Tailor your CV to each application, completely free!

These days, you can’t apply for a job without tailoring your CV, but doing so requires a lot of effort that’s often in vain, or a significant financial expense on subscriptions to services like JobScan that do it for you. But there’s a free, automated alternative, and I’m going to tell you all about it here.

To tailor your CV, you’ll only need a few easily accessible tools, and once you have everything, the process will be quite simple and automatic. First, let’s list the tools we’ll need:

An AI capable of creating projects.
A word processor.
A Markdown editor.

This guide will be divided into three parts: how to prepare your CV to use as a basis, how to set up the AI to create projects, and how to tailor your CV using the project we’ve created. Although this guide may seem long, the process is short; the problem is that I don’t know how to summarise.

For this, you can use any AI service that allows you to create projects. In my case, I’ll be using Qwen, a platform that lets us create projects and whose free tier has no limits. If you don’t have an account, I’d encourage you to sign up.

Prepare your CV to use as a template

Actually, you can skip this step and go straight to the next one. However, I’m including it so you can familiarise yourself with Markdown and Obsidian. We’re going to convert your CV to Markdown, and then to PDF.

If you don’t know what Markdown is, a quick search will give you an idea. But basically, it’s a way of formatting documents using plain text instead of having to use word processing tools like Microsoft Word. You don’t need to know much about it; it’s just an intermediate step. To format your CV, follow these steps:

Open a new chat in Qwen.
Upload your CV to the chat and ask it to format it in Markdown.
Once it’s finished, it will likely have placed the CV in a box.
Check that the content of your CV hasn’t changed.
Make sure you haven’t used a temporary chat so that you can access this formatted CV later.

We now have the CV in Markdown format; next, we need to save it in a Markdown editor. There are many editors available, but I recommend Obsidian, which is an excellent Markdown note-taking editor that everyone should use. Now transfer your CV to Obsidian:

Copy the CV that Qwen showed you in the box. This box has a button to copy all the content.
Create a new note in Obsidian, give it a title and paste your CV.
If Qwen has added something to your CV that shouldn’t be there, now is the perfect time to edit it.
At the top right of the note, you’ll see three dots. Click there and select ‘Export to PDF’ to save the CV as a PDF.

Using Markdown is simple:

If you want to create a heading, just type ‘# Heading’.
For a subheading, ‘## Subheading’.
For lists, “- Text here”.
For numbered lists, “1. Text here”.
For bold text, enclose the text in pairs of asterisks, “**text here**”.
For italics, enclose the text in underscores “_Text here_”,
etc.

Now, let’s create the project in Qwen.

Create a project on an AI service

The first thing we’re going to do is create our project, which will serve as a workspace for creating the CVs. To do this:

Go to the Qwen side menu and select “New Project”.
Give the project a title, such as “CV”.
Under “Advanced settings”, make sure you select “Project-only” in the “Memory” section.
In the instructions, enter the prompt that will do all the magic – we’ll discuss this in more detail later.
In ‘Files’, upload your CV to use as a base.

Before clicking ‘Create Project’, it’s important to discuss what instructions to give Qwen.

Instructions

We want the AI to do the same job as services like JobScan, but we don’t want it to make up the content, which is why it’s important to give it clear instructions. Here are the points to bear in mind:

The AI should act as an expert career coach who knows how to work with your CV.
We don’t just want it to give us the new CV, but to explain what has changed.
It must not invent qualities that we do not possess.
It must be formatted so that the ATS programmes used by recruiters can read it properly.
It must also provide us with ideas for cover letters.

I recommend you don’t use the cover letters generated by AIs. They’re very poor, but they’ll at least give you an idea of how to write your own from scratch.

Below, I’ll share a prompt that I personally use. As you’ll see, it ensures that the points mentioned earlier are covered.

You are expert career coach. Analyze the job description and my CV. Identify essential keywords missing from my CV. Then, rewrite it in markdown format. Next in other block, cross out the text that should be removed and bold the text that should be added (similar to how Jobscan works).

Your goal is to improve my CV so that it aligns as closely as possible with the job description, but without making up important details (eg. you can’t say I program in C++ if it’s not on my CV). If I should add something that isn’t on my CV, leave notes at the end explaining what I should add and where it should be added.

Think deeply. Be precise. Don't add unnecessary embellishments.

Focus on being ATS-friendly.

If I type /cl, then write a cover letter with these requirements:
-Keep it short. Maxi 2 paragraphs
-British English
-Focus on highlighting my professional and academic experience
-Avoid overly formal language typical of AI. Be direct and use conversational language, but not informal.

This prompt provides examples for programming roles. Adapt it for your specific use case.

Take a look at the “/cl” command. Once the CV has been generated, you can type /cl in the same chat and it will give you the cover letter. Edit it as you like, but I’ll reiterate that you shouldn’t use these cover letters.

How to edit your CV using the project we’ve created

We’ve now created the workspace. From now on, we’ll simply need to upload the job descriptions to a new chat so that our tailored CV is generated. It’s important to create a new chat for each job vacancy, so it isn’t contaminated with information from roles you’ve pasted previously. And above all, make sure you open the new chats within this workspace, not in a normal chat.

To customise your CV, follow these steps:

In Qwen, go to the workspace you’ve just created.
Paste the job description for the role you wish to apply for and submit it.
Qwen will provide you with the CV in Markdown format and explain the changes. Read the suggested changes and the reasons behind them carefully.
Copy the CV (remember that the box has a button to copy everything).
Go to Obsidian and paste it into a new note. You’ll see that it appears formatted.
Now it might be tempting to export the note as a PDF, but this will copy the styles from the Obsidian theme into your PDF. Instead, select all the text and copy it.
Open a standard word processor (such as Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer) and paste it there.

You’ll find that the text formatting (headings, bold text, etc.) has been preserved, but the styles from your Obsidian theme (such as text colours) won’t have been transferred.

That’s all!

As I said at the start, it might seem like a long process, but it’s actually quite simple. When you create a CV for each role, you need to pass that CV through Obsidian first and then into a word processor.

You might wonder why you should write it in Markdown and pass it through Obsidian instead of simply asking it to generate a CV and copying it directly into the word processor. Well, the answer is that this is done to preserve the text formatting. AIs use their own formats and styles, and you might copy them over without realising. By doing it this way, you’ll ensure you have a clean document that’s ready to use.

I hope this helps. Cheers!