AI Toolkit

Not sure what you want to do yet?

AI is a free brainstorming partner for finding your direction — long before you write a resume.

• Assess your skills. Describe your coursework, jobs, activities, and projects, then ask AI to identify your transferable skills and where the job market values them.
• Discover new paths. Ask what careers people with your major actually pursue — answers often go beyond the obvious.
• Find skill gaps. Ask what a role requires, compare it to what you have, and get suggestions for closing gaps while you’re still in school.
• Try before you commit. Ask for a realistic “day in the life” of a role — including the parts people don’t love.
• Then talk to humans. AI gives you a map; people give you the territory. Use what you learn to have sharper conversations with career coaches, professors, and alumni.

The Golden Rules: What NOT to Do with AI

AI can hurt your search as easily as it helps. Avoid these:

• Never use a live AI assistant during a real interview. Employers consider it deceptive, and getting caught is disqualifying. Practice with AI beforehand; perform on your own.
• Don’t mass auto-apply with generic materials. Ten tailored applications beat a hundred generic ones — recruiters and screening systems filter out untailored resumes.
• Don’t let AI fabricate or inflate your experience. Every line on your resume is fair game in an interview — and reference checks happen.
• Don’t submit AI output unedited. Recruiters recognize AI writing instantly: generic tone, buzzwords, identical structure. Unedited output signals you didn’t care.
• Don’t paste confidential information into public AI tools. That includes others’ personal info, a current employer’s proprietary materials, and anything you wouldn’t want stored on someone else’s server.

Resumes & Cover Letters

AI can strengthen your materials — but only if you stay in the driver’s seat.

Don’t:

• Let AI draft the entire document. It will sound generic and inauthentic, and employers can tell.
• Use AI-generated templates. Their formatting is often difficult to edit later.
• Paste personal identifying information or proprietary job postings into public AI tools without checking privacy settings.

Do:

• Ask AI to pull keywords and skill clusters from the job posting — many employer systems now screen for broad skill groupings, not just exact words — then weave them naturally into your resume.
• Research the position and company before applying so your materials show real understanding.
• Brainstorm action verbs, synonyms, and concise phrasing to sharpen your own writing.
• Use AI for a cover letter outline — but keep the “why this company, why you” story 100% your own. That’s the part employers actually read.

LinkedIn

Your profile should sound like you, not a chatbot.

• Brainstorm, then rewrite. Use AI to draft your About section, then rework it in your own voice. Generic AI copy is a red flag to recruiters.
• Ground bullets in specifics. AI can tighten your Experience section, but the real numbers, projects, and outcomes must come from you.
• Research before reaching out. A connection request referencing something specific always beats a generic one. Use AI to prep, then personalize.
• Draft outreach, then humanize it. Edit AI-drafted messages until they sound like a real person — not a mail merge.
• Guard your data. Check privacy settings before granting third-party AI apps access to your LinkedIn account.
• Never inflate. LinkedIn is the first thing employers cross-check against your resume. Inconsistencies stand out immediately.

AI is a powerful practice partner:

• Generate likely questions from a specific job posting — behavioral and role-specific.
• Run mock interviews. Have AI ask questions one at a time and critique your tone, clarity, and structure.
• Research formats common in your target industry (behavioral, case-based, technical).
• Refine STAR answers to behavioral questions — but keep every example true to your real experience.