AI Series 1: Exploring the Power of AI

AI Series 2: AI for Everyone: Unlocking the Potential of Everyday AI Tools

Series 3: AI-Powered Job Search: Navigating the Future of Work

Post 1: Creating and Tailoring a Master Résumé

Introduction

Did you know that the average job posting these days gets hundreds of applications? To stand out, you need more than just the right experience—you need the right tools. Enter: the master résumé. A well-crafted master resume can be a game-changer, making it easier to tailor your resume for each unique opportunity. But how exactly do you create one that works for you? Don’t worry, AI tools can help streamline the process and save you tons of time.

Whether you’re already familiar with resume writing or are just getting started, this guide will help you create and tailor a master resume that keeps you ahead in the job search. Let’s dive in!

New to AI? Check out Series 1: Exploring the Power of AI and Series 2: AI for Everyone: Unlocking the Potential of Everyday AI Tools for a great introduction to these tools!

Discussion

A master resume is a comprehensive document that includes all your work history, skills, and achievements. It’s essentially your career catalog, detailing everything you’ve done so that when the time comes to tailor it for specific job applications, you can easily pull out the most relevant details. AI-powered tools can help you maintain, organize, and edit this document with precision and ease.

Why use a Master Resume?

Here’s why a master resume is a must-have:

1. Efficiency: Once created, you can quickly pull the relevant sections to create a custom resume for any job.
2. Comprehensive: A master resume allows you to document everything without worrying about length or relevance upfront.
3. Time-saving: When applying to multiple jobs, you’ll save hours by having a go-to resource that contains all your career information in one place.
4. Higher hit rate: When you keep all your experience together, and use AI to pull out the relevant portions, you’re much more likely to get selected by both automated and manual resume reviewers looking for specific criteria and qualifications.

Tailoring Your Resume with AI

AI-powered resume tools, like Resume.io (free) or Zety (paid), can scan job descriptions and suggest which skills or keywords to highlight in your customized resume. Here’s how it works:

• Keyword Optimization: These tools analyze the job description to match your experience with the employer’s needs.
• Formatting Assistance: They can format your resume in seconds, ensuring it’s easy to read and looks professional.
• Grammar and Spelling Checks: AI tools like Grammarly (free) help refine your resume’s language, making it polished and error-free.

Challenge

Ready to get started with creating and tailoring your master resume? Here’s a hands-on challenge to build your skills. I want you to know that I have done this all myself (and learned from it). All in the interest of research, of course.

Create your master resume

1. Gather your old resumes and select (up to) 5. I selected the widest time frame I could during different jobs. This is not a resume-writing tutorial; I trust you have them already; if not, AI can certainly help you with that! So can Microsoft Word, career coaches, books, etc.
2. Select an AI model. In my experience, I did well with Claude; I did not do well with Copilot, ChatGPT, or Gemini. However, that was before Gemini could take input files, which is no longer the case, so I encourage you to try Gemini.
3. Prompt it. Here is the one I used; feel free to take it and tailor it for you:

You are an expert career coach and resume writer.
Your goal is to create a master resume which can be trimmed to leave relevant portions for each future job applied for.
Find attached many resumes tailored to the jobs I was applying for.
Create one master resume in the same style, with all of the information in all of the resumes.
Format your response as a Word document.

4. Get back a resume and save it as your master/parent. Claude gave me a resume, though not as a Word document, which was 5 pages long. It really did a terrific job of consolidating everything. Remember to save it with a name indicating that it’s your everything resume, and not a normal one. Claude even knew exactly what I was doing and told me:

This master resume can serve as a foundation for creating tailored resumes for specific job applications. When applying for a particular position, you can trim down this master resume to highlight the most relevant experiences and skills for that specific role.

Use an AI tool to tailor it

You can use a platform like Jobscan (free version available) or Resumatch.io (free), but I’m going to walk you through doing it yourself.

1. Create a tailored resume. Go to your favorite model (I stuck with Claude) and provide it with a job listing and the resume you created earlier. Try this prompt, and notice the absolute beauty of the last sentence (yes, I’m proud of it):

You are an expert career coach and resume writer.
Your goal is to use the attached master resume to create a resume tailored for the job listing attached.
Create a smaller resume in the same style, with the relevant information for that job.
Format your response as a Word document.
Make a separate list of required/minimum qualifications and preferred qualifications which are not mentioned in the resume.

2. Now, have it evaluate the resume. Address the concerns it raised as far as missing qualifications (for instance, something may be missing from your master resume) and try again. Then ask the GPT:

Please use the job description attached earlier, and the updated resume attached here. Make a list of required/minimum qualifications and preferred qualifications which are not mentioned in the resume.

3. Do this iteratively until you’ve addressed all that you honestly can.

These two steps – creating and tailoring the resume – will help you develop a very easily optimized resume for every job application in no time.

Summary

Creating a master resume is a crucial step in modern job searching, and AI tools make the process much simpler. By developing a comprehensive document and then using AI to tailor it to each opportunity, you’ll be able to showcase your most relevant experience with minimal effort. Now’s the time to build your master resume and let AI take some of the stress out of job applications! In well under 30 minutes, you can have a polished master résumé ready for tailoring.

Thank you for reading! Keep your resume sharp and your job search smarter by leveraging these tools. Check back next week for AI-powered job hunting.

Further resources

For more on resume building and AI tools:

• Resume Genius How to Make a Master Resume
• Jobscan Optimize your resume
• Résumé Writing Is Easy With Grammarly’s Features
• Struggling with Resumes? Here Are the Top AI Tools You Need
• LinkedIn How AI is Transforming Job Hunting – Tools and Strategies for Success

Disclosure

AI was used to create a draft of this post. I added my own personal touches and take responsibility for all of it. Also, forgive me for the term “master”, as it is considered offensive. I am still figuring out how to get the idea across properly. I used “parent” at one point but am not sure that conveys it as desired. Thanks for your patience.