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TAR UMT × ACER PREDATOR × NVIDIA · 23 JULY 2026

Getting Hired
in the AI Age

How to be a top applicant when everyone has AI.

Fathy Rashad — Co-founder/CTO, Cleve.ai

Fathy Rashad
Quick intro

I build AI
for a living.

CTO @ Cleve.ai · 100K+ users
MIT GenAI research at 19
15+ hackathons judged in Malaysia
QR to mfrashad.com
mfrashad.com
in/mfathyrashad · IG @rashadventure

I've reviewed hundreds
of applications.

Here's what actually gets you hired in 2026.

1 in 3

Malaysian graduates end up underemployed —
“gaji cukup makan.” The degree alone isn't enough.

~35.5% of employed graduates in semi/low-skilled roles — DOSM Graduate Statistics 2024
250

applications land on one corporate job opening.

HiringThing job application statistics, 2025

Only 4–6 get interviewed.

HiringThing job application statistics, 2025

An AI reads your resume
before any human does.

97–99% of Fortune 500 companies screen with ATS — Jobscan, 2025
✋ Raise your hand

Who has used AI for a resume
or cover letter?

74%

of job seekers already do. It's not cheating — it's the baseline.

Greenhouse job seeker survey, Nov 2025
From my hiring seat

4 things I judge in every candidate

01
Projects
Can you build things?
02
Experience
Used in real contexts?
03
Drive
Will you excel?
04
Communication
Can you share ideas?

AI doesn't change what I look for.

It changes how fast you build proof.

01

Projects

Can you actually build things?

Level of projects
😓
Minimum
School projects
😄
Great
Side projects · freelance · open source
😍
Best
Shipped a real product with real users
Resume bullets that work · 1/3
CV bullet with tech stack highlighted
Name the tools & stack.
Resume bullets that work · 2/3
CV bullet with role highlighted
Own your role in the team.
Resume bullets that work · 3/3
CV bullet with metrics highlighted
Let the numbers talk. 93.4% · 405 splits · RM400.

Too lazy to write bullets?

Mine them from work you already did.

gitresume GitHub repo
gitresume — your git history → cited resume bullets

Built by a Malaysian student.

Shawn Chee · github.com/Shawnchee/gitresume
(the tool itself is his best resume bullet 😉 — always verify AI claims before pasting)

How to showcase
🙂
Good
Projects listed in your CV
😄
Great
A complete GitHub profile
😍
Best
Your own portfolio website

The best applicants are googleable.

Made by Malaysian students 🇲🇾
hannahdaud.github.io
hannahdaud.github.io
janelleis.online
janelleis.online
mfrashad.com
mfrashad.com (mine)
Yours doesn't need to be fancy. It needs to exist.
What makes a portfolio good?
01
Visuals
screenshots · demo videos
02
Write-ups
tell the story behind it
03
Delight
animation · interactivity
1 · Visuals
faw.dev project grid — every project has a visual
Every project gets a screenshot or demo video. No visual = doesn't exist.
2 · Write-ups
Janelle's case study — the story behind the project. Doubles as a blog.
janelleis.online/case-studies/forum.html
3 · Delight
Small animations & interactions — the difference between seen and remembered.
3 · Delight — mine
The pixel me? AI-generated. (Hold that thought for later.)
mfrashad.com

You can vibe-code this
in a weekend.

TERMINAL
Claude Code
agent builds it with you
EDITOR
Cursor
AI-first code editor
PROMPT→APP
Lovable
describe it, get a site
DESIGN→SITE
Figma Make
or v0, Bolt — pick one

No coding needed — describe it in plain English, react, iterate. Free hosting included.

Rashad's GitHub profile — pinned repos, contributions
Never leave your GitHub empty. Pin projects · write READMEs — AI drafts them.

Same for LinkedIn.

Headline, about, project sections — AI drafts, you edit.
Recruiters check it before they ever reply.

02

Experience

Have you applied your skills in real contexts?

Level of experience
😓
Minimum
Only the compulsory internship
😄
Great
More than one internship
😍
Best
Freelance / part-time / business while studying

AI collapsed the cost
of shipping.

ChopChopSplit: 6 students, 1.5 weeks, real users, seed funding.
“No opportunity” is no longer the excuse — build your own experience.

03

Drive

Do you have the motivation to excel?

How I read drive
🧑‍💻
Hackathons
ship under pressure
🏆
Awards
competitive proof
🚪
Clubs
bonus if you lead one
🏃
Initiatives
blogs · volunteering · events

My blog got me into
MIT research.

A professor found my AI tutorials online — at 19, no connections, no application.
Learning in public compounds.

Cleve — AI workspace for writing and thinking
No time to build a blog? Write notes in Cleve → publish → free public pages.
cleve.ai — this talk's resource page is hosted this way. QR at the end.
04

Communication

Can you effectively share your ideas?

Everyone sounds like AI now.

Sound like a human.

Short. Personal. A little risky.

✅ A real application we received
Career switcher application message
“…came across Rashad's TikTok of him drilling his curtain.” Personal beats polished.
✅ Another one — remember this guy
Faw's application message
“i actually used cleve for a day and i'm pretty impressed…” He did the homework.
✋ Spot the problem
A suspicious application message
❌ He pasted the whole ChatGPT reply
Application with ChatGPT preamble left in, cofounder laughing
“Your response looks great! …here's a slightly tweaked version:” — sent as-is. My co-founder's reaction says the rest.

AI is your ghostwriter,
not your voice.

Draft with AI. Rewrite it like you're texting a friend.

⌗

How to not get buried
in the pile

Spray wide with AI.
Snipe your top 3 by hand.

Personalization takes energy — you can't fake it at scale.
Spend yours on the few companies you'd fight to join.

AI autofill

AI can fill the forms for you.

Resume in, application out.
Volume just got cheap.

Outreach

DM them.
Even after you applied.

AI drafts. You proofread. Rewrite it in your voice — every time.

Case study

How Faw
got hired at Cleve

He didn't just apply.

He hacked us.

Used the product for a day → sent real feedback →
found an exploit in our system → shared it in his application.

Then someone DMed me for him
LinkedIn referral message mentioning the exploit
“I was busy. This put him on top of the pile.”
The Faw formula
Use the product
for real, not 5 minutes
→
Say something real
feedback, bugs, ideas
→
DM + referral
even after you applied

Founders are busy. Outreach is how you get seen twice.

Case study · my own CV
Rashad's rendered ATS-friendly CV
My CV was 5 years stale. AI rebuilt it — one column, standard headings, ATS-friendly. Boring on purpose.
my actual CV — generated with AI + RenderCV
Generated, not written
Master record
every number I've ever earned, one file
→
AI tailors
reads the job posting, mirrors its rubric
→
Rendered PDF
1–2 pages, ATS-friendly

Rule #1: AI never invents — every claim traceable. “The taste and the truth stayed mine.”

Tailor it per job — free
RenderCV — open source CV generator
Paste the job description → AI rewrites your bullets → RenderCV renders the PDF.
github.com/rendercv/rendercv · your CV as a text file = AI can edit it per application

Rule #1: AI never invents.

Every claim traceable to something real.

“The taste and the truth stayed mine.”

AI for the meta-work, not just the writing

Researched all 17+ program mentors, with sourcesand honestly scored fit — flagging the bad “prestige” picks
Caught a hidden 2,000-character form limitbefore it silently truncated my essay
Pulled my live traction numbers into the CVstraight from my website's data
One more thing

Your laptop is
an AI machine.

The Tensor cores that run DLSS
also run LLMs.

1,824

AI TOPS in an RTX 5090 laptop GPU. Gaming machine = AI workstation.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series laptop announcement, 2025
Why run AI locally?
ChatGPT Plus, 1 yearRM 1,200
Local models on your RTX — unlimited, private, offlineRM 0

Buy the laptop once. The intelligence is free forever.

ChatGPT Plus RM99.90/month in Malaysia (OpenAI, 2025) · budget option: ChatGPT Go RM24/month
Open source caught up · last week

Kimi K3 — open weights, frontier-class.

Kimi K3 · open source1,679
Claude Fable 5 · closed1,631
GPT-5.6 Sol · closed1,618

#1 on Frontend Code Arena · ahead of Opus 4.8 overall · and its smaller open siblings run on your laptop →

Frontend Code Arena scores · Moonshot AI Kimi K3, released 16 July 2026 · Tom's Hardware / VentureBeat
The machine · Acer Predator Helios
FROM RM7,299
Helios Neo 16
RTX 5070 · 8GB VRAM
STEP UP
Neo 16S AI
RTX 5070 Ti · 12GB VRAM
FLAGSHIP
Helios 18 AI
up to RTX 5090 · 24GB VRAM

The VRAM decides which models you can run — see the next chart.

Acer Malaysia 2026 lineup · The Star, May 2026 · match VRAM → models on the next slides
What can YOUR laptop run?
RTX 4050 · 6GB
Acer Nitro V ~RM3.9K
6GB
Llama 3.2 3B · Gemma 3 4Beveryday chat + drafting
RTX 5060 · 8GB
Acer Nitro V16S ~RM5.4K
8GB
Llama 3.1 8B · Qwen3 8B~40–60 tokens/sec — faster than you can read
Q4 quantization via Ollama/LM Studio · speeds: RTX 4060-class benchmarks, Databasemart 2025
Going bigger
RTX 5070 Ti · 12GB
Predator Helios Neo 16S
12GB
Qwen3 14B · Phi-4serious reasoning
RTX 5080 · 16GB
Predator Helios 18 AI
16GB
GPT-OSS 20B · Mistral Small 24BOpenAI's open model, on your lap
RTX 5090 · 24GB
Predator Helios 18 AI (top)
24GB
Gemma 3 27B · Qwen3 32Bfrontier-class, fully offline
Q4 quantization · VRAM fits per LocalLLM/Ollama guides, 2025

Start tonight. One download.

AnythingLLM — all-in-one local AI app

AnythingLLM — free · open source · NVIDIA-accelerated on RTX
1 install  →  2 pick a model that fits your VRAM  →  3 chat with your own files, privately

A free Copilot,
on your own GPU.

VS Code + Continue or Cline + Qwen2.5-Coder via Ollama.
Unlimited code completions. RM0/month.

Your IC. Your transcripts.
Your drafts.

They never leave your laptop.

NVIDIA ChatRTX: chat with your own files, 100% on-device. Works offline — even in kampung Wi-Fi.

Free unlimited image gen — remember my pixel me?

ComfyUI — local image generation

SDXL: ~8 s/image on an RTX 4060 laptop · Fooocus (one-click) · ComfyUI (full control)
Portfolio art · thumbnails · pixel characters — no credits, ever.

AI raises the floor.

Proof of work raises the ceiling.

Use AI to build more — not to fake more.

Do this, starting tonight
Vibe-code your portfolio site
gitresume your commits
Build a master CV record
Complete GitHub + LinkedIn
Publish what you learn
DM + referrals + real feedback
Snipe your top 3 companies
Run it all free on RTX

Everything from this talk. One link.

QR code to the AI Job Hunt Toolkit

All tools, links & the VRAM cheat-sheet — published as a Cleve note (yes, the blog thing from earlier 😉)

Connect with me
QR code to mfrashad.com

mfrashad.com · in/mfathyrashad · IG @rashadventure

DM me. I actually read them — Faw is proof. 😄

Now go build
something.

TAR UMT × ACER PREDATOR × NVIDIA · Terima kasih! 🚀
Appendix

Backup slides

📱 Live poll backup

Have you used AI in a job application?

🎯 PLACEHOLDER

Paste your Menti / Slido QR here
Reference · VRAM cheat-sheet (Q4 quant)
6 GB — Llama 3.2 3B · Qwen3 4B · Gemma 3 4B
8 GB — Llama 3.1 8B · Qwen3 8B · DeepSeek-R1-Distill 8B · Mistral 7B
12 GB — Qwen3 14B · Phi-4 14B · Gemma 3 12B
16 GB — GPT-OSS 20B · Mistral Small 24B
24 GB — Gemma 3 27B · Qwen3 32B · Qwen3-30B-A3B (fast MoE)
Extra ammo
29.3% used AI on their resume last year — nearly 2× the year beforeiHire State of Online Recruiting, 2025
65% of students use AI for cover letters, 64% for interview prepInside Higher Ed, Oct 2025
78% of hiring managers look at online portfolioshiring-manager surveys (indicative)
Median all-graduate salary RM4,521 vs fresh-grad ~RM3,000DOSM 2024 — experience compounds; start building it now
gitresume in 4 steps
1 · Paste repo URL
clones fully in-browser
→
2 · Filter your commits
by author + date range
→
3 · Generate
bullets cite the exact commits
→
4 · Verify → paste
claims ≠ measured outcomes
l4n1skyy.github.io
l4n1skyy.github.io — a student's simple site
mfrashad.com
mfrashad.com — mine, 8 years of iterations
Start simple. Iterate forever.