The AI Resume Prompt
A copy-paste AI prompt that customizes your resume for a specific job — keywords, ATS formatting, and company research included. Works for any industry, any role.
How it works · The prompt · Formatting rules · Pre-submit checklist · Data privacy
A friend asked me last week to "just fix her resume" before she applied somewhere. Same resume, ten different jobs, sent out and hoping.
That's not really the problem. The problem is that most people write one resume and send it everywhere, then wonder why it goes nowhere. ATS systems are actively scoring how specific you are — not just whether you have the right words, but whether your whole resume reads like it was written for this role, at this company.
So I built her a prompt instead of a resume. One she can reuse for every application, that does the research and the rewriting in one pass. Here it is, free, for anyone who wants it.
What you'll walk away with
- A resume rewritten in your own voice — not AI-sounding, not generic
- Keywords pulled straight from the job posting, weighted the way ATS systems actually score them
- A summary and a few bullets that reference the specific company — the kind of detail that makes a hiring manager think "this person actually wants to work here"
How this actually works (4 steps)
Open an AI chat
Go to claude.ai (or any AI tool you use). Sign up with an email and password if you don't already have an account, then sign in — you'll land on a plain chat window with a text box.
Paste the prompt, then fill in the blanks
Copy the grey box below into that text box. Then delete each bracketed placeholder and type your own info in its place — don't paste next to the brackets, replace them:
[paste your current resume text here]— paste it as text, not an uploaded file. Select all, copy, paste. AI tools mangle Word formatting on upload; plain text is cleaner.[paste the full job posting text or URL here]— paste the text or URL[company name]— type it in- "What I know about them" is optional — fill it in or delete it
Hit send
You'll get back a customized resume. Copy it into a Word doc — that's your new resume, ready to save and send. One message, one response. New chat for each job.
Optional — keep talking to fine-tune it
Not quite right? Just reply in the same chat, no need to repaste anything:
- "Make the summary shorter"
- "That bullet doesn't sound like me — plainer, try again"
- "Add a bullet about [thing you did]"
Go back and forth as many times as you want until it sounds like you.
The prompt — copy this whole box
This is the grey box mentioned in Step 2 above.
Where to find company research, fast
- Company website — About, Careers, blog
- LinkedIn company page — recent posts, headcount growth, "Life at [Company]"
- Google News — "[Company name]" plus the current year
- Crunchbase — funding stage, size, investors
- Glassdoor — culture keywords, interview process notes
Two rewrites, side by side
This is the difference between a resume that gets skimmed and one that gets a callback.
| Generic | Company-researched |
|---|---|
| "Managed customer accounts" | "Grew enterprise customer portfolio from $2M to $8M ARR, focusing on verticals matching [Company]'s target market" |
| "Improved team processes" | "Built operational workflows for a 3-country expansion — the same growth stage [Company] is heading into" |
| "Used new tools" | "Implemented [tool the company uses] for workflow automation, cutting manual work by 40%" |
The technical stuff that quietly kills good resumes
You can write the perfect resume and still get filtered out if the file doesn't parse. This is pure formatting — easy to get right once you know the rules.
- File format: Save as .docx by default. It parses most reliably across older and newer ATS platforms. Only use PDF if the posting specifically asks for it — and if you do, make sure it's text-based (exported from Word), never a scanned image or a design-tool export.
- No headers or footers. A large share of ATS platforms skip that region entirely — your name, email, and phone number can just vanish. Put your contact info as plain text at the top of the body instead.
- No tables, columns, or text boxes. They look clean to a human eye, but ATS reads left to right across the full page — a two-column layout can merge your dates with your skills and produce nonsense.
- No graphics, icons, or skill bars. These parse as blank space. If a "skill level" visual matters to you, describe it in words instead.
- Standard section headings only. "Work Experience," "Education," "Skills," "Certifications" — not "My Journey" or "What I Bring." Creative headers stop the parser from mapping your content to the right category.
- Simple bullets, one date format, standard fonts. Round bullets or hyphens, Arial/Calibri/Georgia/Times New Roman, one consistent "Month Year" format throughout.
The 30-second test: copy your entire resume and paste it into a plain text editor (Notepad, TextEdit, or a blank email). If everything still reads in the right order — no jumbled sections, no missing contact info — it'll survive an ATS parser too.
The part people skip: sounding like a human
The easiest way to spot an AI-written resume is that it doesn't sound like the person. Before you send anything, read it out loud.
If every bullet starts with a different thesaurus verb — spearheaded, orchestrated, championed — that's the tell. Real resumes repeat words. Real people say "built" and "ran," not "leveraged synergies."
Rule of thumb: if you can't defend a line in the interview, take it out. This whole approach is about reframing what you actually did — not inventing what you didn't.
Before you hit submit
- I can say in one sentence why this company, specifically, and I've actually looked into it
- My skills section overlaps heavily with their posting — not just generic buzzwords
- Every bullet has a number in it, and I can explain that number in an interview
- Nothing sounds like it was written by a thesaurus
- This resume couldn't be sent, unchanged, to five other companies
- Saved as .docx (or a text-based PDF only if requested), single-column, no headers/footers
- Passed the plain-text paste test — nothing jumbled or missing
Staying organized
Save each version clearly so you're not hunting for the right file at 11pm before a deadline:
[YourName]_Resume_[Company]_[Role]_[Date].docx
And keep a simple tracker — company, role, date applied, which version you sent, status. A spreadsheet is fine. A note is fine. Just have one.
⚠️ One last thing — protect your data before you paste
Your resume has your name, address, phone number. Free AI accounts often train on what you paste in.
A free account works fine here — you don't need to pay. Paid accounts generally have stronger default privacy protections, worth weighing if you'll use AI regularly for sensitive info.
- Turn off model training on your data. Do this first, every time.
- On Claude: Settings → Privacy.
- On ChatGPT: Settings → Data Controls → turn OFF "Improve the model for everyone." This is on by default for Free, Plus, and Pro personal accounts — Business/Enterprise/Edu accounts have it off by default. Turning it off also stops that conversation from being saved to your history.
- Using an account (vs. staying logged out) gives you more control here — logged-in accounts have privacy settings you can actually check and adjust. Logged-out/incognito use may not. Your call, but it's the safer default if you're pasting personal info.
- Strip your address out before pasting. Delete it from the resume text. Paste everything else in, get your rewrite back, then type your address back into the final document yourself. Ten seconds. Your address never touches the chat.
This is practical privacy hygiene, not legal advice. I'm not a lawyer and this isn't a substitute for reading a platform's actual privacy policy — if you're handling anything especially sensitive, check it yourself.