Check the employer’s AI instructions before using a tool to prepare a job application. Where assistance is allowed, keep the experience, reasoning and claims your own. Verify every sentence you submit, protect confidential information and make any declaration the employer requests.
There is no single recruitment AI policy covering every organisation and assessment. A permitted spelling check in one process does not establish permission to generate an answer during a timed exercise somewhere else. Read the candidate pack and ask about an unclear rule before the assessment begins.
Separate preparation from assessed performance
Preparation might include organising your notes, practising with fictional questions or reviewing the clarity of text you wrote. An assessed task asks the employer to judge your capability under particular conditions. Check those conditions separately instead of assuming that a tool used for practice is also allowed during the task.
The Australian Public Service Commission’s AI recruitment resources include principles specifically for APS candidates. The Department of Infrastructure’s candidate guidance illustrates how an agency explains acceptable preparation, restrictions on actual assessments and disclosure expectations. Those are official examples for their own processes, not universal permission for every vacancy.
Use a simple assistance record
Keep a private record of how you prepared. It helps you answer a declaration accurately and distinguish your original evidence from a tool’s suggestion.
The following is an original fictional example:
- Task: shorten a paragraph about coordinating appointments.
- Material entered: a fictionalised description with no customer, colleague or employer identifiers.
- Assistance used: suggestions for sentence length and repeated words.
- Changes accepted: shorter opening and removal of a repeated phrase.
- Changes rejected: an invented percentage improvement and a claim of supervisory responsibility.
- Final check: every remaining statement matched the applicant’s real role and could be explained at interview.
This record is an editing aid. It does not replace an employer’s required declaration or authorise a prohibited use.
Verify claims, not just spelling
Read the final application against your real history. Check dates, role titles, qualifications, systems, team size and the action you personally took. A plausible sentence is still inaccurate if it changes assisting a supervisor into managing a department.
Remove invented achievements and numerical results you cannot substantiate. If a tool turns a team outcome into an individual accomplishment, restore the correct attribution. Keep language you understand and can use naturally in conversation.
Check any research independently. A generated link, employer description or alleged selection criterion may be wrong or out of date. Use the live advertisement and official employer information for the requirements of that vacancy.
Protect information before entering it
Do not paste confidential workplace documents, candidate information, government-sensitive material or another person’s details into a public tool. Consider what the service stores and how it uses inputs. Removing a name may not remove identifying or commercially sensitive information from a detailed example.
You can practise with a fully fictional scenario and then write the actual application yourself from authorised notes. Do not use AI to impersonate a referee, create a certificate or fabricate evidence of work you did not do.
Ask a focused permission question
A useful fictional question is: “Your assessment instructions prohibit external assistance. Does that include a spelling tool, and is there an approved way to request an accessibility adjustment?” Ask before using the tool, and retain the response.
Our application guide covers matching evidence to the role. AI assistance, when permitted, should support the clarity of that evidence while leaving its truth and ownership with you.
