The Perfect Prompt to Tailor Your CV
*Skip to the bottom of the page to go straight to the prompt we’ve devised here at Reed Interview Coaching*
It’s no secret that everybody is using AI to tailor their CVs for job positions. It can help save a huge amount of time and increase the amount of jobs you can apply to in a day. But if everyone is doing it, you need to be doing better than the rest! Here’s how you can:
Have an extremely detailed generic CV
Don’t give AI your one-pager to work with. Give it a behemoth of a document with every single task you’ve taken care of, every single achievement you’ve accomplished, every single soft skill and hard skill in your toolkit. Put in the work in this initial stage to save time editing and adding to your CV later. When you use AI to narrow it down it will have a goldmine of different experiences to choose from.
Use a high level prompt with AI to tailor your CV
I have developed a prompt that my clients have seen a lot of success with (you can copy it below) but if you’d like to try create your own, follow this tip.
Include the term “ATS-friendly”. An ATS is an Applicant Tracking System which recruiters use to narrow down the 100s of CVs they receive to a shortlist of maybe 20-50 that they will give the time of day. So before your CV is seen by a recruiter it has to be ready to be picked out by a keyword search done by an ATS. By asking for a CV that is ATS-friendly you will avoid formats that ATS has difficulty analyzing and you will ensure that relevant keywords are used in the CV, ready to be picked up in a keyword search.
Don’t have blind faith in AI
A big mistake people make is thinking that your work ends as soon as you send your prompt to ChatGPT. Even with an extremely detailed prompt, AI is known to over-embellish and flat out invent experience, statistics, etc. If you upload a CV for a Graphic Designer and ask for it to be tailored to fit a job description for a Nuclear Scientist, AI will do it. You need to carefully check AI’s output and make sure it’s still true to your experience.
You might end up getting an interview with such a CV but if they find out that AI has been waffling on your behalf, you could be blacklisted from any future opportunities with that company.
Feel free to use the below prompt that I’ve devised for my clients and follow the tips above. With this you’ll have all the more chance of getting your CV into that increasingly-difficult-to-enter shortlist and getting it graced by a recruiter’s own eyes.
To be prepared for what comes after that, book a session to master key interview skills and not let any opportunities slip through your fingers.
Prompt:
“ Please take the role of a CV consultant with expertise in Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), recruitment, and keyword optimization.
I want to tailor my CV for a specific job so that it performs well in ATS scans and appeals to hiring managers.
Here is the job description:
[PASTE JOB DESCRIPTION]
And here is my current CV:
[PASTE YOUR CV OR RESUME]
Please do the following:
Analyse the job description and extract the most relevant keywords, soft skills, hard skills, tools, qualifications, and responsibilities that an ATS would likely prioritize.
Audit my CV and identify any gaps or missing keywords that need to be addressed.
Rewrite or reformat my CV to:
- Include those keywords naturally in the summary, skills, and experience sections.
- Focus on accomplishments and impact, ideally using measurable results (feel free to reword bullets accordingly).
- Ensure ATS-friendly formatting (no graphics, tables, columns, or unusual fonts).
Suggest any section headers, bullet point formats, or layout improvements that can enhance clarity and ATS compatibility.
If any areas of my CV seem weak or underdeveloped compared to the job description, please highlight them and suggest how I might strengthen them (either with rewritten content or prompts for me to provide more detail). “
