Chat case
Improve your resume with AI: an honest review, a stronger base CV and a version for each of three jobs
Your CV is fine. That is the problem: in a stack of forty, fine loses. We sent our test agent an ordinary CV, a support team lead with duties and no numbers, plus three job ads that have little in common. Four messages later there was a ten-second recruiter's review, a base CV built only from facts the person gave, three Word files cut for three different roles, and the interview question each version invites. Below are the real replies, the files and the cost.
The short answer
Send your CV to your AI agent as a file and ask for a review first, not a rewrite: “Read it like a recruiter who gives it ten seconds. Tell me what's wrong and what you need from me.” The agent names the weak spots and asks for the facts it needs: team size, volumes, results with numbers.
Answer with what you can actually back up, and ask for an improved base CV as a Word file built only from those facts. Then paste the job ads you are aiming at and ask for one version per job. You get a file for each, plus two lines on what moved up and what was cut.
That is the whole method. One true base CV, several cuts of it, and an agent that keeps them consistent because the facts live in one chat.
The test: Nora, six years in support, three different jobs
We made up the person and her CV. Nora Bennett, from Leeds, started in retail, moved into customer support at an online homeware shop in 2020 and has led the support team since 2022. Her CV is the kind most people have: an “Objective” paragraph about being hardworking and motivated, bullets that begin with “Responsible for” and “Helped with”, a long list of soft skills, and not a single number.
She wants to apply to three jobs this week, and they pull in different directions:
- Customer Success Manager at a B2B software company for restaurants: own 80 accounts, run quarterly reviews, spot churn early.
- Operations Manager at an e-commerce fulfilment company: warehouse leads, carriers, on-time dispatch, cost per order.
- Training and Onboarding Specialist at a bank's contact centre with 300 agents: design onboarding, write materials, measure training impact.
We sent the CV as a Word file to our test agent on 30 October 2026 and wrote four messages. The agent's replies are real and quoted as they came; in a few places we trimmed lines about the made-up contact details on our test file.
If you do not have a CV yet, start with Write your first resume with AI: from a few lines about yourself to a ready Word file. If you have a CV and one vacancy, Tailor your resume to a job post in one chat is the shorter route. This article is for the case in between: a CV that exists, works poorly, and has to serve several jobs at once.
Step 1. Ask for a recruiter's review before any rewrite
The instinct is to write “improve my resume”. The agent then improves the wording and keeps the emptiness. A review comes first, so you see what is missing before anyone fills it.
Thirty seconds. The review is blunt in the useful way: it names the exact phrases that cost Nora attention (“Responsible for”, “Helped with”) and explains why they hurt. Without numbers, every claim reads as unverifiable.
Three details are worth noticing.
The agent found the story the CV hides. Agent in 2020, team lead in 2022: that promotion is the strongest fact on the page, and in the original it carries the same weight as the retail job. A human reviewer often spots this only on the second read.
It asked instead of guessing. The reply ends with a list of what it needs: team size, volumes, response times, satisfaction scores, the migration. An AI that fills these blanks on its own writes a CV you cannot defend in an interview. This one waited.
It proposed the plan before we did. We asked for a review. The agent added the structure that makes three applications manageable: one master file with everything true in it, then three cuts. That became the rest of the test.
Step 2. Give the facts, get the improved base CV
Nora answered with seven facts, each one something she could show or explain in an interview. Ours were invented for the test; yours come from your dashboards, reviews and memory.
Forty-six seconds, and a two-page CV became one A4 page. Here is the top of the file next to the original:
Every number in the new version is one Nora sent, and nothing else was added. We checked the file line by line: 7 agents, 2,300 tickets, 6 weeks, 9 hours to under 2, 82% to 91%, 40 articles, 60 macros, 11 agents onboarded, a third fewer “where is my order” tickets. The sentence “Promoted to team lead in 2022” now sits under the agent role, which is exactly where the review said the story was hiding.
Look at what changed in the bullets. “Helped with moving the team to a new helpdesk system” became “Ran the company's move from Zendesk to Gorgias in spring 2024: delivered in 6 weeks with no downtime, and first reply time fell from about 9 hours to under 2.” Same event. The first version is a duty; the second is a result with a date, a scope and a number.
The agent also left one decision to Nora: whether “Agent of the Month 4 times” belongs under the old role or the new one. Small, but it is her CV, and the agent treated it that way.
Step 3. Three job ads, three versions
Now the part that usually eats an evening. We pasted all three job ads into one message and asked for a Word file for each, plus two lines on what changed.
A minute and a quarter for three files. In the chat above we shortened the job ads; the agent got them in full.
Put the three tops side by side and the method is visible:
- Customer success opens with “responsible for the customer relationship” and the satisfaction score. The first bullets are CSAT and the migration: proof that customers stayed happy while things changed.
- Operations opens with the weekly call between support, the warehouse and the courier, and the third fewer “where is my order” tickets. The weekly report to the Head of Operations moved to the third bullet, because the job ad asks for weekly reporting to the COO.
- Training opens with the onboarding plan and the 11 agents trained on it. The old retail job came back, because “trained seasonal staff” is exactly the frontline training the bank asks for.
Notice what is the same. Not one number changed between the files, and nothing new appeared. Each version is a different order and a different emphasis of the same seven facts. That is what makes three applications safe: whichever version an interviewer holds, Nora tells the same story.
The cuts are as useful as the moves. The retail job disappeared from the customer success and operations versions and returned in the training one. “Agent of the Month” stayed only where a hiring manager would care about individual performance. These are the decisions people agonise over at midnight, and the agent explained each in one line.
Step 4. The question each version will get
A CV that wins the screen leads to an interview, and the interviewer reads the same page. We asked one more question.
Thirteen seconds. Each question targets the real gap between Nora's experience and that job: account management for the customer success role, the warehouse floor for operations, training at the scale of 300 agents for the bank. Each answer is built from the same seven facts, so the interview story matches the CV.
The last paragraph is the best career advice in the whole exchange: say the gap first, then say what you would do about it. It also explains why the files contain no invented lines. A CV that stretches the truth wins the screen and loses the interview.
What came out of four messages
About three minutes of waiting in total gave Nora:
- a review that named eight concrete weak spots and the facts needed to fix them;
- a base CV on one A4 page, with every bullet rewritten as a result and every number from her own list;
- three Word files, one per job, each with a short note on what moved up and what was cut;
- for each version, the interview question it invites and the answer to prepare.
The files stay in the chat. Next month, when a fourth job ad appears, Nora pastes it under the same conversation and asks for version four from the base.
Habits that make the result yours
Ask for a review before a rewrite. “Improve my CV” gets you better wording around the same gaps. “What's weak and what do you need from me” gets you a list of questions, and the answers are what make the CV stronger.
Give facts you can defend. Every number Nora sent was something she could show on a dashboard or explain in a sentence. Rounded is fine (“about a third”), and the agent kept the “about”. In an interview, “about a third” said confidently beats a precise number you cannot explain.
Write the rule into the request. “Only facts I gave you, no made-up numbers” takes six seconds to type and shapes every file that follows. You can also ask the agent to remember it, so the rule holds for every future version and cover letter.
Keep one base file and cut from it. Editing three separate CVs by hand is how numbers start to drift between versions. When something changes, a new result or a new job title, update the base and ask for the versions again.
Paste the job ad as text. The agent mirrors the wording of the ad: “weekly reporting to the COO” became a bullet about weekly reporting moved up the page. A link to a job board often hides the text behind a login, while pasted text always works.
Read the file before you send it. Open each version and check names, dates and contact details. It takes two minutes per file and it is your name on the page.
What it costs
We read the balance in the agent's status line after each message. Reading the CV and writing the review cost 3 , the base file 1 , the three versions 6 , and the interview questions did not move the balance. About 10 for the whole case.
Text work on the default model costs 1 per 20,000 tokens, so most of the price is the agent reading the CV and job ads and writing files. A photo or screenshot of a job ad costs 1.5 to read, which is one more reason to paste the text. The Free plan gives 200 in the first month and 100 every month after, with no card: enough for this whole case many times over. Pro costs $13.90 a month for 400 , or $1.39 for the first month if you subscribe within 7 days of signing up. All rates are on the Pricing page.
Your CV and the chat stay in your agent's isolated container. To answer, the agent sends requests to the model: on the default model they go through DeepSeek's infrastructure in the People's Republic of China, which you confirm during onboarding, and on Pro you can attach your own Claude or Codex, so requests go to that provider under your own account.
If the next step is a job in another language, the same agent helps with that too: see Learn English with AI: a month-long plan with words, grammar, voice and weekly checks.
Messages worth copying
Here is my CV. Read it like a recruiter who gives it ten seconds. Don't rewrite it yet: tell me what's weak and what you need from me to fix it.
Here are the facts I can back up: [list]. Make the improved base version, one page, as a Word file. Only facts I gave you, no made-up numbers.
Here are [N] job ads. Make one version of the base CV for each, a Word file per job. Under each file, two lines: what you moved up and what you cut.
For each version, what's the one question the interviewer is most likely to ask, and what should I have ready?
Remember: never add numbers to my CV that I didn't give you.
Create your agent, send it your CV as it is today and ask for the ten-second review first.
Try it with your own agent
Free, no card. The agent starts working in the chat straight away.
Create your AI agentQuestions
Can AI really improve a resume, or does it just reword it?
It does more than reword when you let it ask first. In our test the agent did not touch the CV in the first reply. It named what a recruiter would skip, listed the numbers it needed and waited. The improved version came after we sent seven facts, and every number in it is one of ours.
Will it invent achievements to make me look better?
Tell it not to and check the result. We wrote “only facts I gave you, no made-up numbers”, and the agent confirmed: “Every number in it is one you gave me, nothing invented.” We compared the files with our facts line by line and found nothing added.
Why three versions instead of one good CV?
Because the same experience reads differently to different hiring managers. The agent put it plainly in its review: “One CV cannot be strong for three different roles.” The base file holds everything true, and each version leads with what that particular job ad asks for.
Which file formats can I send and get back?
We sent a Word file and got four Word files back: the base CV and one per job. The agent also reads PDF and plain text, and you can ask for the result in the format you need.
How is this different from tailoring a CV to one job post?
Tailoring starts from the job ad. Improving starts from your CV: first it gets stronger on its own, then it splits into versions. If you have one vacancy in mind, the shorter route is in our guide to tailoring a resume to one job post.
How much does it cost?
The whole case, four messages and four files, cost about 10 on the default model. The Free plan gives 200 in the first month and 100 every month after, with no card.
