Fix Your CV With AI Without It Becoming AI's CV

Most people think the AI's job is rewriting their CV. Give AI that job and it turns you into a "results-driven professional with a proven track record", which is the same person every other applicant has been turned into. Recruiters have read a thousand of those since March, and they can smell them.

The useful job for AI is smaller. AI finds what's missing and asks you for the detail, and the words stay yours.

Say you've sent the same CV to thirty jobs, two tidy pages describing a reasonable person. Somewhere a recruiter reads that CV in eleven seconds and doesn't see the one thing they were looking for.

Hold every line to two minutes

Nothing goes on the CV that you couldn't talk about for two minutes if someone pointed at it.

Apply that rule to every line the AI touches. Say you organised a meeting, and back comes "led cross-functional stakeholder alignment". Would you blush explaining that line in an interview?

If so, take it off. The CV gets you the conversation, and that conversation is you.

Check your CV against one job

Pick one job you want, paste in the full advert and upload your CV.

Read this job advert the way the person hiring would, then read my CV. Tell me what they are really looking for that the advert says between the lines. Which of those things does my CV show? Which does it mention without evidence, and which are missing? Where am I using vague words where a number or an example would do? Don't rewrite anything yet. Just give me the gaps.

Expect the answer to sting a little. For example, "They want someone who's run a budget. You say 'financially aware' with no figure attached."

Now you have a working list of three or four gaps.

The AI doesn't know the company, so ask a friend who works there, or spend ten minutes on the company's website reading how they describe themselves. Either beats any amount of matching keywords.

Each tailored CV fits one advert, so give the next job its own check.

If you're planning to let a tool apply to a hundred jobs for you automatically, I'd ask why. A hundred unread applications are worth the same as none.

Let AI interview you for the numbers

Most CV advice tells the AI to "rewrite with impact", so the AI makes up the impact. Make AI ask you questions instead.

For each gap you found, interview me, one question at a time. Help me find the real evidence from my experience. That means what I actually did, how big it was, what changed because of it, and any numbers I can honestly stand behind. If I don't know a number, help me work out a fair estimate and mark it as approximate. Don't write anything until we've been through all of them.

Answer like a person. "I sorted out the rota because it was a mess and people kept missing shifts" is raw material.

The AI asks how many people were on the rota, and how many shifts were missed before and after. You end up with "rebuilt the rota for a 14-person team, and missed shifts went from about six a month to one".

That line is all true, and every word came from you.

Rewrite only those lines

Now let AI rewrite, but only the lines you've worked on.

Rewrite only the bullet points we've discussed, using the evidence I gave you and the words I used. Use plain English, one line each, with the number first where there is one. No buzzwords, no "proven track record", nothing I didn't tell you. Leave the rest of the CV alone.

Left alone, AI makes things sound bigger, and "Helped with" becomes "led" in one go. That's why the interview and the checks below exist.

Test your CV on a filter and a person

Many employers use software that scans CVs for keywords before a person sees them, so test the machine first. "Would a keyword filter for this advert pass this CV? List any terms from the advert that should appear and don't, but only where I genuinely have the experience."

Then test the human. "Now read it as the hiring manager with eleven seconds. What do they see first, and what would make them stop reading?"

Read the whole CV aloud. If you'd be embarrassed to say any line in the interview, change that line back to the version you would say.

Send the before and after to someone who knows you and ask which one sounds like you. If they pick the before, you've let the AI in too far.