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How to write a resume, the letter and the interview

By Alberto Gulotta · Updated · 9 min read

This is the entrance to the work tower, and it begins with the question the whole tower is built around: how to write a resume. Underneath it sit the rest — a cover letter that does not sound like everybody else’s, an interview in four days, and a search that has to be tracked somehow before it turns into forty open tabs.

The tower is organised around one uncomfortable possibility: the first reader may not be a person. Where an application is parsed by software first, the document is read for structure rather than for impression — and several of the things that make a CV look considered to a human eye are exactly the things a parser handles badly. The floor on this says which, and quotes the guidance it is drawing on.

So the building starts there. The first wing is about producing a document that both a machine and a person can read, in that order, because the machine reads it first and the person only reads what survived.

The cover letter wing is about the parts a language model cannot supply for you: the specific thing you did, and the reason this employer rather than another one. Those are the two things a generated letter has to leave blank, and they are also the two a reader can check.

The interview wing is the least technological in the tower. It is mostly preparation, structure and rehearsal — and the floors there lean on public careers services rather than on products, because that is where the specific instructions turned out to be.

Three levels, and you are on the first. This atrium lists the floors; a floor covers one subject completely and holds the shorter guides underneath it. Nothing here is more than three clicks from the front door.

One more thing belongs at the door, because it changes the order in which to read the rest. When applications go unanswered, the natural response is to improve the words. Before doing that, it is worth ruling out the layer underneath them: a document laid out in two columns, a name inside a header, a skills section rendered as a graphic, a file saved in a format that arrives as an image — the thing turning a PDF into a JPG does on purpose, and the last thing you want here. None of that is visible to the person who wrote it, and checking it is quick. That is why the first floor of the first wing is about machines rather than about writing, and why it is the one to read before the others.

Where to start

Seven ways in. If you are applying this week, take the second one first.

“I need to write a CV from nothing.”
Start at the document
“I apply constantly and never hear back.”
Read the parsing floor in the document
“I need a cover letter that is not generic.”
Go to cover letters
“I have an interview this week.”
That is before the room
“Should I use AI to write this?”
Every wing answers that — begin at cover letters
“I have lost track of what I applied for.”
That is running the search
“I am changing field entirely.”
The rewriting floor is in the document

The document

Building something that survives being read by software and then impresses a person. Each floor is specific about formatting, because in this category formatting is not decoration but function.

How your CV is read firstAn ats friendly resume template is one a parser can read. What it extracts, and what defeats it.Open this guide → How long it should beOne kind of job has a two-page limit written down and enforced. Every other kind has no rule at all.Open this guide → How far back it should goWhere the ten-to-fifteen year convention comes from, and what a federal commission publishes about why.Open this guide → What to put on itThe include and leave-out lists a government employer publishes, and the reason the second list exists.Open this guide → Which skills to listAn employer says the answer is in the advert — and a published list of skills is the one thing that cannot work.Open this guide →

Cover letters

The part a language model will write for you in four seconds, and the part that shows. These floors are about making one worth reading, which mostly means putting something in it that only you could have written.

How to write oneNot the CV again in prose: the CV states, the letter argues — and the argument has a direction.Open this guide → Are cover letters necessaryCheck what the application asks for first, then what the largest experiment found — and who paid for it.Open this guide → For an internshipWhat four university career services agree on, and what to put in the middle with no relevant jobs yet.Open this guide →
Letter templatesStarting structures, and the openings that are now instantly recognisable.Being built

Before the room

What you do beforehand, which is more of the job than the interview itself — and, where the hiring is structured, most of it.

Preparing properlyWhat to research, what to rehearse, and how long each is actually worth.Open this guide → The STAR methodA length rule rather than a formula — plus the three other acronyms employers actually use.Open this guide → What to wearA rule rather than an outfit: find the ordinary level of dress at that workplace, then go one step above it.Open this guide →

The questions, and afterwards

The handful that recur almost everywhere, what each one is written to measure, and the email that follows within twenty-four hours.

Following upA public careers service says the date should have been agreed before you left the room.Open this guide → Common questionsThe ones a public careers service names, and the structure for answering with your own evidence.Open this guide → Tell me about yourselfWhy a public careers service does not list it as a question at all, and what to do with the ninety seconds instead.Open this guide → What are your weaknessesThe two-part answer a public careers service publishes, and why the lists of safe weaknesses stopped working.Open this guide → Why should we hire youA public careers service files it under strengths, not persuasion — and the answer is already written in the advert.Open this guide → Why do you want to work hereWhat the question actually tests, three depths of answer, and who really wrote the university pages on it.Open this guide → Questions to askWhat a public careers service says the moment is for, how many to prepare, and which questions cost you something.Open this guide → The thank-you emailTwo careers offices on what it is for — including the one sanctioned chance to answer a question again.Open this guide →

The job hunt as a thing to organise rather than endure — what to track, and what an employer sees when they look you up.

A background checkFive categories, and the four things an employer must tell you if the report costs you the job.Open this guide →
Tracking applicationsA productivity habit that takes five minutes a day and answers what happened to everything.Being built

The offer, and the exit

The last stretch: the money conversation, and leaving well. Both are shorter than people fear and both are worth preparing.

How to quit a jobThe sequence, the step that cannot be undone, and the health cover that quitting does not automatically end.Open this guide → Negotiating salaryA state labour department on why the number compounds, and the instruction never to accept an offer immediately.Open this guide → Asking for a raiseA labour department names the three right moments, and gives a sentence to say when you are handed extra work.Open this guide → Two weeks’ noticeThree lines and a date — plus the state labour department answering whether the notice is required at all.Open this guide → Resignation lettersThe four-sentence template a statutory service publishes, and the warning most templates leave out.Open this guide →

Not covered here. It will not tell you a design-led CV is safe. In most application routes it is read by software first, and the floors show exactly what that software drops.

It will not write a cover letter for you. Every floor in that wing is built on the opposite point — the only part worth reading is the part a model cannot produce.

It will not rank the resume builders yet. That needs paid accounts, real applications and an honest account of what the export looked like when the subscription ended, which is the moment these products are actually tested.

And it will not carry affiliate links, which in this category means turning down builders and course platforms that pay well for exactly this audience at exactly this moment.

A note on tone, since this tower is read by people under pressure. Nothing here assumes you have months, a career coach, or a spare four hundred pounds for a rewriting service. The floors are written so that each one can be acted on in an evening. What holds instead is simple: every floor is written for the reader who is applying this week, and none carries an affiliate link.

Written by Alberto Gulotta

Founder and editor of AI Tools Primer, writing from Palermo, Italy. Thirty-five years of taking computers apart, starting with a Commodore 64 — the long version is on the about page.

Something wrong on this page? Write to aitoolsprimer@gmail.com and it gets fixed.

Written on 20 August 2026 · last checked 2 September 2026.

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