6 résumé prompts for an AI assistant

Prompts to hand to whatever assistant you already use. Each one asks for JSON Resume — the open format this app reads and writes — so the answer comes back as a file you can import and edit here. None of them will invent a job, a date or a number you did not give it.

Every prompt asks for JSON Resume, the open format CVAurum imports and exports; the field names an assistant needs are published at /skills/cvaurum/SKILL.md and generated from the schemas the importer validates against, so they cannot drift from the code.

Turn what I already have into a résumé file

You have notes, an old résumé or a job history in some other shape, and no wish to retype it.

I want to turn what I already have into a résumé I can edit.

Here is my raw material. It is unstructured and probably incomplete:

<paste your notes, an old résumé, a list of jobs — whatever you have>

Produce one JSON Resume document from it. The exact field names are written out at https://cvaurum.com/skills/cvaurum/SKILL.md; read that rather than guessing, and do not use a field it does not list.

Rules I care about:
- Use only what is in my material. Do not invent an employer, a date, a qualification, a skill or a figure. If a date is missing, leave the field empty rather than guessing a year.
- Keep my own wording wherever it already says something concrete. Fix grammar and tense. Do not inflate.
- One job per entry in work, with name for the employer, position for my title, startDate and endDate as YYYY-MM (or YYYY if that is all I gave you), and one string in highlights per bullet.
- If something in my material fits no standard section, put it in custom rather than dropping it.

Reply with the JSON in a single fenced block. After it, list the fields you left empty because my material did not answer them — that list is what I need to go and find out.

Copy the JSON block and paste it below, or save it as a .json file and use Create resume → import a JSON Resume file. Anything the assistant got wrong is dropped field by field on import, so a near miss still arrives as most of a résumé.

Tailor a résumé I already have to one job description

You have a résumé that works and a posting you want it to answer, and you do not want the two to drift apart into a lie.

Here is my résumé as a JSON Resume document:

<paste the JSON Resume file this app exported>

Here is the job description:

<paste the posting>

Rewrite the résumé for this job without adding anything I have not done.

- Reorder the highlights inside each work entry so the ones closest to the posting come first. Drop one only if it is genuinely irrelevant here, and tell me which you dropped.
- Reword a highlight to use the posting's vocabulary only where my version already describes that same work. If the posting asks for something my history does not show, do not write a bullet for it — put it under "gaps" at the end instead.
- Rewrite basics.summary to point at this role: three sentences, and no adjective I could not defend in an interview.
- Reorder skills so the ones the posting names come first. Do not add a skill I have not listed.
- Leave every date, employer and job title exactly as it is.

Return the whole edited document as JSON Resume (field names: https://cvaurum.com/skills/cvaurum/SKILL.md), then a short plain-prose list of what you reordered, what you reworded, what you dropped, and the gaps.

Import the JSON as a second résumé and keep the original — a tailored copy per application is the point, and the gaps list is worth reading before the interview.

Rewrite weak bullets into ones that name a number

Your bullets describe duties rather than results, and you know it.

Here are bullets from my résumé, one per line:

<paste your bullets>

First, do not rewrite them yet. For each bullet, ask me the one question whose answer would turn it into a measurement — how many, how much, how often, how long, compared with what, for whom. Ask, then stop and wait. Do not guess a figure; a number I cannot stand behind is worse than no number.

When I have answered, rewrite each bullet as: what I did, what changed because of it, and the figure that shows it. One sentence each, active voice, about twenty-five words at most. No "responsible for", no "helped to", no "successfully".

Where I could not give you a figure, say so and rewrite that bullet to name the scope or the outcome instead.

Return the finished bullets as a JSON array of strings, ready to drop into the highlights array of a JSON Resume entry.

Paste the strings straight into the bullets of the right entry in the editor — pasting several lines at once makes one bullet per line.

Write the summary at the top

The three lines under your name are the hardest three lines on the page, and you have rewritten them five times.

Here is my résumé as a JSON Resume document:

<paste the JSON Resume file this app exported>

If I am aiming at a particular job, here is the posting; if this line is still here, I am not:

<paste the posting, or delete this line>

Write me three different versions of basics.summary. Three sentences each. Never the word "I". Built only from what the résumé already shows.

- The first leads with what I do and how long I have done it.
- The second leads with the single strongest thing in the résumé.
- The third leads with where I am going — but only if the résumé makes that legible. If it does not, say so instead of inventing an ambition for me.

Under each version, name the entries in the résumé it rests on, so I can check it. If a version would need a claim the résumé does not support, do not write it: tell me what I would have to add first.

Paste the one you believe into the summary field under your name. If none of the three is true, that is the useful answer.

Draft a first résumé from a job title

You are starting out, the page is blank, and everything you have feels too thin to write down.

I am starting out and I do not have a résumé yet.

The job I want: <job title>, in <field, and the country I am applying in>.
What I actually have: <a course, a part-time job, a project, a club, a certificate — list it however thin it looks>.

Build me a JSON Resume document from what I just gave you and nothing else. The field names are at https://cvaurum.com/skills/cvaurum/SKILL.md. You may not invent an internship, an employer, a grade, a date or a skill. Where a section would be empty, leave it empty.

Then, separately from the JSON, do the part that actually helps:
- Tell me which sections a <job title> résumé is read for, in the order a reader looks at them.
- For each thing I listed, ask me the two or three questions that would turn it into a bullet worth reading.
- Name what is genuinely missing — the kind of evidence this role expects and I do not yet have — and for each, one realistic way to get it in the next few months.

I would rather have a short honest résumé and a list of what to do next than a full page of things I did not do.

Import the JSON, then work through the questions it asked you and put your own answers in. A short résumé that is true is a résumé you can talk about.

Read my résumé back to me the way a hiring manager would

You have stared at it too long to see it, and you want to know what it says before someone else decides what it says.

Here is my résumé as a JSON Resume document:

<paste the JSON Resume file this app exported>

I am applying for: <the role>.

Do not rewrite it. Read it the way a hiring manager for that role would, in the thirty seconds they will actually give it, and tell me:

- What they learn about me from the first six lines.
- Which three entries carry the most weight, and which ones take up space without paying for it.
- Every place I have described a duty rather than a result.
- The questions they would be left with — the things the résumé makes them wonder and does not answer.

Then ask me those questions, one at a time, and wait for my answers. When we are through them, turn my answers into the bullets they belong in, in my own wording, using only what I told you.

This one changes nothing on its own. Take the bullets it ends with back into the editor, then run the ATS panel to see what a parser makes of the result.

Import an answer and start editing · Browse the 68 résumé templates · Read 108 complete examples