Using AI to review and optimise your CV

A couple of months ago I returned from a sabbatical and, out of curiosity, asked claude.ai to assess my 2025-version CV the way an ATS (automated recruitment screening) system would.

Turns out I'd nailed it - it was perfectly optimised - for 2010, which was a little confronting. 😂 

The advice back then was to stuff in as many keywords as possible so you'd get indexed in recruiters' databases. Most people with a tech-based CV from even earlier had a "Technical Summary" page which listed every product name you'd ever laid eyes on. I'd removed that but kept the keywords and it used to work pretty well. But systems got more efficient, AI got added, and I hadn't updated enough to stay relevant.

I ended up working through a process using AI to help me to audit and rebuild it. Everything went into a master document, which means now I can pull together a tailored CV for a specific job application in about fifteen minutes. It took some time to set up but I'm quite pleased with how it works now.

I joked with a recruiter recently that AI writes their job ad, AI cross-posts ad to recruiter website and job boards, potential candidate uses AI to mass-apply for roles, recruiter systems use AI to filter - where are the people?! It's not really a joke though. If you're applying for roles and hearing nothing back, it's worth considering whether your CV is actually reaching a human. 

Learn more about What AI actually does well on the ENVEE Digital blog.

This article was first published on LinkedIn