You have a role as a human in your job search process. However, some of the tasks and activities you need to do in the process may be quite demanding or you may simply not know how to do them best. So using AI to complement your human efforts can be a game changer. It can help you save time and improve the quality of your applications.

Currently, there’s a growing use of AI in the recruitment process — both from the recruiter and the job seeker sides. This study conducted by Google and Ipsos shows AI plays a major role in the job search and hiring process. So why not learn how to use AI in your job search now and follow the trend into the future?

⚠️ Note: Using AI in your job search should be complimentary and not replace your human effort. Recruitment and hiring are inherently personal and you continuously need to let your personality show. This cannot be achieved with AI-only content. With that said, let’s move on to how to use AI in your job search.

9 Key Ways to Use AI in Your Job Search

There are AI tools that can help you in every step of the job search process, from exploring career paths to identifying roles, applying for jobs, and preparing for interviews. You can use AI to:

Explore Career Paths

Suppose you’re unsure of the career paths to take during a career transition, AI tools can help you determine possible paths based on your skills, experiences, interests, personality, and so much more.

A prompt into any text-generative AI tool like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot can help you identify various careers you can explore. The more details you give, the better the career options AI will give you.

To learn more about the details you can feed into AI to help generate roles you can explore, watch this career transition playbook video by Joel Anaman at the NoCode Required webinar:

Create and Optimise your Resume

If you’re currently in the job market, chances are you’re applying for multiple roles concurrently. And optimising your resume can be a daunting task. If you’re not a career specialist or resume writer, you might also find it difficult to create winning resumes to meet the requirements of the application. This is where AI comes in.

For building your resume from scratch, tools like Huntr and Teal give you templates to choose from. They also allow you to build multiple resumes in one place and add matching jobs to help optimise the resume further for the specific job description. Both platforms also give you AI suggestions to improve your bullet points.

More so, you use ChatGPT to craft winning resume bullet points. Check out our ChatGPT prompts guide on how to do that.

If you’re unsure which achievements to highlight on your resume, use Mande Quant to get examples of achievements you can quantify based on your job title, industry and task you did.

Create and Optimise your Cover Letter

Most people just go straight into AI and paste a job description with the prompt: generate a cover letter for me based on this job description. Even worse if there is no job description and they just add the job title.

This information is very scanty and not personal. This means you will get a generic cover letter from AI. So what should you do?

With the job description in hand, identify your experiences, skills, and other relevant information that you’d want to highlight in your cover letter. Then add that together with the job description and let the AI generate the cover letter.

For best results, you should write a very rough draft and let AI improve it instead. This way, your relevant skills and qualities are highlighted professionally, while maintaining the human context.

Don’t forget to proofread and edit your AI-generated cover letters to remove unnecessary details included by the AI tool.

Tools: ChatGPT and Gemini can do this for you, but you can also use specific cover letter tools like CoverDoc and Huntr.

Find Relevant Open Jobs (Job Matching)

Combing through job boards and searching for your ideal role is great, but it can be time-consuming — especially when you have to filter through so many roles to find a job to apply to.

Take a look at this: searching through job boards to compile about 5–6 roles for the NCT remote work of the week social media posts takes about 1–2 hours to identify these roles and compile them into social media posts. (Yes, we’re thinking of ways to streamline this process to make it easier to find the jobs for you).

So just imagine. How much time do you have on your hands to always be combing through job boards to find roles that are a good fit for you?

That’s why AI job matching tools exist, making it easier to get access to job opportunities that fit your experiences, skills, and interests. Examples of job boards with these features include We Are Distributed, Otta, LinkedIn jobs, RemoteJobFinder, Talentprise, and other job boards that match you to jobs and send you alerts.

Prepare for Interviews

In my previous post on acing your job interviews, I mentioned that participating in mock interviews is a great way to help you prepare for your interviews, whether in-person or online. However, you may not always have someone at your disposal to take you through mock interviews.

That’s why interview preparation tools like Google’s Interview WarmUp, RightJoin, and other similar tools can help you simulate interview scenarios and receive constructive feedback to improve your performance ahead of the actual interview.

Aside from actual interview preparation tools, you can also use generative AI tools to generate interview questions based on the job description.

Enhance your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn uses AI to suggest roles that may be a good fit for you, so it’s only ideal that you also use AI tools to improve your profile based on the data that matters to LinkedIn’s algorithm.

LinkedIn Optimisation tools like Resume Worded and Jobscan use AI to review your LinkedIn profile, give a score, and make recommendations based on industry benchmarks.

💡 Read this article or this on how to optimise your LinkedIn profile, then follow the steps and upload it in Resume Worded or Jobscan to see how you can further improve your profile.

Apply for Jobs Automatically

Putting your job applications on autopilot can help you save time and focus on preparing for interviews. AI tools like Sonara can auto-apply for jobs on your behalf. You just have to set it up and provide relevant information beneficial to the jobs you’ll be applying to.

Other AI tools that can help with automating your job search process are Huntr and Simplify. These tools automatically fill out application forms on your behalf, thereby reducing repetitive tasks and saving you valuable time.

Track your Job Applications

Spreadsheets are good for tracking job applications, but manually entering these details can be time-consuming. That’s why AI tools like Huntr, Teal, and Careerflow.ai exist to make tracking your job applications more efficient.

While you’re browsing jobs on LinkedIn and other job boards, you can easily use the extensions of these tools to automatically save jobs to your dashboard and track progress as you move through various stages of the application process.

These tools also allow you to add contacts related to the jobs you’re tracking, allowing you to plan and schedule outreaches and follow-ups.

Learn about Salary Negotiations

There’s so much that goes into salaries and compensation packages that you cannot know all by yourself. It’s great to speak to industry professionals in your region (and country) so you have an idea of what’s realistic based on your location and other factors, like experience.

Nonetheless, these responses may not be all-encompassing, so it’s best to also use salary benchmarking tools and platforms like Payscale to get insights into average industry salaries based on your location, job title, degree certification, skills, industry, and so much more. This salary information can help with your negotiations when the time is due.

More so, you can prompt Gen AI tools like Microsoft CoPilot and Gemini to give you average industry salaries based on your job title, location, and years of experience. Remember, the more specific you go, the better your responses.

Next Steps

It’s not bad to use AI in your job search process, but you need to learn how to use it effectively. And always remember to review or cross-check the work AI has done so you don’t submit mistakes or wrong information.

How do you plan on using AI in your next job search? Let’s hear it in the comments section below.