Your first CV with AI: coach yes, ghostwriter no

First summer job, first internship, and the usual blank page: what do I write if I have never worked. The temptation is to ask the AI to write the whole CV. Bad idea, and not for moral reasons: in the interview, it takes two minutes to tell who wrote that paper.

The rule we suggest at home: the AI is a coach, not a ghostwriter. It can ask, organise and polish. It cannot invent. Everything that ends up on the page has to survive a face-to-face conversation.

First, without AI: your experience list

Before opening any chat, grab paper and write down everything you have actually done. More counts than you think: babysitting, helping train the little ones at the club, the drama group at school, building the team's website, helping out at the street fair. It does not need to have been a job with a payslip: it needs to be true.

Now the AI, as a coach

I want to prepare my first CV for [ROLE]. Do not write it for me. Ask me questions, one at a time, about what I have done: responsibilities, how long, what I learned. When we finish, help me phrase my answers clearly and honestly, without exaggerating. If something sounds inflated, tell me.

• Write the first draft of every sentence yourself and let the AI only polish it.
• Read it out loud: if it does not sound like you, change it until it does.
• The fire test: for every line, imagine being asked tell me more about this. If you cannot, cut it.

One privacy detail: the chat does not need your address, your phone number or your full date of birth. Those details go only in the final document, not in the conversation with the AI.