Just got laid off? Free AI certificates in 48 hours. A LinkedIn rewritten for recruiter search. A portfolio project that pulls inbound interest. An application factory that ships 5 tailored applications a day.
First, take a breath. Don’t announce the layoff in week one. Posting "open to work" on day one puts you on the market as someone looking for help. Spend week one quietly getting the certificates, rewriting your profile and shipping one project. When you start outreach in week two, you’re a fluent AI builder who’s open to roles. That framing changes the conversations you get.
Second, AI skills are your leverage. PwC’s 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer found job postings that ask for AI skills advertise a 62% wage premium on average (PwC). Recruiters also filter LinkedIn by the Skills on your profile, so the plan below gets you credentials, puts the right words where recruiters search, and ships visible proof in your own field.
Pick 3 and finish them in 48 hours. Add each under Licenses & certifications on LinkedIn. My pick for most people is the two Anthropic courses plus the Microsoft and LinkedIn path.
Extra time? These are free too:
Most laid-off profiles read like a job description. Recruiters search keywords and filter by Skills, so your headline, About, Skills and Experience bullets need the words they type.
01
The LinkedIn rewrite prompt
Paste your current profile, 3 dream job descriptions, your top 3 roles with real numbers and a couple of things you’ve written. Claude goes one section at a time so you can edit as you go.
The Skills Section Is The Lever
LinkedIn lets you add up to 100 skills, and most people list a handful. Go to your profile, open Skills, and add every AI tool and method you’ve actually used (Claude, ChatGPT, generative AI, prompt engineering, AI agents and so on). Only list what you can talk about in an interview.
Recruiters who land on your profile should see proof, not claims. Pick the painful problem from your last job, the one you’d have built a tool for if you’d had time, and build it now. Then post it.
02
The portfolio strategist prompt
Paste your old role, the painful recurring problem and the roles you’re targeting. Claude picks one format (a skill, a working artifact or a scheduled task), writes the spec, builds it with you and drafts the post.
Hashtags are a bonus. Your Skills section and the project itself do the real work.
The bottleneck is time. Most people recycle one generic cover letter. This tailors a resume and cover letter to each job in about 10 minutes. At 5 a day for 20 days, that’s 100 tailored applications.
03
The application factory prompt
Put this in a Claude Project so the setup sticks. Click Set project instructions, paste it, and add your master resume, base cover letter, about-me file, cringe list and non-negotiables as project files. After that, each application is one pasted job description.
04
The interview prep prompt
Run this the night before. Paste the job description, your tailored resume, the interviewer’s LinkedIn and the 3 hardest things they might ask about. For the mock, switch to voice mode with the sound wave icon, which works best in the Claude phone app.
30 Days From Now
Three AI certificates on your profile. A LinkedIn recruiters can find through Skills. One real project in public. 100 tailored applications sent. Every interview prepped. Steady pace beats panic every time.
Want to go deeper? Read 3 free AI certifications from Microsoft and LinkedIn and the LinkedIn Magnet framework.
Then prep with the Interview Coach.