How to Use AI to Improve Resumes, Cover Letters, and Networking

If you're spending more than 30 minutes tailoring a resume for each job you apply to, you're doing it wrong. And I'm not talking about cutting corners or sending generic resumes, I'm not talking about creating AI slop. I'm talking about a complete AI-powered workflow that lets you create better, more targeted applications that actually showcase your skills correctly in a fraction of the time. We're talking 10 minutes from job posting to finished resume and cover letter. That's what I'm going to teach you today. I'm Karina Klingman, scientist turned CEO of a talent strategy consulting firm. I've helped over 85 biotechs hire and develop thousands of amazing employees, so I know what works and what doesn't work when it comes to landing a job and then excelling in it. I created the Biotech Career Coach podcast to give you simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies to help you land your dream biotech job, then move up the career ladder. If you're exploring career paths looking to learn about biotech or simply striving to be the type of person who makes an impact and gets promoted, you're in the right place. Now, this workshop is really visual. I'm doing live demos in Notion AI, building resumes from scratch, showing you exactly how to tailor them, how to generate cover letters that actually align with the company mission. So if you can watch this on YouTube, do it. You're going to see every click, every prompt, every output, but if you're driving or at the gym or just prefer to listen, stay with me. I'm going to walk you through the entire system and give you all the key takeaways and you can always go watch it later with this knowledge in mind. So today we're talking about all things AI in your job search and I'm going to be really tactical about this. First, let's talk about which models to use. I've been testing all of them and as of right now, my top recommendations are ChatGPT 5.1 and Claude Sonnet. ChatGPT 5.1 just came out and it is leaps and bounds better than the previous version for resume writing specifically. These LLMs have functions. They're like different people with different skill sets and different strengths. So I want you to keep that in mind. A lot of people just go to their favorite LLM and try to do everything with it and that is a mistake. And as we all get better at using AI in our day-to-day workflows, I think you'll start to find that if you're exploring different types of models, you're going to have favorites for this task or that task. So that is why I'm highlighting this. ChatGPT 5.1 is really good at reasoning and it tends to read the room better. Claude Sonnet is still fantastic for writing, research, and analyzing job descriptions. So I actually like using them both together and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in a minute. Now here is where Notion AI comes in and this is why I love it so much. I get no monetary advantage from mentioning Notion. I just love it so much that I can't help but mention it. It is where I organize my whole life. So you're going to hear a lot about that if you are around me. You can access both of these models in one place, in Notion, and keep everything together. So all of your resume versions, all of your job descriptions, your tailored resumes, your cover letters, all of that lives in a workplace where the AI can reference everything. And again, I'm not getting paid by Notion to say this. I just think it's really powerful. It is like a secret weapon. If you are in the community, I am giving you a ton of templates for all of this. One of the things that I created for this is a comparison of different AI models where today, which is November 21st, 2025, I have broken down exactly what I'm using, what's good, what are the strengths, what are the weaknesses, and which models maybe to avoid in your job search materials. So I've sort of done this specifically for job search materials like creating resumes, cover letters, writing emails, doing LinkedIn and networking requests, things like that. If you are doing coding and creating web applications, different models are going to be stronger for that. But I have created a cheat sheet for which model to choose when in these instances, and that will be in the community for you. And I will try and keep that updated every time one of these models gets an update or a facelift. In the workflow in this workshop, I teach four main steps. The first is creating what I call a template resume. It is your template resume. This is the longest part of the process, but you only have to do it once. So it's time well spent. To do this, you're going to use the LLM of your choice to compile all of your old resumes, your LinkedIn profile, maybe some old cover letters, and to create a really comprehensive template, which is going to have several strong headline options and about 15 highlights bullet points. You are never going to submit this resume. Never, never, never. It is just so that when you're tailoring things in the future, you have beautifully curated bullet points to pull from so that it is easy to tweak. When you create this large template resume using my prompts, and again, you can come to the community and grab these templates, you will spend some time tweaking these bullet points, working with the AI to really dial in the way you want to sound to make sure all the metrics and the data that we put into these bullet points are accurate, that you're comfortable with it. Throughout your experience section, same thing, you're going to have some really highly targeted bullet points. All of the bullet points are going to start with an action verb. They're going to have metrics and data. They're going to show your impact, not just a list of things you did. It's going to become everything you need to reference for all subsequent resume tailoring in the future. The second step in this process is tailoring that template resume for a specific job. So once you have that template, tailoring it takes maybe 10 minutes. You're going to paste the job description in the company info in the company website. And the AI is going to go to the website. It's going to look at the company. It's going to look at the job description, analyze everything and create what I call a tailoring worksheet. And in this worksheet, you are going to be able to look at all signature words that the company uses in their job descriptions and in their marketing materials. You're going to understand the company's mission. You're going to understand what is so important to the hiring manager. What is the pain point? Why are they hiring for this person? All of these things come together into a list of suggestions for tailoring the resume, which then the AI acts on and creates a really lovely resume for you. Now you will always check these resumes for accuracy. It will have created a tailored resume by selecting the correct bullet points from your template resume, adjusting and tweaking those bullet points to align with the language and what the company is looking for. And it's going to output this so that you can quickly review it, make your tweaks and be done tailoring that resume. The third step is to create a cover letter. And I use a t-style cover letter template. Again, this is all within the prompts that I provide. The AI is going to then ask you for a short personal story so that it can help you to align really well with the company mission. And then it's also going to create a table that shows what the company needs and how your experience aligns in really targeted, concise bullet points. This is going to be a one page letter. It's straight to the point. It's mission oriented. It's like a little teaser so that it wets the hiring manager's appetite for what is in your resume. And these two steps, this tailoring step and this cover letter step are so fast. If you've done the pre-work and you have a really good template resume to draw on. And then the fourth step that I go over is networking. So the statistics on networking vary, but anywhere from 60 to 80% of jobs are actually a result of networking in some capacity. It may be that you know someone at the company. It may be that you're referred into a job. It may just be that once you've applied, HR recognizes that you're connected to people at the company and does a little bit of digging. Networks are important. So I have built a networking agent that helps me to write really effective short messages. So these are messages like asking for a coffee chat to learn more about a company or a job, sending thank you notes, writing LinkedIn connection requests. The key is keeping these short and very human sounding and focused on learning from the other person as opposed to asking for a favor. And so this agent with all of the prompts associated with it is also something you can grab from the community. I've just used the word agent and I think this is an important thing to learn. If you haven't heard about agents, consider this a quick little primer. When I think about the evolution of large language models, we had chat GPT come out and it was like this really cool chat bot sidekick and it could chat with us and it didn't have much memory and we could sort of ask it little things and it would do a task here and there and it was very, very smart and it was like nothing we'd seen before. So it felt very powerful. Contrast that with today. I have an army of what I call agents and these are extremely detailed single focus LLM prompts. They're usually quite long. I give the agent a job and a full set of instructions, a lot of context. And then I also give it access to all of the documents it needs in my ecosystem like my Notion and my Google Drive and anything else it needs to be able to complete a task. Think of an agent as an employee, but an employee that has a very specialized job. All day long, my agents do their specialized job when asked. So what you will be getting from me in the community if you want these templates are actually agent templates. These templates are meant to be used in Notion AI, but you can adapt them to use them in any LLM of your choice. For example, chat GPT has a custom GPT function and it also has an agent function. If you're a power user, Claude has what they call projects. So my template agent, its only job is to create amazing resume templates. It knows what it needs. It gets what it needs. It asks users to provide more context when it lacks that context and it spits out a wonderful template resume every time. Then I have my resume tailoring agent and its job is to create the tailored resume and the tailored cover letter. Again, it asks for what it needs if it doesn't have it. It will let you know where the holes in its knowledge are and it will get that job done. And then I have a networking agent and its whole job is to do the various types of networking that I need. So these are highly trained employees with one single job. Where we're going in the future, and I've already seen a lot of great progress with this, are multi-agent ecosystems where, probably in the not too distant future, you're going to hear me back on the podcast telling you about my full agent that does the whole job from start to finish and it uses these multiple different agents in hands off the work automatically between the agents. We're already seeing things like that in platforms like Lindy, but they do require a subscription and there's a learning curve. So for the purposes of this podcast, I am giving you the tools you need to be able to do this fairly simply, but just know that there's so much more to come. And I'm building this into a tool that is user friendly, hopefully coming in the next month or so. Folks in the community will obviously get to test that first. All right, so that is the difference between just an LLM, prompt and agents that actually have a really dedicated job. The next thing I want to do is tell you about one of my favorite new techniques, which is to use multiple models to double check my work. So what I'll do is I'll create, for instance, a resume in Klotz on it, and then I'll switch to chat GPT 5.1 and say, take a look at this resume. What are the strengths and weaknesses? How well does it align with this job description? And what chat GPT 5.1 is really good at doing is reasoning through things and giving you specific recommendations for improvement. So it's like getting a second opinion. I did this in the workshop and it immediately found several places where a very well-tailored resume could be improved slightly, and it was really insightful, and it gave its reasoning for it. So I really love the interplay between different models, which you can do if you're using them separately. Like if you were in the Klotz app and you made your resume, you could take it over to chat GPT for a different opinion. What I love about Notion AI is that you just switch models and ask the question, and it already has all the context, so you don't have to go anywhere. So that is one reason I think Notion is very powerful. All right, a couple of important things to remember. Always, always, always double-check everything AI creates for accuracy. These models can hallucinate. I have given my agents explicit instructions never to hallucinate, but it still happens occasionally, so you really don't want them to making something up wonderful in your experience that just isn't true. And make sure you're comfortable with the language. If something doesn't sound like you, change it. That is okay. You do not need to take every suggestion an L along gives you. This should be about making your job search faster and better, not making a bunch of AI slop and just submitting it without thinking about it. Also, AI is so integral now to many people's workflows. And I really would encourage you that if this is new to you and if you're thinking, wow, this all sounds so foreign, start to get comfortable with AI. Start to consume podcasts that are AI podcasts. They don't have to be about biotech. I consume so much information about technology, all the different AI models, all of these agents, things that are coming down the pipeline because it is critical for my job. And I think it will become critical for all of your jobs, even if you're at the bench. So don't sleep on this. Make sure that you are putting in the time and you're really thinking about AI. It is definitely here to stay. People are saying that this is going to change our lives more than the internet did. So I really want to impress upon you how important this is to get out there and learn. All right, like I said, I have created all of these custom agents. And if you want them, they're yours. I've got them in the community and they have my entire methodology built into them. They learn from your preferences over time. So you will be able to really use these to make amazing resumes and not only that, but to learn from them to make other agents for other things you do in your life. And again, if you want to see exactly how this works with my live demos, go watch this on YouTube. You'll see me build a template resume from scratch, tailor it for a real job posting, create a cover letter, write a networking message all in real time, all in 30 minutes. And the biggest part of that is showing you the difference between the agents and making the template resume. Honestly, the last 10 minutes is where I create that tailored resume and cover letter. So you will see how fast that truly is once you get this set up as a system for yourself. This could be a game changer for your job search. One of the biggest complaints I get is how much time people feel like it takes to tailor resumes really well. And I agree, it can be time consuming, but it doesn't have to be. And this isn't cutting corners. Like I said, this isn't creating a bunch of AI slop. This is helping you to go from spending hours tailoring an application to maybe 10 to 20 minutes total, and you're going to get better results because the AI helps you align experience and brainstorm with you so that you are submitting exactly what the company is looking for. So go try it out. And if you have questions, we would love to have you in the community. We've got a whole group of biotech professionals helping each other out with this stuff. All right, that's it for today. Thanks for listening. And again, jump to the YouTube if you want to see this in action and we'll see you next week. Thanks so much for listening to the biotech career coach podcast by the Collaboratory Career Hub. Join our school community to get access to support resources and materials and be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn. Pro tip, when you connect with me on LinkedIn, you get instant access to my entire network of biotech folks, which is powerful for your career. If you found this podcast valuable, please subscribe or follow us on YouTube so that you never miss an episode. Have an amazing week and we'll see you back here next Friday.