Job searching can feel overwhelming, especially when you’re in a new job market, different from where you built your career. Knowing what information to highlight on your resume for the role you are applying for can be challenging, but thankfully, AI can help simplify the process. Of course, it’s not as simple as directly asking AI, “make my resume match this job application,” but rather, there are strategic ways to carefully prompt AI to effectively highlight your achievements and help your resume stand out within the Canadian job market.
The “Golden” Prompt
What Ai tells you, depends on how you ask the question and how you word your request. This is why it is crucial to ensure that you provide clear instructions to avoid ending up with a resume that is AI-sounding. For instance, telling it to “act like an experienced resume writer with over 20 years of experience in helping people land jobs at top organisations” will help the AI position itself in a way to offer you better responses.
You should share your existing resume with ai, along with the job description of the role you are applying for, as both of these will help it have background information that is important in order for it to assess what your skills are and what must be highlighted for the specific job. Help it understand all the details by providing as much information as you can.
It is also important to set up ground rules. Strictly instructing the AI on what it should and shouldn’t do, is important to prevent it from fabricating work experiences or responses. False claims made by ai to enhance your resume can cost you opportunities. Instruct the AI to ask you questions before it begins tailoring your resume to avoid loopholes. For example, directing it specifically, such as asking it to avoid using em dashes (—) as it is a common AI giveaway, can be useful.
Explaining Your Work Through Results (KPIs)
Employers in Canada prefer to see your skills through results rather than a list of your daily responsibilities from previous jobs. This is mainly because it helps employers get a tangible idea of your achievements. A key to creating a stronger resume is:
- Reviewing your bullet points and improve on ones that are more descriptive by adding results (e.g., the impact of your work).
- Ask AI, “Do these bullet points represent accomplishments or tasks? Identify the tasks.”
- It is good to include numbers and tangible results in about 60% of them.
- Ask AI, “Can you suggest some numbers or results I could include in these bullet points?”
AI will provide suggestions, but it is up to you to verify that nothing you put on your resume is false. It is okay to not have exact numbers; rough estimates are just as effective, but only include accurate information on your resume. For example, instead of “Coordinated events”, you can say, “Coordinated 12 networking events serving 500+ attendees with a 95% satisfaction rate.” Here, the number of attendees is a rough estimate, but it shows the scale and impact of your work, which will help appeal to employers.
Skills & Summary
Your resume must be clear and easy to read. This is especially important because most employers skim through resumes due to the large volume of applications they receive.
Furthermore, ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems), which are used by most organisations today, strongly prefer resumes that are well organised. One way to make your resume stronger for the ATS system, is to ask AI to organise your skills into categories based on your resume.
Step 4: Bearing the Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are used to review resumes before HR reads them. However, ATS are flawed and may overlook points on your resume that are important to the role you are applying for. This is why it is vital to write your resume with the goal in mind to bypass the ATS and have your resume reviewed by a human recruiter.
To begin the simulation, you can tell AI,
- Act as a sophisticated modern ATS (like Greenhouse or Lever).
- Analyse the alignment between my resume and the job description.
- Give me a ‘Yes/No’ decision on shortlisting. Identify 10 specific red or yellow flags.
This provides the AI with clear and strict instructions, which makes it a strong prompt. Clear instructions lead to the AI giving you better responses.
After prompting the AI to identify weaknesses, there are three levels of feedback to focus on, and ask ai to review with you.
- Keywords: Are the important keywords from the job description present in the resume? Keywords are particularly important for ATS because these systems look for them to ensure that your resume aligns with the role you are applying for.
- Quantified Achievements: Are accomplishments supported by numbers and results? Numbers and estimates help solidify your achievements as they display tangible results.
- Strategic Role Fit: Does the resume clearly show that you are the right fit for the role? You want your resume to align with the role as much as possible so that you can be preferred by the recruiter over other applicants competing for the same role.
General Best Practices
Overall, there are a few things to keep in mind when using AI to improve your resume. AI can be extremely useful, but if used wrongly, it can cause more harm than good. Always verify that the information included on your resume is accurate.
Within the Canadian context, tailoring your resume is necessary as you want to avoid being filtered out by the ATS before a human recruiter gets to see your resume.
AI can be extremely useful in helping save time while improving your resume and providing you with tips to tailor each application to the job posting. However, it is always important to remember that your personal input is what will make your resume stand out exceptionally.
Overall, the human voice is still the most important! AI can simply help you make your own true experience and skills stand out more in today’s job market.
Please feel free to reach out to us for help at [email protected]. Good luck on the job search!