Job hunting is a stressful and draining process. You spend hours filling out one application, tailoring your resume to fit unique requirements, and writing—grinds teeth—yet another cover letter that shows how your shining personality is only outdone by how awesome you are at your job.
In short, searching for a new job is a full-time job itself. But if you add AI into the mix—and specifically Zapier Central—you can speed up and streamline the search process.
That's because you can use Central to build a dedicated assistant that writes personalized resumes and cover letters to match any job description based on your experience. It can even carry out tasks in other apps for you, like emailing resumes or collecting your accomplishments from Slack.
Here's how to create that assistant yourself. Watch Zapier's Emily Mabie build a Central job assistant in the video below. Or keep reading for step-by-step instructions.
Zapier Central is in active development and available in beta. Try it now.
Jump ahead
Set up your Central assistant
To start building your dedicated AI assistant, follow these steps:
First, head over to central.zapier.com and sign up.
When the portal opens, click + New assistant. This will open up your assistant in Central, where you can finish setting it up.
To start with, a window will appear where you can give your assistant a name (like Job hunting assistant), a description, and instructions. (If you're not ready to provide these things just yet, click Create assistant in the top-right corner. That will lead you to the chat field, and you can finish setting up those aspects there.
Instruct your assistant's behavior
Next up, you'll want to define your assistant's behavior. This means telling your bot what to do when it's triggered, how it should process your data, and which actions it should take. You can trigger behaviors on demand or when new data comes through another app.
In this instance, we're going to instruct the assistant to add your weekly accomplishments to a Google Doc. In your current role, you might post weekly or monthly updates of all your achievements in Slack, for example.
You can set a behavior that dictates whenever you add an emoji to that Slack message, your assistant will take those accomplishments and convert them into bullet points. Finally, it will add those bullet points to a Google Doc in Markdown formatting. That way, your bot can use that Google Doc as a data source to write your future resumes. (We'll show you how to upload this data source later on.)
For now, follow these steps:
To add the assistant's behavior, click the Behaviors tab and + Create behavior.
In the dialog box, under the Instructions to follow field, describe what you want the assistant to do in simple terms. In this case, you can add something like when I react to a Slack message with a "google-doc" emoji, convert the message into resume content (feel free to expand and embellish) using Markdown formatting and add it to the Google Doc. This will prompt the assistant to suggest the trigger app (Slack) and action app (Google Doc).
For your trigger step, select Slack: New reaction added. Select the emoji you want to use as a reaction, and follow the instructions to set up the rest of the fields.
For your action step, select Google Docs: Append text to document. Select the document where you want to store your weekly list of accomplishments, and follow the instructions to set up the rest of the fields.
Once you've done that, click Test behavior, then switch it on.
Add your data sources
Next up, it's time to add your data sources to the assistant. You can give your bot access to live data (like a table or a Google Doc) so that it can find, analyze, and summarize information when you ask for it.
In this case, we'll want to add as much information about your current job role, your past achievements, and your professional experience.
That means we'll be adding the Google Doc you set up to list your weekly accomplishments. You can also add past resumes, cover letters, and anything else you think your assistant should know.
To add your data sources, follow these steps:
Give your assistant a data source. Click Data sources and + Add data source in the initial chat message.
In the dialog box, select Google Docs from the menu of options.
Select an existing connection for the app or connect a new one.
Next, select a document to use as the data source. After you select your list of accomplishments, click Add data source.
Follow this same process for any other data sources.
Add instant actions
Next up, you can add an instant action to your assistant. This refers to simple actions (or tasks) your assistant can execute on command across different apps when you converse with it. Actions are different from behaviors because they don't require an event happening in another app first.
You might set up an instant action for Gmail, for example, so that once your assistant has written a resume, you can ask it to email you—or the hiring manager—a copy.
To set up this instant action, follow these steps:
Click Actions in the initial chat message, then click + Add action.
In the dialog box, search for and select Gmail from the available options.
Select an existing connection for the app or connect a new one.
Select Gmail: Send Email as the action, then click Save.
Your assistant should now be ready to help with your job search—though you can refine it as much as you like until it's perfect. Next time you come across a great job role on LinkedIn, you can ask your assistant to write a resume that matches the description—and pulls from all of your accomplishments listed in your data sources.
Tip: Download Zapier Central's Chrome Extension to bring your job hunting bot anywhere with you on the internet while you search for jobs—like LinkedIn.
Build assistants with Zapier Central
With Zapier, you can create a dedicated assistant in a matter of minutes, helping you streamline the way you search for new roles in your industry.
But Central lets you create, teach, and interact with assistants so they can help you across any multitude of tasks.
Have another task that could use streamlining? Start experimenting with Central today and see what you can build.
Learn more: For more information on building a Central bot, check out our feature guide.
