Tech & AIBeginnerPreview
AI-Powered Resume & Job Search
A practical course for job seekers who want AI to do the slow, repetitive parts of a search: tailoring resumes to each posting, writing honest cover letters, optimizing a LinkedIn profile for recruiter search, and rehearsing interviews. You leave with a master resume, a tailoring workflow, reusable prompts, and a tracker you run through to offer.
For job seekers, career changers, new graduates, and working professionals who run their own search and want AI to tailor and draft faster without lying on a resume or sounding generic.
Course content
Workbook & downloads
Put the course into practice — a printable workbook plus editable templates you can fill in and reuse.
Preview the workbook
This workbook turns the course into tools you use through your whole search: a master-resume builder, a per-job tailoring and ATS check, a cover-letter and LinkedIn system, and an interview-and-offer playbook. Work through one section per module, filling the worksheets and running the prompts in ChatGPT or Claude as you go. By the end you will have an ATS-ready resume, an optimized profile, a STAR story bank, and an application tracker you run all the way to an offer — with one firm rule throughout: AI tailors and drafts, but every fact comes from you.
How Hiring Really Works and Where AI Fits
Build the master resume and the honesty guardrails that every later exercise depends on.
Exercise: Interview Yourself to Build the Master Resume
Pick your most recent role. Use AI to interview you one question at a time until you have at least eight concrete, quantified accomplishments. Paste the results into a private master document. Repeat for each past role. You will never send this document — you tailor from it.
- Act as a career coach and ask me one question at a time to surface accomplishments from my role as [title] at [company]; probe for numbers, scope, and results.
- Keep asking follow-ups until we have at least eight concrete, quantified bullets; do not write the resume yet.
- Now list every tool, software, method, and certification I mentioned so I can add a skills inventory to my master.
Worksheet: Master Resume Role Capture
Complete one copy of this for every role in your history. Record raw facts and real numbers with their source, not polished prose — polishing happens per application. Leave a number blank only if you genuinely cannot verify it.
- Employer, exact title, and location
- Start and end dates (month and year)
- One line on what the team did and your scope
- Accomplishment 1 (with a number and its source)
- Accomplishment 2 (with a number and its source)
- Accomplishment 3 (with a number and its source)
- Accomplishment 4 (with a number and its source)
- Tools, software, and methods used (by name)
- Promotions, awards, or metrics you were measured on
Checklist: AI Toolkit and Guardrails Checklist
- Chosen one general assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, or Gemini) for all drafting
- Decided whether to add a match-rate tool (Jobscan) and a tracker (Teal or Huntr)
- Turned off chat history or used Temporary Chat for resume conversations
- Set the rule: AI may rephrase and quantify from my figures, but never add an employer, date, credential, or metric
- Committed to listing only skills I could discuss for two minutes in an interview
Tailoring an ATS-Ready Resume with AI
Decode a posting into keywords, rewrite bullets as quantified achievements, and verify ATS-safe formatting.
Exercise: Decode One Real Job Posting
Choose a real posting you want. Paste the full description into AI and extract the must-have and nice-to-have keywords in the posting's exact wording. Map each must-have to a bullet in your master resume that honestly proves it, and flag any genuine gaps.
- Extract the hard skills, tools, certifications, and repeated phrases from this job description, grouped into Must-have and Nice-to-have, using the exact wording.
- For each must-have, ask me whether I have that experience so I can map it to a resume bullet.
- List any acronyms I should spell out in full at least once for keyword matching.
Worksheet: Keyword-to-Evidence Map
List the posting's must-have keywords and the real bullet that proves each. Adopt the posting's wording where it is true of you. Any keyword with no honest evidence is a gap — note it; do not fake it.
- Must-have keyword 1 — proof bullet from my master
- Must-have keyword 2 — proof bullet from my master
- Must-have keyword 3 — proof bullet from my master
- Must-have keyword 4 — proof bullet from my master
- Must-have keyword 5 — proof bullet from my master
- Genuine gaps (keywords I cannot honestly support)
- Acronyms to spell out in full once
Exercise: Rewrite Five Bullets with XYZ
Take five duty-style lines from your master and rewrite them as achievements using XYZ (accomplished X as measured by Y by doing Z). Supply your own numbers; if a bullet has none, dig for one or have AI ask you rather than invent it. Start each with a strong, varied action verb.
- Rewrite each of these duty statements as an XYZ achievement, starting with a strong action verb, using only the numbers I provide.
- If any bullet has no metric, ask me a question to find one instead of inventing it.
- Now vary the opening verbs so no two bullets start with the same word.
Checklist: ATS-Safe Resume Checklist
- Single-column, text-based layout (no images, tables, or text boxes holding real content)
- Standard section headings: Experience, Education, Skills, Certifications
- Contact details in the body, not in the header or footer region
- Dates formatted consistently (for example, Mar 2021 to Aug 2023)
- Match-rate checked against the posting; missing terms added only where true
- Saved as .docx or a text-based .pdf with the company and role in the filename
Cover Letters and a Recruiter-Ready LinkedIn
Write a specific, honest cover letter, optimize your LinkedIn for recruiter search, and draft networking outreach.
Exercise: Draft a Non-Generic Cover Letter
For your target posting, draft a four-paragraph cover letter from your resume only. Open with one specific, non-flattering reason you want this company. Map your strongest relevant achievement to their top requirement. Then run an edit pass to delete every sentence that could appear in anyone's letter.
- Write a four-paragraph cover letter under 300 words for [role] at [company] using only the achievements in the resume I paste.
- Open with this specific, non-flattering reason I am interested: [reason]; map my result to this requirement: [requirement].
- Now flag any cliches like 'I am excited' or 'hard-working team player' and rewrite those sentences to sound like me.
Worksheet: LinkedIn Optimization Worksheet
Rebuild your highest-value LinkedIn fields around the real, recurring keywords from three target postings. Keep your profile consistent with your resume — recruiters compare them. The profile can be slightly broader than one tailored resume, but every fact must match.
- Target job title (the searchable, standard version)
- Recurring skills and tools across three target postings
- New headline (under 220 characters, title plus core skills)
- New About opening line (first person, keyword-rich)
- Two quantified achievements to include in About
- Top three Skills to feature (most visible)
- Location and Open to Work status set (yes/no)
Exercise: Write Three Outreach Messages
Draft your reconnect, informational-request, and referral-ask messages, each under 90 words and personalized in the first line. Keep them warm and low-pressure; the referral ask should name a specific role and attach your tailored resume.
- Write a LinkedIn message under 90 words asking a former colleague for a 15-minute call to learn about [team]; reference our work on [project]; no 'pick your brain.'
- Write a referral-ask message under 90 words for [named role] with a one-line reason I fit, warm and easy to forward.
- Draft a short LinkedIn recommendation a former manager could edit, based on these projects and results: [paste].
Checklist: Profile and Outreach Checklist
- Headline and About contain my target title and true core keywords
- Job titles changed to standard, searchable versions (creative title moved to description)
- Relevant skills added and top three reordered
- Resume and LinkedIn tell the same story with no contradictions
- Every outreach message is under 90 words with a personalized first line
- Referral asks include the tailored resume so it is effortless to forward
Interviews, Offers, and a Sane AI Job Search
Build a STAR story bank, run AI mock interviews, prepare to negotiate, and set up a tracking system.
Exercise: Build Six STAR Stories
Choose six to eight real accomplishments and build each into a STAR story (Situation, Task, Action, Result) as a 60-to-90-second spoken answer. Emphasize Action and Result, use 'I' not 'we', and tag each story with the question types it can answer.
- Help me turn this experience into a STAR story; ask me one question at a time to fill Situation, Task, Action, and Result, then write a 60-to-90-second first-person answer using only what I told you.
- Make sure the Result has a concrete outcome; if it does not, ask me for one.
- Tag this story with the behavioral question types it can answer (conflict, failure, leadership, ambiguity, learning).
Worksheet: STAR Story Bank Index
Index your stories so you can point the right one at any question under pressure. Keep each true and detailed enough to survive a follow-up question.
- Story 1 — title and question types it covers
- Story 2 — title and question types it covers
- Story 3 — title and question types it covers
- Story 4 — title and question types it covers
- Story 5 — title and question types it covers
- Story 6 — title and question types it covers
- My truthful framing for any gap, short tenure, or transition
Exercise: Run a Mock Interview Against AI
Paste your target posting and resume and have AI act as the hiring manager: one question at a time, behavioral and role-specific, with realistic follow-ups, then feedback after eight questions. Speak your answers as you would live, and note which were vague or missing a metric.
- Act as the hiring manager for this role; ask me one question at a time, mix behavioral and role-specific, wait for my answer, then ask a realistic follow-up.
- After 8 questions, break character and tell me which answers were strong, which were vague, and where I should add a metric or use STAR.
- Based on this posting, list the 10 questions I am most likely to be asked, including any about gaps or transitions.
Checklist: Offer, Negotiation, and Search-Hygiene Checklist
- Researched a real pay range from Levels.fyi, Glassdoor, LinkedIn Salary, or Payscale before responding
- Set a target and a walk-away number plus non-salary items to negotiate (bonus, PTO, remote, start date, title)
- Drafted a warm, collaborative negotiation message under 150 words
- Tracking every application: company, role, date, resume version, contact, status, next action
- Saved each tailored resume with its job description before the posting disappears
- Confirmed resume, LinkedIn, and interview answers are consistent and all true
Your Action Plan
- Build your private master resume this week, using AI to interview yourself for every past role until each has at least four quantified bullets.
- Pick one real target posting and extract its must-have and nice-to-have keywords in the posting's exact wording.
- Tailor a resume from your master, mapping each must-have keyword to a real achievement bullet rewritten in XYZ or CAR format.
- Fix ATS-safe formatting (single column, standard headings, text-based file) and run a match-rate check, adding only true missing terms.
- Write one specific, honest cover letter and edit out every generic sentence and AI tell.
- Rebuild your LinkedIn headline, About, and top skills around your real target keywords, and turn on Open to Work.
- Send three short networking messages (a reconnect, an informational request, and one referral ask with your resume attached).
- Build a bank of six to eight true STAR stories and tag each with the question types it answers.
- Run at least three AI mock interviews against your target posting and fix the answers that came out vague.
- Research a real pay range, prepare your negotiation target and non-salary asks, and set up an application tracker you update after every application and interview.
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