In our last article, Prompt Engineering Best Practices, we explored the core principles for maximizing LLM performance.This follow-up demonstrates these principles in action through six real business scenarios. Each example includes the business context, a working prompt, and an explanation of the techniques used.
Prompt Engineering Examples for Various Business Scenarios
1Recruiting & Interviewing
Recruiting top talent involves multiple time-intensive steps: sifting through resumes, screening candidates, and crafting interview questions tailored to specific roles. Creating structured interview frameworks and evaluation criteria often leads to inconsistent candidate assessment across different hiring managers.
AI can help standardize this process by generating structured interview questions and evaluation frameworks, ensuring more consistent candidate evaluation while reducing preparation time for hiring teams.
Example Prompt:
You are an HR manager with over 10 years of experience in tech recruitment.
Task:
1. Review the following job description for a software engineer role: [Insert Job Description Here]
2. Come up with a structured interview plan. Include these in the plan:- a. 5 technical questions testing core skills
b. 3 behavioral questions assessing the candidate's teamwork & adaptability
c. 1 evaluation rubric scoring each candidate out of 5
Format:
Present as a three-section table (Technical Questions, Behavioral Questions, Evaluation Rubric)
Constraints:
• Use plain English, avoid technical jargon
• Keep questions concise and actionable
• Include brief scoring criteria for each rubric item
Interpretation & Integrated Best Practices:
Give the AI a Job Title: We prefaced the prompt with assigning the AI a role as a "senior hiring manager," specifically in tech. This provides the AI with an appropriate frame of mind to guide tone and focus.
Start With Crystal-Clear Questions: We provided clearly defined goals (structured interview plan) and constraints (plain English, conciseness, table format) to get the exact output we’re looking for.
Define the Output Format Clearly: We specified that we required the output to be in the form of a 3-section table, ensuring the response is structured, immediately usable, and tailored to our requirements.
Use Simple, Everyday Language: Provided instructions are clear & straightforward to ensure the content is not convoluted or needlessly complex, avoiding AI-generated jargon.
Add Context: Providing the job description provides the AI with the proper context of the real-world scenario.
2Market Research & Competitor Analysis
For businesses to stay competitive, they need accurate insight into their competitors. Manual competitive research is time-consuming and often lacks strategic focus. Teams spend significant effort gathering competitor data but struggle to synthesize findings into actionable business strategies.
AI can quickly analyze competitive landscapes, identify market trends, and suggest strategic opportunities, allowing teams to focus on execution rather than data collection.
Example Prompt:
You are a market research analyst at a mid-size SaaS company specializing in project management software.
Task:
Analyze the competitive landscape for the following product category: Project management software. Think this through step-by-step.
1. Identify the top 3 competitors and summarize their strengths/weaknesses.
2. Highlight emerging trends in the project management software market segment.
3. Suggest 3 actionable strategies our company could implement to gain a competitive edge.
Format:
Use these headers with bullet points:
• Competitor Analysis • Market Trends• Strategic Recommendations
Constraints:
• Output should be presented as bullet points with these headers: Competitor Analysis, Market Trends, Recommendations
• Use clear, concise, & non-technical language
• Each section should be under 200 words
3Customer Support & Service
Effective customer support drives retention and customer satisfaction. Yet agents often face repetitive questions and struggle to maintain consistency.
To help mitigate straying away from brand tone & a consistent, positive customer experience, AI can help generate response templates for specific situations, produce troubleshooting guides, and offer proactive solutions efficiently.
Example Prompt:
Act as a senior customer success manager for an e-commerce platform selling consumer electronics.
Scenario:
Our support team frequently receives questions about product returns and billing issues.
Task:
1. Draft three email templates for these common inquiries:
- a. Refund requests
b. Step-by-step process of product return according to our latest policy [Inset policy info for training data]
c. Billing discrepancies
2. Include a short, friendly greeting and closing line for each email template.
Constraints:
● Each template should be under 200 words.
● Use a polite, professional, and empathetic tone
● Avoid jargon and abbreviations
Tone: Professional, empathetic, solution-focused
Interpretation & Integrated Best Practices:
Start With Crystal-Clear Questions: Clearly indicate to the AI what emails to generate for relevant situations and the word limit for clarity.
Give the AI a Job Title: The role of a senior customer success manager helps the AI inform on its tone and ensures relevant content.
Add Context Like a Story or Scenario: Providing a common support scenario ensures practical, realistic outputs. Positioning the company as an e-commerce platform selling consumer electronics ensures that the templates are relevant to the company’s industry/products.
Define the Output Format Clearly: Clear separation for each email template makes them immediately usable.
Use Simple, Everyday Language: The prompt is simply presented and encourages plain, non-complex English to suit customer-facing communication.
4Learning & Training
Creating effective training materials requires instructional design expertise and significant time investment. However, training quality often varies by instructor, and many programs fail to engage learners or promote practical skill application.
AI can standardize training development by generating structured lesson plans, interactive exercises, and assessment materials that promote consistent, engaging learning experiences.
Example Prompt:
Act as an experienced corporate trainer with expertise in [Industry].
Task:
1. Create a 30-minute training session outline on [Specific Topic Here].
2. The training session should include:
- a. 5 key learning objectives
b. 3 timed interactive exercises
c. A 5-question quiz to assess comprehension of the topic
d. 3-5 reflective questions that prompt learners to analyze trade-offs, identify pitfalls, or answer a “what if” scenario
e. For each reflective question, provide a 1-2 sentence note explaining its purpose
Format: Numbered outline with brief explanations
Constraints:
● Present output as a numbered list
● Use simple language suitable for employees with no prior experience
● Keep the outline concise (max 300 words)
Interpretation & Integrated Best Practices:
Start With Crystal-Clear Questions: Prompt clearly outlines the deliverables (outline, objectives, exercises, quiz, reflections) to keep the AI focused and actionable.
Give the AI a Job Title: The role of a corporate trainer with specific expertise ensures the response is professional, structured, and framed appropriately.
Break It Down Step by Step: The listed components in sequence guide the AI to build a complete, logical training plan.
Define the Output Format Clearly: Includes word limits/numbered lists to ensure content is concise and ready-to-use.
Use Simple, Everyday Language: Explicitly requesting plain language ensures accessibility & relevance to entry-level employees.
Encourage Critical Thinking, Not Just Answers: Requiring reflective questions pushes the AI to analyze trade-offs, pitfalls, and scenarios, leading to deeper, discussion-ready insights.
5Creative & Brainstorming
Creativity & brainstorming are essential for marketing, product development, advertising, and problem solving, but teams can face idea bottlenecks. Ideas may feel stale or take too long to refine into something usable.
AI can assist by generating innovative ideas, alternative approaches, and creative strategies rapidly, tailored to your product, topic, or content.
Example Prompt:
You are a creative marketing strategist for a [Industry] company.
Task:
Brainstorm 10 unique campaign ideas for our new product launch [Insert Product Name/Details].
Requirements:
● Include a catchy campaign name and a one-sentence concept for each
● Suggest the primary marketing channel for each campaign idea (social media, email, events, etc.)
● Focus ideas on originality and audience engagement, while adhering to brand tone
Focus on:
● Audience engagement and interaction
● Brand differentiation from competitors
● Measurable outcomes
Constraints:
● Each description should be under 50 words.
● Avoid generic, overused phrases like “cutting-edge” or “revolutionary”
Interpretation & Integrated Best Practices:
Start with Crystal-Clear Questions: The task, deliverables, and requirements are defined upfront for specific/relevant output.
Give the AI a Job Title: Assumes the role of a senior creative strategist to ensure innovative & out-of-the-box ideation.
Set Boundaries With “Do” and “Don’t” Rules: Restrictions like “avoid overused phrases” guide output quality and facilitate more creative, tailored content. Adding “adhering to brand tone” helps ensure that the content aligns with the company’s brand image for the new product campaign.
Define the Output Format Clearly: Structured list with campaign name, description, and channel is ready to review and use.
6Personal Productivity & Automation
Aside from ‘big-picture’ AI use, prompt engineering can also be a useful tool for personal use of busy professionals who struggle to keep up with daily/weekly tasks. Or they may be working with repetitive workflows manually, at a big cost to efficiency.
AI can create automated workflows, task prioritization templates, and productivity strategies to save time, reduce errors, and take some of the “burden” off their shoulders.
Example Prompt:
Act as a productivity coach for mid-level managers.
Scenario:
The manager is struggling to organize weekly tasks, meetings, and follow-ups efficiently.
Task:
1. Create a weekly task automation plan using [Insert specific tool/platform].
2. This should include:
- a. Daily task priorities (maximum of 5 daily)
b. Suggested automations & processes to build for repetitive emails/reports
c. A one-line motivational tip for each day to boost morale & keep the manager focused
Format: Present as a structured weekly template
Constraints:
● Present output as a table with these columns: Day, Task, Automation, Tip
● Each cell should be concise with a max of 15 words.
● Use clear, practical language
Interpretation & Integrated Best Practices:
Start With Crystal-Clear Questions: Clearly defines the manager’s struggle, the tool/platform to create automations, and the required output to avoid vague, unhelpful responses.
Give the AI a Job Title: The AI takes the role of a “productivity coach” to ensure grounded, usable advice.
Define the Output Format Clearly: Fixed column in the table keeps results structured, easy to apply, and convenient to parse through for the busy manager.
Add Context Like a Story or Scenario: Including the manager’s weekly challenges makes the AI’s suggestions more relevant to the context.
Use Simple, Everyday Language: Does not overcomplicate the prompt, with direct, practical instructions to guide the AI to generate the plan similarly.
Set Boundaries With “Do” and “Don’t” Rules: Word limit per cell prevents overly long, cluttered outputs, and emphasizes “clear, practical language” to ensure the output is not overly complex or convoluted.
Conclusion
An AI is only as helpful as its prompt; with prompt engineering principles, you can clearly see that structuring requests gets clear, actionable results.
These examples demonstrate how proper structuring, context-setting, and constraint definition create reliable, actionable outputs.
The key is treating prompts as precise instructions rather than casual requests. When you provide clear roles, specific requirements, and structured formats, AI delivers results that save time and enhance decision-making across your organization.
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