How to write a CV, cover letter or email with AI, step by step

To write an email, a cover letter or a CV with AI, give the assistant your real information and a precise prompt, then reread and personalize every sentence before sending. This six-step tutorial takes you from a blank page to a document ready to go, with no sensitive data and nothing made up.

What you need before you start

• An AI assistant, a free one is fine: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Le Chat or Copilot.
• Your raw information: a list of your jobs, education, skills and achievements, even if it is messy.
• The job posting text, if you are applying for a specific role, or the exact context of your message.
• About twenty minutes for a first draft, and a little distance for the review.

Expected result: a clear email, a structured cover letter or the text of a CV (a résumé, in US terms) tailored to a job posting, which you have reread and approved line by line.

Step 1: gather your information, without sensitive data

Start by writing down, in a separate document, everything you know about your background. Do not try to write well: notes are enough. Add concrete facts, because they make the difference. “Managed orders for a 12-person store” beats “strong organizational skills”.

Before pasting these notes into the assistant, remove anything the writing does not need: home address, phone number, date of birth, Social Security or National Insurance number, photo. Replace them with markers like [ADDRESS] or [PHONE]. You will add them back yourself at the end.

Step 2: write a complete prompt

The quality of the result depends mostly on your request, called a prompt. A good prompt has four parts: a role, a task, context and a format.

You are a recruitment advisor. Write the text of my CV for the job described below. Here are my notes on my background. Use only information found in my notes, do not make anything up. Format: a one-line profile title, a three-to-five-line summary, then my jobs in reverse chronological order with two or three achievements each.

Then add your notes and the job posting. The phrase “do not make anything up” matters: an assistant can produce a hallucination, meaning it confidently adds a degree, a number or a skill you do not have. If you are short on ideas for your request, the site’s prompt generator walks you through it.

Step 3: write a clear email

For an email, three things matter: who you are writing to, what you want and the tone. For example: “Write a polite follow-up email to a recruiter, Ms. Johnson, who received my application for an accounting assistant role ten days ago. Under 100 words, warm and professional. Suggest two subject lines.”

Then check three things: the person’s name, the dates and the sign-off. If the text sounds too stiff, just ask for “more natural” or “shorter”. You can also paste an email you received and ask for the points you need to answer: our tutorial on how to summarize a document with AI explains the method.

Step 4: write a cover letter

The cover letter is where AI is most tempting, and most risky. Without guidance, it produces interchangeable sentences: “dynamic team player”, “true passion”. To avoid that, give it three things only you know:

1. why this company or this role in particular;
2. one concrete achievement that meets a need in the posting;
3. what you bring that is different.

Ask for a short letter with no clichés, then rewrite in your own words any passage that does not sound like you. For a formal letter, such as a complaint or a cancellation, the logic is the same; our guide to using AI for paperwork covers the checks specific to that kind of letter.

Step 5: build or tailor your CV

With your notes and the posting, ask for a full draft first, then work section by section. Three requests are especially useful:

• “List the skills the posting asks for and tell me which ones appear in my notes.” You see what is missing, without inventing anything.
• “Rephrase this job with action verbs and a concrete result.” Check that the result is still true.
• “Suggest a one-line profile title for this role.” Keep the one that fits you.

Then keep a base version of your CV, reviewed and approved, and start from it for each new posting. Paste it with the job ad and ask: “Tailor this CV to this posting by changing only the title, the summary and the order of achievements.” You get a targeted version in minutes, without the assistant rewriting everything and slipping an error into a section you already checked. Keep a simple record of which version went to which employer: it will help on interview day.

For formatting, the easiest route is to paste the approved text into a word-processor template. Keep it simple and readable: a clear CV works better with both recruiters and applicant tracking software. If you are applying abroad, the assistant can translate your CV, but have the translation checked by someone who speaks the language.

Step 6: reread, check, personalize

Before sending anything, run your document through this table.

Item	What to check
Facts	Every job, date, degree and number is accurate and yours
Names	The recruiter’s and company’s names are spelled correctly
Tone	The text sounds like you and you could defend it in an interview
Empty phrases	Vague expressions are replaced by examples
Personal details	The contact details you added back are correct
Length	The email reads at a glance, the cover letter fits on one page

Check yourself The assistant added “advanced Excel skills” to your CV, but they are not in your notes. What do you do?

You remove it, or replace it with your real level. A recruiter can ask about any line on your CV, and a made-up skill is quickly exposed in an interview or during a probation period. That is why your prompt should say “do not make anything up”.

Which assistant should you use for writing?

For these three tasks, the free versions of the main assistants all do the job. The differences are file uploads, useful for sharing an old CV, and memory, which can remember your background from one conversation to the next. Here are their features as listed on the companies’ websites:

Assistant	Free	Paid from	Web search	Agent mode	Voice	Images
ChatGPT	Limited	$8/mo	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Claude	Limited	$20/mo	Yes	Yes	—	—
Gemini	Limited	€4.99/mo	Yes	—	Yes	Yes
Le Chat (Mistral Vibe)	Limited	$5.99/mo	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Microsoft Copilot	Limited	$9.99/mo	Yes	—	Yes	Yes

For a deeper comparison, our article on the best AI for writing covers each one’s strengths. If writing tires you, you can also describe your career out loud and let the assistant shape it: our guide to AI voice assistants explains how.

This tutorial is part of our series on practical uses: find more in our list of 20 everyday ways to use AI.