How to Review AI-Written Résumé and Cover Letter Wording

• Every employer, title and date matches your records
• Every number came from you and can be explained
• No qualification, licence, registration or clearance has been added
• Responsibilities weren’t inflated (for example “led” instead of “supported”)
• The wording still sounds like you

Look at the original and the suggestion side by side. Accept only the parts that are accurate and reject the rest. Aptivelle never replaces your wording without your approval.

Match estimates and quality feedback are guides to help you edit. They aren’t an employer’s ATS result and don’t predict whether you’ll be shortlisted.

AI writing tools tend to make the same kinds of mistakes. They round up responsibilities, add plausible-sounding numbers, merge two jobs into one, or describe a team’s result as yours. They may also add skills listed in the job ad that you never mentioned. None of these are malicious — the tool is predicting likely wording — but each one can become a false statement on your application.

• Inflated verbs: “led”, “owned” or “spearheaded” where you “contributed to” or “supported”
• Invented metrics: percentages, dollar values or team sizes that weren’t in your notes
• Borrowed keywords: skills copied from the job ad with no evidence behind them
• Date drift: start or end dates changed, or concurrent roles reordered
• Credential creep: a course in progress described as completed

Read the suggested text once for meaning and once line by line. On the second pass, point to the fact that supports each sentence. If you can’t find one, remove the sentence or rewrite it in terms you can support. Then read it aloud. If a sentence sounds like something you wouldn’t say in an interview, it probably doesn’t belong in your application either.

Pay special attention to anything an employer might check: qualifications, registrations, licences, clearances, citizenship and employment dates. Errors in these areas can lead to an application being excluded or an offer being withdrawn.

• Read for meaning
• Match each sentence to a fact you can support
• Remove or soften anything unsupported
• Check credentials and dates against your records
• Read aloud for tone

AI text often sounds generic or American. Check spelling (organise, centre, licence as a noun) and remove overblown phrases. Australian employers generally respond well to plain, direct language. A short, clear sentence about what you did is stronger than a long one full of adjectives.

The reviewed version is less dramatic but every word is supportable. If you do have a measured result, include it and be ready to explain where it came from.

When you submit an application you’re declaring that its contents are true. Some employers, especially in government, ask you to confirm this formally. AI assistance doesn’t change that. Treat every suggestion as a draft from a helpful but unreliable colleague: useful for structure and clarity, never the final word on facts.

Keep a copy of exactly what you sent for each application. If you’re invited to interview, you’ll want to review the claims you made, and you may be asked about any of them in detail.

Before pasting your résumé into any AI tool, check how it handles your information: whether it is stored, how long for, and whether it is used to train models. Remove details you don’t need to share, such as your full address, date of birth or referees’ phone numbers. Aptivelle states what it saves and lets you export or delete your data from Settings.

Sometimes the best edit is to keep your original wording. Reject a suggestion when it changes the meaning of what you did, when it adds something you can’t support, or when the original was already clear and specific. Clarity improvements are worth keeping; changes that make you sound more impressive at the cost of accuracy are not.

If a tool repeatedly suggests the same unsupported claim, that is a sign it is filling a gap in your evidence. Instead of accepting the claim, ask yourself whether you have a real example that fits. If you do, add it in your own words. If you don’t, leave the gap — and consider whether that requirement is one you can genuinely meet.

A reviewed application may be shorter and plainer than the AI draft, and that is usually a good sign.

Before you submit, read the whole application once more as the employer would. Check that the résumé, cover letter and any criteria responses tell the same story, with the same titles, dates and examples. Inconsistencies between documents are easy to miss when each was edited separately, and they can quietly undermine an otherwise strong and honest application.