How to Write Your CV With AI in English and Arabic: 8 Practical Steps

Short version: AI is excellent at turning your scattered experience into sharp bullet points, checking your CV against a job ad, and producing an English version and an Arabic version in minutes. It is bad at knowing what you actually achieved, and it loves the stock phrases every recruiter has learned to skim past. So this guide does not say “ask ChatGPT to write my CV”. It sets out eight steps that keep you as the only source of facts and give the AI the job of wording and structure.

Any general chat assistant will do, including ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, and the free tiers are enough for this. If you are torn between the two most common choices for writing, our ChatGPT vs Claude comparison covers it.

Step 1: Decide the language before you write anything

Read the job ad itself. Which language is it written in, and does it ask for a CV in English, Arabic or both? Many private-sector roles across the Gulf advertise in English, while government and semi-government employers may expect Arabic. If the ad doesn’t say, ask. The working rule: submit in the language of the ad. If you need both, write each one separately (Step 5 shows how) instead of translating one into the other.

Step 2: Empty your memory into a raw file

Open a blank text file. Under each job you have held, write down everything you can remember, in any order: projects, numbers, problems you fixed, tools you used, complaints that went down, people you trained. Write in whatever language is fastest for you. Quantity matters here, not style. This file is the only raw material the AI will work from. Anything that isn’t in it will not appear on your CV, and that is the point.

Step 3: Turn notes into achievements without invented numbers

Paste the raw file into the assistant with this prompt:

Turn the notes below into CV achievement bullets. Start each with a past-tense verb and state the result, not the duty. Do not add any number, percentage or name that is not in my notes. If a bullet would need a number to be convincing, write [number?] and list your questions for me at the end.

The last instruction carries the whole prompt. Chat assistants like to dress up achievements with invented figures such as “increased sales by 40%”. Any number you cannot defend in an interview will come back to hurt you. Answer the [number?] questions with real figures, or delete the bullet.

Step 4: Run a gap check against the job ad

Paste the full job ad, then your bullets, and ask:

Compare my bullets with the requirements in this ad. Make a table: each requirement, whether my bullets cover it (yes / partly / no), and which bullet covers it. Do not rewrite anything yet.

The table surfaces two kinds of gap. One is a skill you have but forgot to mention: go back to your raw file and add a bullet for it. The other is a skill you genuinely lack: leave it out. Then reuse the ad’s exact wording. If it says “stakeholder management”, don’t write “liaised with management”. Many applicant tracking systems, and many busy recruiters, scan for the literal phrase.

Step 5: Write the Arabic version natively, not as a translation

A machine-translated Arabic CV gives itself away quickly. Every line opens with the Arabic for “responsible for” or “I carried out the work of”, phrasing lifted straight from English. Don’t ask for a translation. Give the assistant your English bullets and ask it to write them “the way an experienced Gulf HR professional would write them in formal Arabic, not as a translation, using direct verbs, and keeping tool names and certifications in English.” Then handle three things the tools often get wrong:

• Your name. Pick one Latin spelling that matches your passport and use it everywhere: CV, LinkedIn and email address.
• Job titles. Some are clearer in English, for example Product Manager. It is fine to give the Arabic title with the English original in brackets.
• Numerals. Arabic documents may use Western (1, 2, 3) or Eastern Arabic-Indic digits. Pick one and use it throughout.

If you only need an English CV, still read this step. The “no translation” rule works the other way too. An English CV drafted from Arabic notes needs the same direct-verb pass, or it ends up wordy and passive.

Step 6: Format it so software can read it

Two-column templates with icons, skill bars and tables look good. They can also turn into scrambled text when a screening system extracts them. Arabic raises the risk, because right-to-left text mixed with English words is easy to garble. So:

1. Use a single column with plain section headings: Experience, Education, Skills.
2. For an Arabic version in Word or Google Docs, set the paragraph direction to right-to-left in the paragraph settings. Right-aligning the text is not the same thing.
3. If you design in Canva, choose a one-column template and never put key information inside images or shapes.
4. Export to PDF.

The one-minute test: open your PDF, select all the text (Ctrl+A), copy it and paste it into a blank text file. If the lines come out in the right order and any Arabic words are not reversed or broken apart, the file is readable. If you get a mess, that is roughly what a screening system sees, so switch to a simpler template.

Step 7: Protect your personal data

Don’t paste your ID or passport number, or your full home address, into an AI tool. It doesn’t need them to improve your wording. Use placeholders like [NAME] and [PHONE] and fill them in by hand in the final file. Also check the data settings of the tool you use, since some let you stop your chats from being used for training. Photos depend on the country and the employer: some employers in the region expect one, and many international companies prefer you leave it off.

Step 8: The final human pass

Print the CV or read it aloud. For every line, ask: could I explain this with an example in an interview? If not, cut it. Then search the file for “passionate”, “dynamic”, “self-motivated”, “results-driven” and “think outside the box”, and replace each with a concrete achievement or delete it. For grammar and spelling in English, a checker like Grammarly helps. For the Arabic version, ask the assistant to list grammar and spelling errors only, without rewriting, so it doesn’t undo the work you did in Step 5.

The common mistake: one CV for every job

The biggest payoff from AI is not writing your first CV but tailoring it. Once you have a raw file and verified achievement bullets, rerunning Step 4 against each new ad gives you, in about ten minutes, a version that leads with what that particular employer asked for. Save each version with the company name and date in the filename, so you know which one the interviewer is holding.