Use AI to translate your real experience into the employer's language, never to invent experience.
Do now: Write three true examples with numbers, then rehearse the follow-up questions.
Anything you cannot discuss for two minutes should not be on the page.AI has made polished applications free, which means polish no longer distinguishes anyone. What distinguishes you is specific evidence you can defend in conversation — and that is exactly what these tools cannot fabricate for you.
Translate, do not invent
Most people undersell real work because they describe duties rather than results. 'Managed stock' is a duty. 'Reduced out-of-stock days from about eight a month to two by changing the reorder point' is evidence. The second is not an exaggeration of the first; it is the same work, described usefully.
AI is genuinely good at this translation, provided you supply the raw material. Give it what you actually did, what changed, and any numbers you have, and ask it to express that in the language of the role. Give it nothing and it will produce confident sentences about a person who does not exist.
Estimate honestly where you lack exact figures, and say so: 'roughly', 'about', 'in the region of'. An honest estimate you can explain is far stronger than a precise number you invented, because the follow-up question is where the interview actually happens.
If you cannot talk about it for two minutes under questioning, it does not belong on the page.
Match the role, not the industry
Paste the actual advertisement and ask which of your examples best evidences each requirement. This surfaces mismatches early, and it stops the common failure of sending the same strong-but-general application to twenty different roles.
Ask what the role appears to be worried about. Most job descriptions are written after a problem — someone left, something failed, something is growing faster than the team. Reading for the worry tells you which of your examples matters most.
Where you genuinely lack a requirement, say so briefly and show the nearest real thing. Employers hire people who are honest about gaps far more often than people assume, and the alternative collapses at the first specific question.
Rehearse the follow-ups, not the answers
Ask for the three hardest follow-up questions on each of your examples, and answer them out loud. Anywhere you slow down is either a gap in preparation or a claim that is too broad, and both are fixable before the room.
Practise being challenged. Ask for a sceptical interviewer who questions whether the result was really due to you, or whether the number is meaningful. This is uncomfortable and it is the most valuable twenty minutes of preparation available.
Prepare your own questions too. Ask what a candidate should want to know about a role like this, then choose the ones you genuinely care about. Asking a question you do not care about is visible.
Rehearse the second and third questions. Anyone can survive the first.