How to Use GenAI to Advance Your Career: Insight from Coursera’s CEO

Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Google Gemini are well-positioned to work on reading, writing, and thinking tasks. You can typically use a simple prompt for reading and writing tasks, for example, “summarize these meeting notes” or “draft an email.” Thinking tasks, or activities that require problem-solving, tend to need a bit more work in order to receive useful outputs from your generative AI (GenAI) tool.

Luckily, Jeff Maggioncalda, Coursera’s CEO, has an LLM prompting process that primes your tool to deliver more comprehensive, relevant outputs. His process relies on systems thinking to produce context that you feed to the LLM prior to asking your question. In his course, Use Generative AI as Your Thought Partner, Maggioncalda provides hands-on guidance for using his process. You can learn more about systems thinking and get step-by-step instructions in our guide, The Secret to Using GenAI Tools Effectively: Insight from Coursera’s CEO.

If you’re aiming for career advancement, there are two important benefits to incorporating GenAI into your workflow. First, it can help your candidacy stand out. According to the 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report from Microsoft and LinkedIn, more than 60 percent of leaders only want to hire candidates with AI skills [1]. Second, it can help you do more faster, opening your capacity for higher-level work. A report from Visier found that professionals using GenAI to augment their skills are saving an average of almost two hours per day [2].

“It's one thing to talk about generative AI, but the way to really learn it is to understand the concepts and then apply them in practice,” Maggioncalda says. 

To figure out your base plan for incorporating GenAI into your job role, read our guide, How to Use GenAI in Your Job: Insight from Coursera’s CEO. Here, we’ll build upon that plan with Maggioncalda’s advice for leveling up.

How to advance your career

People often compare a workplace team to a family; Maggioncalda disagrees. “A business is more like a sports team,” he says, “where the sports team is accountable for winning, and the way that you win is by playing your own position at the absolute best level you can and supporting your teammates.”

The way that you advance as an employee is similar to the way an athlete excels, Maggioncalda continues, with these three key steps:

1. Working really hard: “First find a position that you love because if you don't love it, you're probably not going to work really hard at it. Once you find a position you love, and ideally, you're good at, then work really hard.”

2. Being a team player: “Be a really good teammate. Make sure that you bring out the best performance in other people.”

3. Stretching: “Every time you have a chance to stretch yourself, to push yourself beyond your current boundaries—whether that's in training, whether that's in practice, or whether that's in a game—the way that you grow is by stretching.”

When you’re ready to advance, act like an athlete, then supercharge your approach with GenAI. 

Tip from a CEO: Take initiative

“What really gets noticed, at least at Coursera, is when someone says, ‘Look, this could be way better. I will take the lead on this. This is what I'll need in terms of support to do it, but I will lead this, and there'll be a group of people that I will pull together to accomplish this goal that's really important for the company,’” Maggioncalda says.

How to use GenAI for career advancement

“[Career advancement] is almost always about stretching yourself and growing to take on some initiative to broaden your skill sets,” Maggioncalda says. “But GPT can help you spot them and can help you be more successful because it'll help you figure out what you need to know and where the downsides might be.”

To brainstorm pathways for your advancement, Maggioncalda advises an approach that builds upon your plan for incorporating GenAI into your job role. Here’s his step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Gather your context.

You can reuse your systems-thinking approach to your job role here—“and I wouldn't just type it in once,” Maggioncalda adds. “I'd put it into a Google doc so that you can just paste it in every time.”

The remaining context you provide will depend on your specific advancement goals. Some ideas for additional context include:

• A description of the role you aspire to

• Skills you’d like to develop

• Projects you’d like to lead

Step 2: Input your context.

Use versions of Maggioncalda’s go-to prompt to provide your LLM with the context it needs in order to act as your thought partner.

Consider the following CONTEXT and reply "I understand the context" but do not explain:  

<<< BEGIN CONTEXT >>>

[add context here]

<<< END CONTEXT >>>

Step 3: Prompt the LLM to identify your growth opportunities.

Finally, build your growth plan. Here is a series of prompts Maggioncalda recommends:

• Identify five on-the-job projects I can do to develop these skills.

• If I took PROJECT on, what new skills would I learn?

• What skills would I need in order to be successful?

• What are the key success factors I would need to have in place in order to be successful?

This line of questioning aims to create a comprehensive understanding of how to prepare as you volunteer for stretch projects so that you can make the best decision based on your career goals. Once you decide on the skill, project, or role you’d like to pursue, prompt the LLM to help you come up with a project pitch and action plan.

Prompt like a pro

Ready to go deeper on prompting techniques with Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda? Try our guide, Useful Generative AI Prompt Techniques for Everyday Work, to grow your AI skills, better integrate GenAI into your processes, and prepare for your future job role.  

Keep learning with Jeff Maggioncalda on Coursera

In his course Use Generative AI as Your Thought Partner, Maggioncalda breaks down the process for using ChatGPT with systems thinking, with your career as an example. In the first article in this series, The Secret to Using GenAI Tools Effectively: Insight from Coursera’s CEO, Maggioncalda details how he uses systems thinking to effectively use LLM tools. In the second article in this series, How to Use GenAI in Your Job: Insight from Coursera’s CEO, Maggioncalda shares his tips for incorporating GenAI into your job role.