AI for job seekers

A year ago, using AI in your job search was an edge. You were ahead of most candidates just by knowing the tools existed.

Now everyone has it: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot. Everyone is using AI in their job search and recruiters know it.

So the tool itself isn't the advantage, how you use it, is.

Right now, most graduates use AI to go faster. Resume in two minutes. Cover letter on demand. Interview answers they've never actually thought about.

It looks productive because applications fly out and everything looks polished.

But nobody gets hired for having the prettiest looking resume, or a cover letter with the most keywords.

The question isn't are you using AI. It's is the way you're using it actually making you better?

Australian Migration and Education Conclave 2026

I've been invited by the Aussizz Group to run a resume workshop at Conclave 6.0. It’s part of a bigger event bringing together visa, migration, and career experts all under one roof.

Whether you’re weighing your next visa move, working toward a PR, or just want some clarity on your next step, it’s a great chance to connect with experts who can help you explore your options in Australia.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Date: 8th August 2026, Saturday

• Time: 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM

• Location: Sydney Masonic Centre

• Event Registration: Link

Come say hi.

The biggest mistake: using AI to replace thinking

In June 2025, researchers at the MIT Media Lab ran an experiment.

They divided participants into three groups and asked all of them to complete the same writing task. One group used ChatGPT, another used Google Search, and the third completed the task without either tool.

At first glance, the AI users looked like they performed better. They finished faster, their work was polished, and they generally felt more confident about what they'd produced.

But when researchers looked at what was happening during the task, they that people relying heavily on ChatGPT were engaging much less deeply with the work itself.

This doesn’t mean AI is harmful or you should stop using it altogether. It means that improvement requires mental effort, and when AI removes all of that effort, the development often disappears with it.

Learning works in a funny way.

The most uncomfortable part, where you're forced to organise your thoughts, solve problems and figure things out, is the part that's actually building the skill. If AI quietly removes all of that effort, it also removes a lot of the learning that would have happened.

And that's exactly why this matters during a job search.

A polished resume might get you into an interview. But once you're sitting across from a hiring manager, there's no ChatGPT answering the follow-up questions for you.

Eventually, your own thinking has to take over.

AI should think with you, not for you

Let me give you two examples.

Imagine two graduates applying for the same graduate program.

The first uploads their resume and the job description into ChatGPT and types:

"Rewrite my resume for this role."

Ten seconds later, they have something that “looks” polished. They skim through it, make a couple of edits, and submit the application.

The second graduate starts differently.

They write the resume themselves first. It isn't perfect, but that's okay because perfection isn't the goal yet.

Then they take it to AI and ask it to review the application the way a recruiter would… to point out where the evidence is thin, where claims are too vague, where something is missing, and where an assumption isn't being supported.

They revise based on what comes back, push back where the feedback doesn't fit, and submit something they genuinely understand and can defend.

Both graduates used AI and the outputs might look similar. But only one of them is walking into an interview with a clear understanding of what they wrote and why.

Most people treat AI like a ghostwriter. They expect it to produce the answer, solve the problem and hand them something ready to submit.

The graduates getting the most value from AI treat it very differently.

They treat it like a coach.

A good coach doesn't run the race for you. They watch your technique, point out mistakes you didn't notice and keep asking questions until you improve. AI, when it comes to your job search, works best in exactly the same way.

That's the shift I think more students need to make.

Where AI actually gives you an edge

So if AI shouldn't do your thinking for you, what should it be doing?

Quite a lot, actually.

In my opinion, AI is at its best when it helps you think more clearly, communicate more effectively and prepare more deliberately. Those are the three areas where it can genuinely improve your job search.

1. Thinking better about where you fit

One of the hardest parts of being a graduate is making sense of your own experiences. You've completed assignments, worked part-time, joined student clubs, maybe done an internship or volunteered somewhere. But turning all of that into a clear career story isn't always easy.

This is where AI can be incredibly useful.

Instead of asking, "what career should I pursue?", give AI some context.

Tell it about your projects, subjects you've enjoyed, internships, part-time jobs and extracurricular activities.

Then ask questions like:

• What transferable skills do you see across these experiences?

• What careers would value this combination of skills?

• Where do you think I have gaps that employers might notice?

Those are much better conversations because AI isn't making decisions for you. It's helping you connect dots you might not have noticed yourself.

2. Communicating better

AI is excellent at making good writing clearer and stronger.

What it shouldn't do is create experiences you haven't had or invent achievements you can't stand behind.

Here's why this matters beyond just ethics. Insight Global's 2025 AI in Hiring survey found that 88% of hiring managers believe they can detect AI-generated applications, and 54% say they would care.

For example, instead of asking:

"Write my resume."

I’m asking:

"Here's the bullet point I wrote. Make it clearer and more concise without changing the achievement."

The difference might seem small, but it's important. In the first example, AI owns the story. In the second, you own the story. AI simply helps you tell it better.

The right mental model here is editor, not author. Your story has to exist first. AI's job is to help you tell it more clearly, not to write one in your place. 

If AI is inventing the substance rather than improving the expression, you've handed over the one thing that actually makes your application different from anyone else's.

3. Preparing better

This is where AI is arguably most underused, and where the difference between the right and wrong approach is clearest.

Most students ask AI to give them the perfect interview answer. A much better prompt is:

That conversation builds the understanding you need to handle something unexpected in the actual interview.

A 2025 ACM study on AI-driven mock interviews found that candidates who used AI to simulate adversarial interviewers and stress-test their stories showed measurably lower anxiety and better performance than those who used AI to generate polished answers they then memorised. 

AI can also suggest portfolio projects based on your target role, create structured learning plans to close specific skill gaps, and run increasingly difficult mock interviews that push you past your comfort zone. 

The candidates who perform well aren't the ones with perfectly memorised answers. They're the ones who've been challenged enough beforehand that nothing in the interview feels completely new.

That's the kind of preparation AI is brilliant at.

The parts of your job search AI should never do

As useful as AI is, there are still parts of the job search where I'd be very careful about letting it take over.

Networking is one of them.

AI can help you research a hiring manager, understand their company, and think of genuinely interesting questions to ask. What it shouldn't do is write the outreach message. 

Research on professional networking consistently shows that personalised messages achieve a 32.7% higher response rate than generic ones, and AI-generated messages, however polished, almost always carry the same tells: smooth, complete, and somehow saying nothing personal.

Most networking isn't successful because someone wrote the perfect LinkedIn message. It's successful because the other person senses genuine curiosity.

Interviews are the higher-stakes version of the same problem. AI can help you practise, stress-test your stories, and simulate difficult follow-up questions. What it can't give you is the understanding behind an answer.

If you've memorised an answer that ChatGPT wrote, everything feels fine until the interviewer asks:

"That's interesting. Can you tell me more about how you handled that situation?"

Now you're no longer reading prepared lines.

You're explaining your own thinking.

And if that thinking never existed because AI created the answer for you, the conversation usually falls apart pretty quickly.

The same goes for resumes, portfolios and projects.

If AI writes an achievement you can't confidently explain, you've created a problem for your future self. Sooner or later, someone will ask how you achieved that result, why you made a particular decision or what challenges you faced.

Those questions are easy to answer when the work is genuinely yours. They're much harder when the impressive sentence came from AI instead.

Ultimately, employers aren't assessing whether you know how to use ChatGPT. They're assessing whether you can think through problems, make decisions and explain your reasoning.

Ironically, those are the exact skills many people are outsourcing to AI.

AI is a multiplier

AI doesn't automatically make someone a stronger candidate. It amplifies the habits they already have.

And I don't think the graduates who benefit most from AI will be the ones using it the most. Instead, they'll be the ones using it more deliberately.

Every time they open ChatGPT, Claude or another AI tool, they'll use it to sharpen an idea they've already started, challenge an assumption they haven't questioned or improve work they've already done themselves.

That's a very different habit from asking AI to simply produce the answer.

Over time, those habits compound.

One graduate becomes increasingly dependent on AI because it has done most of the thinking for them. The other becomes more capable because every interaction with AI has strengthened their own thinking instead of replacing it.

That's why I think the most important prompt you'll ever use isn't something you type into ChatGPT.

It's the question you ask yourself before you even open it.

Am I asking AI to do my thinking, or am I asking it to help me think better?

The answer to that question probably won't change your next application. But over the next year, it could completely change the kind of candidate you become.