AI Guides › Step-by-step guides
By Nigel Guy · 6 min read
Most people use an AI assistant for job hunting by pasting in a job advert and asking for a cover letter. That makes Claude the last stage of a process you still run by hand: you scroll, you pick, you paste. It feels productive because the letter comes out polished, but the slow part, finding and ruling out roles, is still yours.
The Indeed connector moves Claude to the front of that process. It can search live Indeed listings itself, so you can hand it your CV and a short list of rules and let it do the first sift.
The rule: give Claude your rules before it searches, and make it show its reasons for every match, so you only spend time on roles that survived a written test.
Before searching, write the card once and keep it. Claude searches better against explicit rules than against "something suitable".
| Field | Example (hypothetical) |
|---|---|
| Target titles | Operations coordinator, office manager |
| Location and travel | Within 45 minutes of Leeds, hybrid at most 3 days in |
| Pay floor | £[MINIMUM] a year, listed or inferred |
| Must-haves | Skills you hold, with the evidence from your CV |
| Dealbreakers | Night shifts, unpaid trial days, commission-only |
| Stretch allowance | Up to one missing requirement is fine |
Paste your CV into the chat first (or attach it), then use this. Fill in the bracketed fields.
You are a careful job-search analyst working for me, a candidate based in [YOUR_TOWN_OR_REGION].
Goal: use the Indeed connector to find live roles that genuinely fit my CV and rules, and tell me which are worth my time.
Inputs
- My CV: [PASTE_CV_OR_SAY "attached"]
- Target job titles: [TITLES]
- Location and working pattern: [LOCATION_AND_PATTERN]
- Minimum pay: [PAY_FLOOR]
- Dealbreakers: [DEALBREAKERS]
- How many roles to review in depth: [NUMBER]
Steps
1. If any input above is missing or vague, ask me before searching. Do not guess.
2. Search Indeed using several close variants of my titles, not just one.
3. Open the full detail for each promising listing. Do not judge from the headline.
4. Score each role against my rules. For every must-have, quote the CV line that proves it, or write "no evidence".
5. Drop any role that hits a dealbreaker, and list the dropped roles in one line each with the reason.
Output
- A table: role, employer, pay (as listed, or "not stated"), location, fit (strong / maybe / weak), biggest gap, link.
- Then the top [NUMBER] roles ranked, with two sentences each on why.
Rules
- Only use facts from the listing and my CV. Mark anything you inferred as "inferred".
- Never invent salary, requirements or employer details.
- Before you answer, check that every link and pay figure came from a listing you actually opened.
For each role you keep, run the same three moves, in this order:
Act as a recruiter who reads this kind of role every week, then as my editor.
Job: [JOB_TITLE] at [EMPLOYER], from the Indeed listing you opened above.
My CV: [CV_TEXT]
1. List the listing's requirements in the order the advert gives them, and beside each, the CV evidence or "gap".
2. Suggest edits to my CV for this role: reordered bullets and rewording only. For every change, show the original line and the new line.
3. Draft a cover note of up to [WORD_LIMIT] words in plain British English, using only items from step 1.
Do not add skills, employers, dates or numbers that are not in my CV. If a gap matters, say so and suggest how I could honestly address it. Before replying, check each claim in the note against my CV.
Fluent output hides unchecked claims. Claude may read a listing's requirements generously, or tidy your CV so that a gap quietly disappears. A tailored CV that implies experience you lack is a problem you carry into the interview, and possibly beyond it. Always read the final version yourself and compare it with the advert.