10 Generative AI Prompts for HR

Generative AI isn’t just a tool for content creators—in fact, AI prompts for HR are already proving to provide time and cost-saving benefits for candidate screening, recruitment, writing job descriptions, and more. Use cases are growing every day for generative AI in HR—here are some prompts to get you started.

Saving time while gaining useful insights

Generative AI is a tool that HR should definitely be paying attention to because it holds the potential to save time and streamline processes in a range of ways. Josh Bersin is one of a number of HR experts already pointing to a wide range of potential applications for generative AI in HR.

Generative AI prompts for HR can range from the simple, typed into a tool like ChatGPT: 

“What are some best practices for onboarding remote employees?” 

…to the complex and detailed, something you could ask a GenAI tool made specifically for your dataset: 

“Based on the data we provide, analyze the effectiveness of various talent acquisition channels for the past three years, including average cost-per-hire, and average time-to-fill for each channel. Recommend how we should allocate our budget across these channels for the next quarter to achieve the most cost-effective results.”

In fact, the more complex and specific your prompts, the better the outputs you’ll receive. 

Creating AI prompts for HR use cases

Here we provide a starting point for crafting AI prompts for HR. To make sure your output is as useful as possible, you’ll want to edit these prompts to provide more specific detail about how you will use the information, your audience or who the information is intended for, and any other important details specific to your organization and your intended objectives.

5 general AI prompts for HR

1. What is the average compensation rate for [role] in New York City? 

2. Tell me about the compliance requirements for [labor law] and where I can find more information.

3. What are three tips for having a difficult conversation with a [type of] employee who is underperforming? Provide three options for beginning the discussion and for wrapping up the discussion. 

4. What is a strategy for creating an employee engagement plan for new hires?

5. We’d like to improve collaboration between our on-site staff members and those working remotely across various time zones. What are some things we could do to build better connections between all employees?

3 AI prompts for HR writing and editing

HR professionals create a lot of content—from job descriptions to ads for open jobs, policies, email communications with employees, benefits communications, and on and on. This is an area where generative AI can help you save significant time while also improving the quality of the content you create. 

Some useful prompts for these purposes might include:

1. Using this job description [paste in a job description], provide 10 options for a LinkedIn post directed at [insert details about target audience}. Include three hashtags for each option.

2. This open enrollment information for employees is long and difficult for employees to read and understand. Rewrite this document to make it more casual and interesting. Use shorter sentences and paragraphs and incorporate bullet points, bold and underlining to highlight key points. We like the style of this copy [provide an example of a document with the style and tone you like] [cut and past your open enrollment document at the end of your prompt]

3. We need to develop a policy about employee use of generative AI tools. What are the most important considerations to include in a policy based on our current thinking? [provide a list of points] What have we missed? What are the most common elements that other companies are including in these policies? 

4 AI prompts for HR data analysis

For HR professionals, using generative AI to analyze your own data is where some of the real power in these tools lies. But, read carefully how the tool you’re using will use—or retain—any proprietary information you’re feeding into it. 

For instance, if you’re feeding in your own employee data, will the tool retain that data as part of its database meaning that it could potentially be used in responses to others’ prompts or queries? Or will the inputs and outputs be exclusive to you and your organization?

Think about the kind of data you currently assess to draw conclusions on staffing, employee satisfaction, pay and promotion trends, and more. Think about things that you wished you had the time to analyze or that have stumped you in the past. Maybe generative AI could help. 

For example:

1. Using the employee data we provide, create an employee attrition risk assessment including the impacts of division, department, manager, performance ratings, and demographic information to identify employees most likely to leave the organization in the next six months. 

2. Analyze our compensation practices to identify areas of inequity based on employee demographic factors, department, manager, and performance data. Where do we have gaps that can’t be explained objectively that might indicate discriminatory pay practices?

3. Compare the performance of internal versus external hires for our senior leadership positions with length of time in the position, and performance evaluation data to determine if there is a measurable difference between those hired internally and those hired externally.

4. Analyze our annual employee engagement data to identify areas where we are doing well, and areas where we need improvement, broken down by department, role, length of service, and demographic data.

Visier’s new generative AI digital assistant, Vee, can respond to prompts about your own people data in natural language. Best of all, with Vee, you can have confidence that your data will be kept private and secure with answers available only to those with the right level of permission—and only to those within your company. Your data will not be added to any public dataset.

Best practice tips for generating better answers from GenAI

In addition to being as specific as possible with your original prompts, here are a couple of additional tips to help you get maximum value from your generative AI output: 

• After creating a prompt, ask: “Do you understand?” or “Do you have any questions for me?”

• Ask follow-up questions. The tool will retain the information you previously provided as well as its responses so you can ask it to add/change/reformat/refine its responses until it’s exactly what you need.

And a couple of caveats to be aware of when using generative AI tools:

• Be aware that some tools (like ChatGPT) are only trained on content up to September 2021, so if your information needs are more current, certain generative AI tools may not work well for those specific purposes.

• Users are finding that generative AI tools hallucinate. In short, it makes up answers, providing information that isn’t exactly true. Carefully review outputs to check for any potential inaccuracies.

• After generating an answer,  always thoroughly check to ensure that anything you publish or share doesn’t contain personal information or proprietary data. 

• Finally, refine the writing to sound less robotic and more human, and ensure that the writing adheres to any style guidelines established for your brand or company. 

While AI will never replace the “human” in “human resources,” as we hope you can see from the examples above, it certainly can help HR pros save time and amplify their impact in a number of ways. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the potential of generative AI to streamline and inform your HR processes.