AI for job hunting: CVs, cover letters, and interview prep

A practical AI workflow for the job hunt — tailoring your CV to each role, drafting cover letters that sound like you, rehearsing interviews out loud, and the steps most candidates skip.

New to AI7 min read

Job hunting is one of the highest-ROI everyday uses of AI for adults. It is also one where doing it badly can hurt — generic AI-drafted cover letters are easy to spot, AI-tailored CVs sometimes overpromise, and rehearsing with a chatbot is not the same as rehearsing with a human.

This article is a practical workflow for the parts of the job search where AI is genuinely useful, the parts where it is dangerous, and the lines you should not cross.

The four steps where AI helps most

A typical job application has roughly these phases:

Tailoring your CV / résumé to the specific role
Drafting a cover letter or motivation message
Preparing for the interview
Following up after the interview

AI helps in all four. We'll go through each, with concrete prompts.

Step 1: Tailoring your CV to a specific role

A generic CV gets you generic results. The same person with the same experience can dramatically improve their hit rate by tailoring each application — emphasising the parts that match the job ad, downplaying the parts that do not, and using the vocabulary the employer uses.

This is a job AI is built for. The workflow:

I am applying for [job title] at [company]. Here is the job ad: [paste the full ad]

Here is my current CV: [paste your CV as plain text — strip out formatting]

Do the following:

1. Read the job ad and list the five most important qualities the employer is looking for. 2. Read my CV and list the three or four strongest pieces of evidence I already have for each of those five qualities. Quote the line of my CV where the evidence lives. 3. Suggest specific rewrites — not "make it sound stronger," but specific replacement lines I could use — to make the matching more visible. 4. List the things I have not mentioned at all that I should consider adding. 5. List the things on my CV that are weakening the fit for this role and could be cut or shortened.

Be specific. Do not invent experience I do not have.

The last sentence is critical. AI will sometimes overreach — phrasing a junior project as if you led the whole team, or claiming proficiency from a hint in your CV that does not warrant it. Push back on anything that overstates. The line to hold: every word on your CV must be defensible if asked about it in the interview.

After this prompt you have a precise, role-specific edit list. Apply the changes you agree with. Read the result. Send.

Step 2: Drafting a cover letter

The standard mistake: ask AI to "write a cover letter for this job." You get a generic, slightly wooden, AI-smelling letter that any reader can spot.

The better workflow:

I am writing a cover letter for [role] at [company]. Here is the job ad: [paste]

Here is my CV: [paste]

Before drafting: 1. Ask me three questions you would need answered to write a strong, specific cover letter — not a generic one. Wait for my answers.

Then: 2. Draft three versions: warm and personal (250 words), direct and confident (180 words), and a short opening-and-close-only version (90 words) for situations where the form just has a "tell us about you" box.

Constraints: - Do not include "I am writing to apply for..." - Do not start with "Dear Hiring Manager" - Do not include any sentence that could appear in someone else's cover letter for a different role - Match the language register of the job ad - One specific story or example per version

The three questions the model asks before drafting are where the magic is. They force you to think about what is actually distinct about your situation — and then the resulting letter will read as a specific person writing to a specific role, not as someone who applied to a hundred jobs in a weekend.

After the drafts come back, edit aggressively. Cover letters are short; every word should earn its place. The biggest improvement you can make is usually deleting the second sentence of each paragraph.

Step 3: Preparing for the interview

AI is excellent for two specific kinds of interview prep: researching the company and rehearsing answers.

Researching the company

Turn on web search and try:

I have an interview for [role] at [company] in [N days]. Help me prepare with a one-page brief covering:

1. What the company does, in plain language, in one paragraph. 2. The three most important recent developments at the company (funding, products, leadership, market position) in the last 12 months. Cite your sources. 3. The state of their industry — who their three biggest competitors are, what is happening to the market. 4. The three open questions I should be ready to discuss intelligently, given the role I'm applying for. 5. Three thoughtful questions I could ask the interviewers that would signal real preparation.

You will get a brief that takes the model 30 seconds to generate and would have taken you an hour and a half of skimming. Read it carefully — verify any specific claims, especially numbers. But the structure of the brief alone is worth gold.

Rehearsing answers

This is where most candidates leave the biggest gains on the table. AI is a tireless, infinitely patient interview partner who will not get bored at midnight. Use voice mode for full effect:

You are interviewing me for the [role] at [company] based on the job ad I will share. Your interview style: thoughtful, slightly skeptical, follows up on weak answers.

Job ad: [paste] My CV: [paste]

Rules: 1. Ask me one realistic interview question at a time. Wait for my answer. 2. Push back on any answer that is vague, jargon-heavy, or doesn't include a specific example. 3. Do not give me feedback after each answer. Just continue. 4. After ten questions, tell me the three answers that were strongest, the three that were weakest (with specifics), and the single behavioural change I should make for the real interview.

Spend twenty minutes doing this. Then do it again the next day. By the third pass, you will notice your answers getting tighter and your examples getting more specific — which is exactly what interviewers are listening for.

A particularly useful variant for behavioural questions: "Now make me practise answering questions using the STAR structure — Situation, Task, Action, Result. Ask me five behavioural questions, one at a time. Tell me after each answer where my structure broke down."

Step 4: The follow-up

A short thank-you note after an interview is one of the lowest-effort, highest-leverage moves in job hunting. Most candidates either skip it or send something generic. AI makes a personalised version trivial:

I just finished an interview for [role] at [company]. The conversation covered [paste your notes, even rough ones — what was discussed, what you liked, anything specific that came up].

Draft a short follow-up note (under 100 words): - Thanks for the time, by name if possible. - One specific thing from the conversation I want to refer back to. - One brief reinforcement of why I'd be a strong fit, tied to something we discussed. - A small, low-pressure close.

Tone: warm, professional, not effusive. No "thank you for the opportunity to interview."

Read it, edit it lightly, send within 24 hours.

Where to draw the line

A few things AI should not do for you.

Inventing experience. Every line on your CV and in your cover letter must be defensible. AI will sometimes paraphrase you into territory you do not actually own. Verify each claim before it goes out.

Writing in a voice that is not yours. If you write an AI-perfect cover letter and then sound completely different in the interview, the gap is jarring. Match your written voice to your spoken voice — and use AI to help you write as yourself, not as a generic strong candidate.

Skipping the thinking. If you let AI write your application for a job without thinking about why you want it, your interviews will be vague and uncertain. Use AI for the parts where it accelerates you; do the strategic thinking yourself.

The whole workflow, in one line

Tailor your CV with role-specific evidence, draft a cover letter with a specific story, research the company and rehearse with AI as interviewer, send a calibrated follow-up. AI accelerates each step. The judgement and the choices stay yours. Done in 90 minutes per application instead of three hours — and with a noticeably higher hit rate. Go put this to work on the next role you apply for.