The best prompt to analyze a job posting with ChatGPT or Claude

Paste a job posting into ChatGPT or Claude and ask “what do you think?”, and you get a polite, vague answer. With a structured prompt and your CV, you get what matters in a minute: whether you tick the boxes, what looks off, and whether the job is worth a cover letter.

The prompt to copy

Paste it into a new conversation, with your CV and the full text of the posting. Give the text rather than the link: many careers pages can't be read by the assistant.

You are an experienced recruiter in my field. I will give you my CV, then a job posting. Analyze the posting for me, honestly:

1. Match: a score from 0 to 100, then the 3 main requirements of the posting and, for each one, whether my CV meets it (yes / partly / no), with the evidence from my CV.
2. What's missing: the skills or experience asked for that I don't have, and whether they are deal-breakers or can be made up for.
3. Red flags: missing or vague salary, a scope too wide for one role, requirements that don't fit the level, wording that hints at high turnover, signs the job is already filled or reposted again and again.
4. Questions to ask: 3 specific questions for the recruiter to clear up my doubts.
5. Verdict: apply, apply with a tailored application (tell me what to highlight) or skip, with one sentence of reasoning.

Answer concisely, in lists. Don't make anything up about my background: if something is missing from my CV, say so.

My CV:
<paste your CV>

The posting:
<paste the full posting>

Why this prompt works

• A precise role (a recruiter in your field) gives franker feedback than a generic assistant.
• The score is backed requirement by requirement, with evidence from your CV: you see right away whether it holds up.
• The red flags are spelled out: without a list, the assistant rarely raises them on its own.
• “Don't make anything up” keeps it from polishing your CV, the most common flaw when you then ask for a cover letter.
• The verdict forces a decision: the goal is to sort jobs, not to collect analyses.

Three useful variants

Sort today's job alerts

Here are today's job alerts. For each job: a match score with my CV out of 100, one sentence of review and the main red flag if there is one. Rank them from best to worst and tell me which ones are worth applying to.

<paste the jobs>

Compare two offers

I'm torn between these two jobs. Compare them on: fit with my profile, stated salary and benefits, growth prospects and red flags. Tell me which one to prioritize and why.

Job 1:
<paste the posting>

Job 2:
<paste the posting>

Prepare the cover letter

Based on your analysis, list the 3 experiences from my CV to highlight for this job, with the keywords from the posting to reuse. Do not invent any experience.

Limits to keep in mind

• The assistant does not know how long the job has been posted. A job open for more than 90 days or reposted several times is often a ghost job: check it for free before spending an hour on it.
• The analysis is only as good as your CV: if it is old or incomplete, so is the score.
• Remove from your CV what the analysis does not need: full address, date of birth, social security or social insurance number.

Stop losing your analyses

The real problem comes next: three weeks and forty conversations later, finding the job that was worth it takes longer than the analysis. Plug CheckTaJob into Claude or ChatGPT and end your prompt with “if the verdict is to apply, add the job to my tracker”: the job, its score and the review land in your application tracker, with the posting archived.