What each part of the prompt does
- Recommendation held back
- The first line forbids an early answer. Without it, the model picks the higher salary in the opening paragraph and every later section reads as a justification of that pick.
- Hard limits first
- A visa rule or a city you cannot leave can settle the question before any weighing starts. Checking [CONSTRAINTS] first saves you reading a careful comparison of an option you could never accept.
- Unknowns with a person to ask
- Offers are vague about team size, review cycles and on-call duty. Step 3 turns that vagueness into specific questions for the hiring manager, a future teammate or HR, which you can send before the deadline.
- Your ranking, not a generic one
- Gemini waits for you to order the factors. Someone paying off a loan and someone changing fields weigh the same offer differently, and the final fit should reflect your order rather than an average person's.
Variations to try
Same idea, one thing changed.
Two offers or staying put Help me decide between three career options. Do not tell me which one to take until you have laid out the trade-offs and asked me the questions below. Option A: [OPTION A] Option B: [OPTION B] Option C: staying in my current job, as described below. About me: - My current situation and role: [CURRENT SITUATION] - What I want my work life to look like in three to five years: [LONG TERM GOAL] - Hard limits (money, location, family, visa, health): [CONSTRAINTS] Steps: 1. Restate all three options in two lines each so I can check you understood them. 2. Compare all three on pay and financial risk, what I would learn, who I would work with, stability, daily workload and hours, and how each one moves me toward my long-term goal. Use a table with one row per factor and a short note in each cell. 3. List what is still unknown about each option and the exact question I should ask to find out, and who to ask. 4. Ask me to rank the factors from most to least important to me. Wait for my answer. 5. After I answer, weigh the options against my ranking and tell me which one fits better and what I would give up by choosing it. Rules: Stay with the facts I give you. When a detail is missing, say so instead of assuming. Point out any hard limit that rules an option out before comparing anything else.
With a bad-year test Help me decide between two career options. Do not tell me which one to take until you have laid out the trade-offs and asked me the questions below. Option A: [OPTION A] Option B: [OPTION B] About me: - My current situation and role: [CURRENT SITUATION] - What I want my work life to look like in three to five years: [LONG TERM GOAL] - Hard limits (money, location, family, visa, health): [CONSTRAINTS] Steps: 1. Restate both options in two lines each so I can check you understood them. 2. Compare them on pay and financial risk, what I would learn, who I would work with, stability, daily workload and hours, and how each one moves me toward my long-term goal. Use a table with one row per factor and a short note in each cell. 3. List what is still unknown about each option and the exact question I should ask to find out, and who to ask. 4. Ask me to rank the factors from most to least important to me. Wait for my answer. 5. After I answer, weigh the options against my ranking. Then describe a realistic bad year in each option: what goes wrong and whether I could recover from it. Tell me which option fits better and which bad year I could live with more easily. Rules: Stay with the facts I give you. When a detail is missing, say so instead of assuming. Point out any hard limit that rules an option out before comparing anything else.
If the result isn't right
- Write both options with the same level of detail. If one has exact figures and the other has impressions, the table will favour the one you described better.
- Answer the ranking step honestly, even when your top factor feels unambitious; a fit built on a pretend ranking is no help.
- Send the questions from step 3 to the employer before deciding, then paste the answers back and ask Gemini to update the table.