Tailor a data engineering application with AI in twenty minutes

Tailoring every application is the advice everyone gives and almost nobody follows, because it takes too long. An AI assistant changes that. Not by writing your CV for you, but by doing the tedious parts: pulling requirements out of an ad, spotting gaps, and suggesting rewordings you then check.

This post describes a workflow I use that takes around twenty minutes per application. It assumes you already have a decent master CV. If you do not, fix that first.

The rules before you start

Set these in your head before you open the assistant. They matter more than the prompts.

• Never fabricate. The assistant will happily invent tools, numbers and outcomes. Everything that ends up in your CV must be true and must be something you can talk about in an interview.
• Never paste personal data belonging to other people. No colleague names, no client names, no internal documents. Your own CV and a public job ad are enough.
• Keep a master CV. Tailored versions are derived from it and never replace it. Store it somewhere you will not accidentally overwrite.
• You are the editor. The assistant drafts; you decide. Every change gets read by you before it is saved.

Minute 0 to 5: extract the must-haves

Paste the job ad into the assistant and ask it to separate what the employer requires from what they would like. Most adverts bury the real requirements under boilerplate about culture and benefits.

Here is a job advert for a data engineering role. Read it and give me:

1. The must-have skills and experience, as a short bullet list, in the employer's own words where possible.
2. The nice-to-haves, as a separate list.
3. The three things this employer seems to care about most, based on what they repeat or emphasise.

Do not add anything that is not in the advert. If something is ambiguous, say so.

[paste advert here]

Read the output against the ad. If the assistant has added something that is not there, delete it. You should now have a short list, usually five to ten items, of what you need to show.

Minute 5 to 10: map requirements to real experience

This is the step that keeps you honest. For each must-have, write one line about where in your own history you have done it. If you have not done it, write "no" and move on.

Do this yourself first, quickly, in a plain text file. Then give the assistant your master CV and the requirements list and ask it to find matches you may have missed.

Below is my master CV and a list of requirements from a job advert. For each requirement, tell me which parts of my CV already provide evidence for it. Quote the relevant bullet or line.

Where my CV has no evidence for a requirement, say "no evidence found" and do not suggest anything to add. I will decide what to do about gaps myself.

Requirements:
[paste list]

My CV:
[paste master CV]

The phrase "do not suggest anything to add" is deliberate. Left to its own devices, the assistant will propose plausible-sounding experience to fill gaps. That is exactly what you do not want.

At the end of this step you know two things: which of your real experience to bring forward, and which gaps are genuine. Genuine gaps are fine. Most candidates do not meet every requirement. What matters is that you do not pretend to.

Minute 10 to 15: rewrite the bullets

Now you work on the CV itself. Three types of change are allowed:

1. Reordering. Move the bullets and skills that match the ad nearer the top of each section.
2. Rewording. Use the employer's terminology where it is accurate. If they say "ELT" and you have been saying "ETL" for a dbt-based pipeline, ELT is the better word and it is true.
3. Expanding. If a bullet is thin on something the ad cares about, and you have the real detail, add it.

One type of change is not allowed: adding anything that did not happen.

Ask the assistant for suggestions bullet by bullet rather than for a whole rewritten CV. Whole rewrites are hard to check and tend to drift. A good prompt looks like this:

Rewrite this CV bullet so it better shows the requirement below. Keep every fact exactly as it is. Do not add tools, numbers or outcomes that are not in the original. If the original does not support the requirement, say so instead of rewriting.

Requirement: experience designing pipelines with retries and alerting

Original bullet:
- Built the nightly load for the finance warehouse using Airflow, with task retries and Slack alerts on failure.

Compare each suggestion with the original. Accept it only if every claim in the new version is already in the old one or is something you know to be true and can add yourself. Reject anything that sounds better than what happened.

Also update the summary line at the top of the CV. Two or three sentences, specific to this type of role. It is the single highest-value edit you can make.

Minute 15 to 18: write the cover note

Most UK applications do not need a full cover letter, but a short note helps when there is a free-text box or a recruiter email. Keep it to about 120 words. Four short paragraphs:

• Which role you are applying for and one sentence on why it interests you.
• Two or three sentences linking your strongest matching experience to their main requirements.
• One sentence acknowledging a gap, if there is an obvious one, and how you would close it.
• A plain closing line.

Give the assistant the requirements list and the two or three bullets you want to feature, and ask for a 120-word draft in plain British English with no adjectives about yourself. Then edit it so it sounds like you. If you would not say "I am excited to leverage my skills" out loud, do not write it.

Minute 18 to 20: the honesty check

Before you send anything, read the tailored CV and the note once more with one question in mind: could I defend every line of this in an interview?

Specifically:

• Every tool listed is one you have used in real work.
• Every number is one you measured or can explain the basis for.
• Every outcome happened.
• Nothing has shifted from "I contributed to" to "I built" unless you did build it.
• The summary line describes you, not the job ad.

If a line fails, change it back. The whole point of this workflow is to present your real experience in the best light, not to manufacture a better candidate.

Save the tailored version with the employer's name in the filename, keep the master untouched, and send it.

Why this works

Twenty minutes is short enough to do for every application that matters and long enough to make a visible difference. The assistant does the reading, comparing and drafting, which is where most of the time used to go. You do the judging, which is the part that should never be delegated.

The version of you on the page ends up more accurate, not less. Tailoring done honestly is just editing with a clear audience in mind.

Next step

Take one job ad you are interested in and run only the first two steps. If the mapping shows you meet most of the must-haves, carry on. If it does not, that is useful to know before you spend any more time.