkthrough is below the paywall.
Click the button, subscribe, and the locked section below opens right away. You get this article now.
