How to Automate Your Job Search with AI in n8n

Let's be honest. Job hunting is exhausting. You spend hours scrolling through job boards, copying and pasting your resume, and crafting cover letters that all start to sound the same after the tenth one. What if you could wake up to a neatly organized spreadsheet of relevant jobs, complete with personalized cover letters already drafted in your Gmail? That's not a fantasy. That's exactly what this n8n workflow delivers.

This automated job search system pulls fresh job listings from Adzuna every single day, uses AI to match them to your profile, generates custom cover letters, tracks everything in Google Sheets, and even creates email drafts ready to send. No more manual grunt work. Just smart automation doing the heavy lifting while you focus on preparing for interviews.

What You'll Need to Get Started

Before diving in, make sure you have these accounts and tools ready:

• Adzuna API credentials – Sign up at Adzuna's developer portal to get your app ID and API key. This is your pipeline to thousands of job listings
• OpenAI API key – You'll need an OpenAI account with API credits. This workflow uses GPT-4.1 to summarize jobs and write cover letters
• Google Account – For Google Sheets integration to track your applications and Gmail for creating draft emails
• n8n instance – Either cloud or self-hosted version

Key Components in This Workflow

• Schedule Trigger – Kicks off the entire workflow automatically at 7 AM daily
• HTTP Request – Fetches job listings from the Adzuna API
• Split Out – Breaks down the API response into individual job items
• OpenAI nodes – Two instances for summarizing jobs and generating cover letters
• Google Sheets – Logs all job data for easy tracking
• Gmail – Creates draft emails with your cover letters

Building Your Job Search Machine: Step by Step

Step 1: Set Up the Daily Trigger and Search Parameters

Start by adding a Schedule Trigger node to your canvas. Configure it to run every morning at 7 AM. This ensures you get fresh job listings while you're having your coffee. Next, add a Set node to define your target job title. In this example, it's set to "IT Auditor," but you can customize this to match whatever role you're hunting for. Think of this as telling your robot assistant what kind of opportunities to look for.

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Step 2: Pull Jobs from Adzuna

Add an HTTP Request node and connect it to your Set node. Configure the URL to hit Adzuna's API endpoint. You'll need to plug in your app ID and API key, specify the US market (or your target location), and set it to retrieve five results per page. The workflow uses a dynamic URL that includes your job title from the previous step, so the search automatically adapts to whatever role you've specified.

Step 3: Process and Summarize Each Job

Here's where things get interesting. Add a Split Out node to break the API response into individual job listings. Each job now flows through the workflow separately. Next, connect an OpenAI node configured with GPT-4.1. Set up the system prompt to extract key information: company name, location, and a short description under 200 characters. Enable JSON output so the data comes back in a clean, structured format. This step transforms raw job data into digestible insights.

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Step 4: Generate Personalized Cover Letters

Add another OpenAI node, but this time configure it to act as a professional writing assistant. In the system prompt, tell it to generate custom cover letters based on the job description. The user prompt should include the summarized job details from the previous step and your resume information. Yes, you'll need to hardcode your resume details in this workflow, but that's a one-time setup. The AI then crafts a unique cover letter for each position, matching your experience to the job requirements.

Step 5: Track Everything and Create Email Drafts

Connect a Google Sheets node set to append mode. Map the columns to include the job title, application link, summary, and the AI-generated cover letter. Every job that flows through gets logged automatically.

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Finally, add a Gmail node to create draft emails. Set the subject line to the job title and the body to your cover letter. Now when you open Gmail, you'll find professionally crafted application emails ready to review and send.

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Why This Workflow Changes the Game

This automation solves multiple pain points in one elegant system. First, it eliminates the tedious daily grind of checking job boards. You get a curated list delivered automatically. Second, it tackles the cover letter problem. Writing personalized letters for every application is time consuming, but generic letters get ignored. This workflow generates customized letters at scale. Third, it keeps you organized. Everything lives in one Google Sheet with links, summaries, and ready-to-send cover letters.

The beauty of this system is that it runs while you sleep. You're essentially hiring a tireless job search assistant who works 24/7.

The use cases extend beyond individual job hunting too. Career coaches can adapt this for multiple clients. Recruitment agencies can flip it to track candidate outreach. Students can use it to find internships. Anyone facing a competitive job market gets a significant advantage by automating the grunt work and focusing energy on what actually matters: preparing for interviews and networking.

Taking It Further

Once you have the basic workflow running, there are plenty of ways to level it up. Add a filter node to screen out jobs that don't meet your salary requirements. Integrate with LinkedIn to cross reference companies. Set up Slack notifications when a particularly good match appears. Connect to a database instead of Google Sheets for more robust tracking. The modular nature of n8n means you can keep building on this foundation.

The job market is competitive, but automation gives you an edge. While other candidates are still manually browsing Indeed at midnight, you're already reviewing personalized applications generated by AI. That's the power of smart workflow automation. This n8n setup isn't just about saving time. It's about applying to more positions, with better quality applications, and staying organized throughout the entire process. Your next opportunity might just arrive in tomorrow's automated batch.