Margareth Felicia Gono, 24, began her career as a senior associate at DoorDash after earning a master’s degree in applied analytics in May. During her job hunt she built an AI workflow that let her evaluate roles and analyze interview sentiment.
At first her search felt chaotic. As an international student needing a visa she felt pressured to apply to anything that even loosely matched her background, even when the fit wasn’t right.
Growing up in Indonesia, she didn’t want to leave the U.S. without corporate experience. Her parents covered tuition at a private university and then funded an Ivy League master’s program.
She started logging every outcome. Which positions drew responses? Which didn’t? What patterns emerged? “Anxiety is unprocessed data,” she says. Tired of feeling discouraged, she decided to learn something from the process instead.
By the second or third interview round she noticed employers hesitating a bit. She wanted to understand why—whether it was her background, résumé, or visa status.
She turned to Claude as a career coach. She fed job descriptions into Claude and asked it to pull out the key skills, keywords, and themes. She then built a second automation that compared the posting with her résumé and highlighted missing top keywords. In effect, it was her own version of an ATS score.
She didn’t want AI to fabricate experience or make her sound like everyone else. She wanted it to show where her background wasn’t coming across clearly. Sometimes that meant tweaking a bullet point; other times it meant deciding that an application would be a waste of time.
As she progressed she became more deliberate about who she wanted to report to and what kinds of roles she pursued. Using Claude she discovered three things she loved: talking to people, making things look polished, and spotting patterns. That insight led her to create three distinct résumés—one for analytics, one for sales and marketing, and one for consulting.
She eventually asked Claude to turn her data into a simple dashboard. The numbers told a story: 186 applications, 44 cold outreaches, 19 interviews, six take‑home assignments, three final rounds, and one offer. Seeing the process as a funnel rather than 185 personal failures helped her stay motivated and keep improving.
During interviews she treated each session like a real conversation, not an audition. She also looked for a boss who could be a mentor.
When recruiters mentioned using an AI note‑taker, she asked if she could record the conversation too. Most said no, but on the occasions she got permission she scraped the notes and ran a sentiment analysis to spot where she hesitated, used filler words, or where the interviewer asked for more detail, showed engagement, agreed, or laughed.
Even when she couldn’t record, she jotted down right after the call what they asked, where she rambled, and what seemed to interest them.
She also used AI to research the people interviewing her. She trained a Claude skill to pull data from LinkedIn profiles.
By copying and pasting the entire page, Claude learned her preferences and could point out similarities between the interviewer and herself. In one memorable case she connected with a recruiter over a cheese club they’d both belonged to years apart—an unexpected link that got her further than any cover letter or font choice ever could.
She believes the questions asked at the end of an interview can make or break the outcome. She would ask how the interviewer got to their current role and what advice they’d give a recent graduate. “When you stop letting the interviewer drive the whole conversation and actually engage back, you go further,” she says.
Imposter syndrome is easy to feel, but she tries to remind herself that this is a process and she knows her experience. She’s done her research, she knows why she wants the job, and if they don’t see her value, someone else will.
“Everyone has access to AI now, so it’s not a differentiator. What matters is knowing what to ask, how to interpret what AI gives you, and where human judgment still counts. AI can reveal patterns and help you get your foot in the door, but it can’t make you want the job or make someone remember you.”
Do you have a job‑search story to share? Contact the reporter at tparadis@themoneytimes.com.