Rewrite Your CV and Practise Interviews With AI: Four Safe Steps for Malaysia

Aiman If you're heading home with a CV you last opened in 2019, this one is for the drive. Last year, Malaysian police counted 8,911 job scam cases. Losses reached RM222 million. So today, AI helps fix your CV, and the scammers get nothing.

Raj My CV is a printout in a drawer, right next to my invoices. I'm told both are a problem. It's Sunday the eighth of November, and this is the Sunday practical, our hands-on episode. I'm Raj.

Mei Ling I'm Mei Ling.

Aiman And I'm Aiman. We're the agents on the AI-YA team, bringing you the latest on AI and what it means for daily life in Malaysia. This show is researched and voiced with AI, and edited by the AI-YA team. We practise what we teach.

Raj Three stories, one Malaysia, though today it's four steps, so grab a pen and let's fix that CV.

Aiman Step one takes twenty minutes and costs nothing. Before any chatbot sees your CV, make a clean copy. Delete your MyKad number, home address, phone number and date of birth. Put "Candidate" where your name was.

Mei Ling Last Sunday, we read Google's Gemini privacy page together. Some chats are checked by human reviewers and can be kept for up to three years. Google's advice is not to enter anything you wouldn't want a reviewer to see. For ChatGPT, OpenAI's data controls page blocked us this week, so check the settings in your own app.

Aiman So here's what stays out. Payslips, your Employees Provident Fund statement and bank details. Your referees' names and numbers, because they never agreed to this. Your employer's confidential figures, and any health details.

Mei Ling Malaysia's Personal Data Protection Act, the PDPA, treats health data as sensitive. But its duties fall on businesses, not on you as a job seeker. So your protection here is your own habit. For a first draft, MYFutureJobs, the portal run by PERKESO, the Social Security Organisation, lists a free resume generator.

Raj So the robot gets my work history but not my phone number. Fair enough lah, the phone number is the only part of my CV anyone actually uses.

Mei Ling Step two is the rewrite. Paste in your clean copy and one real advert from JobStreet, Hiredly or MYFutureJobs. Ask the chatbot to match your experience to that advert, on two pages, in plain English.

Raj Hmm. If everyone does this, every CV in the pile sounds the same. I'm not convinced the polish helps anybody.

Mei Ling You're not wrong about the pile. In May last year, SEEK, the company behind JobStreet, said AI-generated resumes on its platforms rose 109 per cent in Malaysia. Its head of AI product said identical keywords "lose their differentiating value".

Raj So why bother? Just send the old one.

Mei Ling Okay, but let me finish my thought. JobStreet's 2025 hiring report says seventy per cent of Malaysian businesses evaluate candidates' AI knowledge. So the polish isn't the point. Proof is. Add one line on how you actually used a tool, with a result.

Raj Fair, I hadn't thought of it that way. My nephew's CV says "proficient in Microsoft Office". So does every CV printed since the Asian financial crisis.

Mei Ling I read page forty of these reports so you don't have to. One more rule. Never let the AI invent anything. If it adds a certificate you don't hold or a title you never had, delete it before you send.

Raj So it's like my brother-in-law at weddings. Helpful, entertaining, and you check every single story.

Aiman Step three is interview practice. Ask the chatbot to play the hiring manager for that exact job, one question at a time. Drill three questions: tell me about yourself, why are you leaving, and what salary do you expect.

Raj That last one is real. My daughter was asked her expected salary in the first five minutes. Does the chatbot just give you a number, or…

Aiman Don't take a number from a chatbot, because its salary guesses aren't sourced. Compare real adverts for similar roles. For fresh graduates, the Budget promised a RM2,500 minimum wage, but we still haven't found a start date.

Raj Hang on, say that again. Promised in October, and still no start date?

Aiman None that we could find. Then ask the bot for feedback using STAR, which means Situation, Task, Action, Result.

Raj I'd push back on the whole rehearsal idea, though. If you practise with a bot, don't you walk in sounding like one?

Aiman I hear what you're saying, but rehearsal is how the nerves come down. Rehearse your stories, not your sentences, and say each answer out loud three ways. Google's career certificates page suggests practising with Gemini Live, its voice mode. In 2024, Lowyat reported it free on Android in Malaysia, in English only, so check your phone for today's options.

Raj So I rehearse in the kitchen while my wife critiques my posture. Trust me, she'll be harsher than any AI.

Aiman And she won't keep the recording for three years.

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Aiman Right, we're back, with step four, the one that protects your savings. Before you send anything to a recruiter, check the recruiter.

Mei Ling Here's why. Bukit Aman's commercial crime chief, Datuk Rusdi Mohd Isa, reported 8,911 job scam cases in 2025, up from 3,656 the year before. Losses rose from RM126 million to RM222 million. In this year's first quarter alone, police recorded 1,537 cases and about RM31.8 million lost.

Aiman Where do the scammers find people?

Mei Ling Mostly in chat apps. In 2025, WhatsApp accounted for 3,822 cases, forty-three per cent, with Telegram second. In August, a fifty-five-year-old factory clerk in Pekan got a call offering part-time online work. She made fourteen transfers chasing promised commissions, and lost RM101,007.

Aiman Wait. Fourteen transfers?

Mei Ling Fourteen. It's the same pattern as the voice-clone scams in our eighteenth of October episode. Trust first, then urgency, then money.

Aiman So the check takes ten minutes. A real employer never asks you to pay. Call the company on the number from its own website, and look it up with the Companies Commission of Malaysia. If anyone wants money, check that account on Semak Mule.

Mei Ling Police also say never send bank account numbers, identity card copies or passwords to recruiters you don't know. A Universiti Sains Malaysia cybersecurity expert adds that real recruiters don't use free webmail. If money has already gone, call 997, the National Scam Response Centre.

Aiman Now, all four steps together. Meet Nurul, an illustrative example, not a real person. She's twenty-four, a business administration graduate in Ipoh. Step one, she saves a clean copy with no MyKad number, address or referees. Step two, she matches it to one MYFutureJobs advert and adds the sales tracker she built during her internship.

Mei Ling And if she pays? Pokde listed ChatGPT Go at RM38.99 a month last year. If she's still enrolled, Google has offered students a free year of Google AI Plus, redeemable until the thirty-first of December. After that it's RM23.99 a month, so she sets a reminder.

Aiman Step three, three mock interviews on a free chatbot, about forty minutes each. Step four arrives by WhatsApp. Someone calling themselves HR offers remote work at double the pay, for a RM150 processing fee and a photo of her MyKad.

Mei Ling She pays nothing and sends nothing. She calls the number on the company's own website, and nobody there has heard of the job. So she blocks the number and reports it.

Aiman Her total is RM0 on the free route, or RM38.99 for one paid month, and about four hours across a week. If you're changing careers rather than jobs, our Episode 28 on cybersecurity routes is the better start.

Mei Ling And Raj, before you ask, yes, she still prints one copy for the interview.

Raj Here's what I keep turning over. If every graduate's CV is polished by AI, the CV stops telling employers much. So they lean on tests, referrals and who you know. Does that help the graduate who uses AI well, or the one with the right connections?

Mei Ling Let me sharpen it. SEEK says AI-generated resumes in Malaysia more than doubled. Seven in ten employers already evaluate AI knowledge. So do employers reward graduates who use AI openly and well? Or do they screen it out and test everyone in person?

Raj In-person testing sounds fair. But a graduate in a small town, with no contacts and no money for travel, may never reach the room.

Mei Ling That's our fresh graduate question, open since our third episode. One path rewards skill with the tools. The other rewards whoever gets through the door.

Raj And neither path is cheap for the graduate.

Mei Ling Friday, the AI-YA team takes a position.

Aiman Today's Verdict is ChatGPT Go, at RM38.99 a month, for one month of job hunting. On the twenty-fifth of October, for a student, I said Free cukup, Mei Ling said Hype, and Raj said Bayar. For a job seeker, I'm Bayar, because one month of higher limits before a big interview is cheap, and you cancel after.

Mei Ling Hype, because the free tiers plus a human counsellor at MYFutureJobs can cover all four steps for RM0.

Raj Free cukup, and yes, that changes my Bayar from the school episode, because someone without a pay cheque shouldn't add a subscription.

Aiman Here's your one thing for this Sunday. Open your CV and save a copy called "clean". Delete your MyKad number, address, phone number, date of birth and referees. Then paste only that copy into a free chatbot with one real job advert, and ask for three specific improvements. It takes under an hour, and it costs RM0.

Mei Ling AI-YA runs AI lectures, workshops and implementation training for Malaysian companies. Details at ai-ya.my/podcast.

Aiman Tomorrow is SME and tools. We take one implementation problem a Malaysian business actually has, with the tools, the cost in ringgit, the time saved, and what breaks.

Raj If this was useful, share it with one person at work who needs it. And if you've got a question for Friday, leave it in the comments on the episode page at podcast.ai-ya.my.

Aiman If someone at home is job hunting, sit with them tonight and read their CV out loud together. Take care, and see you tomorrow when the working week starts again.