AI Generated CV: How to Make One That Gets Shortlisted
An AI generated CV is a resume drafted with the help of a tool: you give it your work history and the job description, and it writes the summary, bullet points and layout for you. It saves time, but the output is only a first draft. The candidates who get shortlisted are the ones who edit that draft until it sounds like a real person did the work.
Start with your own raw material
The tool can only work with what you give it. Before you open any builder, spend twenty minutes writing down your jobs, dates, what you actually did, and one result for each role. Numbers help here: how many people, how much money, how much time saved. "Handled social media" becomes "ran the Instagram page for a coaching centre and doubled enquiries in four months."
If you are a fresher with no work history, list projects, internships, college activities and any freelance work. A CV with a solid projects section beats one padded with skills you can't back up.
Use the free tool for structure, not for content
Most free AI CV makers work the same way: you paste your details, sometimes the job description, and it produces a formatted document you can download. Canva is a design tool people use for visual resumes; ChatGPT is a general chatbot you can prompt to rewrite your bullets. Both can help, but neither knows your career. Treat their output as a template with placeholder sentences you will replace.
Here is a sequence that works:
- Paste the job description into the tool along with your raw notes, and ask it to match your experience to what the ad asks for.
- Read every bullet and ask: did this actually happen, and can I explain it in an interview?
- Replace vague phrases like "responsible for" or "assisted with" with a verb and a result.
- Cut anything you can't defend. Invented achievements fall apart in the first five minutes of an interview.
- Export as a plain PDF and check it opens cleanly on your phone.
Keep the format boring on purpose
Many companies run resumes through software that reads text before a person does. That software struggles with tables, columns, text inside images, and contact details buried in a header. A single-column layout, a standard font, clear headings like Experience and Education, and your phone number and email in the body of the page will get read properly.
One page is enough for most freshers and early-career applicants. Two pages is fine if you have several years of work behind you. Don't shrink the font to squeeze everything in; cut the oldest and least relevant material instead.
Fix the mistakes AI drafts make
AI writing has tells. It overuses words like "dynamic", "passionate" and "results-driven", and it writes long summaries that say nothing specific. Rewrite the summary in your own words in two or three lines: what you do, how long you've done it, and what kind of role you want next.
- Keyword stuffing: listing every skill from the ad in a block. Weave the important ones into your bullet points instead.
- Same CV for every application: change the summary and the top three bullets for each job you apply to.
- Ignoring the job ad: if it asks for Excel and client handling, those words should appear where you describe your actual work.
- Skipping proofreading: read it aloud, and get one friend to check names, dates and phone numbers.
When the draft is clean, save a copy as your master CV and make a fresh version for each application. That habit alone puts you ahead of people who send the same file everywhere. If you want help turning the draft into a finished resume and keeping your LinkedIn profile in step with it, Destava's AI career manager can build and fix both, and apply to jobs for you.