Assign a role

What this technique does

Role prompting in ChatGPT means deciding who is writing the answer before anything else. Add the line “You are an editor with 10 years of experience” and the AI starts reaching for the standards an editor would care about — sentence length, repetition, adjectives with nothing behind them — on its own. With no role it aims for an answer that suits anybody, and the result is usually a textbook average.

A role sets the point of view as well as the knowledge. The same proposal gets questions about where the numbers came from if an investment analyst reads it, and questions about unfamiliar jargon if a new hire does. What you want out of it is also who you should call in.

Persona — the voice and the temperament too

A persona is a role plus an attitude. “A demanding senior colleague who always offers an alternative”, “polite but with no filler” — write down the voice and the temperament and the temperature of the result changes. The over-eager tone and the excessive praise that survive a bare job title get caught here.

Good example / bad example

Bad

can you polish up this cover letter

Good

You are a CV editor with 10 years of experience who deals with recruiters every day. You point out problems before you give praise, and you never flag a sentence without showing a replacement for it.

Please tighten the cover letter paragraph below. Start with the overstatements and the adjectives with no evidence behind them, and propose a replacement sentence for each one.

The first answer smooths the sentences out, but you cannot tell what was wrong or why, so none of it carries over to the next letter. The second points out why a line like “I am a hard worker” grates and hands you alternatives, so you can pick one and use it as it is.

How to write it

• You are a {years of experience, job title}. Judge by {what matters most in this work}.
• You are a {job} who deals with {audience} every day.
• Answer in a {polite, terse} voice, with the temperament of someone who {points out problems before giving praise}.

Watch out

A long role description pushes the actual request down the page and buries it. Two or three sentences are enough.

Casting a real person as the role only imitates the way they talk; it does not raise the expertise. Write it as a job and a standard of judgement instead.

Unfamiliar terms? See Aha AI: role-prompting, persona