A practical guide for the lay (wonderful) person. Covers the fundamentals, example workflows, and the tips to get you up and running.
Cheat sheet, golden rules, and intermediate techniques like personas, chaining, and structured outputs.
Set up Claude with your context once — it remembers it every time you work on that topic.
Specialist tools for specific tasks — meeting prep, email drafting, onboarding plans, and more.
Real-world scenarios for recruiting, onboarding, comms, and performance — with prompts you can use today.
Fill in the blanks, get a ready-to-paste prompt. No guesswork, no blank page.
The essentials to get going — plus intermediate techniques that make Claude dramatically more useful.
An AI assistant that reads, writes, summarises, and helps you think — in plain English. No technical knowledge needed. Think of it as a fast, capable thinking partner. It's great at drafting, analysing, and structuring. Final judgement always stays with you.
These take 2 minutes to learn and dramatically improve output quality. Worth the read.
Tell Claude who to be — you'll get sharper, more targeted responses
Instead of just asking for an email, tell Claude to act as an experienced HR Business Partner or a direct manager who values clarity. This "role assignment" anchors the tone, expertise level, and framing of the output.
"Act as an experienced HR Business Partner who specialises in difficult conversations. Help me prepare talking points for a performance conversation with someone who is technically strong but has been missing deadlines without flagging issues."
Works especially well for: performance conversations, sensitive announcements, policy review, and interview prep.
Break complex work into steps — each output feeds the next
For multi-part work, don't ask for everything at once. Build iteratively in the same chat — Claude holds the context between messages.
Step 1: "Here's the context for a new hire: [details]. Draft a welcome email from their manager."
Step 2: "Good. Now draft the team introduction Slack message their manager will post."
Step 3: "Now create a first-week checklist for the manager to follow."
Each step builds on what came before. Far better results than asking for everything in one go.
Request tables, frameworks, or specific formats — not just prose
Claude can produce structured content that's ready to use — comparison tables, decision frameworks, pros/cons lists, or formatted documents. Be explicit about what structure you want.
"Give me a comparison table: column 1 is the old policy, column 2 is the new policy, column 3 is what employees need to do differently."
"Lay this out as a simple framework: situation → recommended approach → what to avoid."
"Format this as a 30/60/90 plan: three columns for each phase, with goals, actions, and success metrics."
Have Claude read your work through someone else's eyes
A hugely underused technique. After drafting something, ask Claude to read it through the lens of your intended audience and flag issues — before you send it.
"Read this policy update as a junior employee who's already anxious about job security. What might worry them? What's unclear?"
"You're a new manager who's never given a performance review. Does this feedback template make sense? What would be confusing?"
"Read this offer letter as a candidate who got a competing offer. Does this feel compelling? What's missing?"
Give Claude your actual materials — it reads and reasons against them
Don't just describe a document — upload it. Claude can read PDFs, Word docs, and text files. Once uploaded (in a Project or a chat), you can ask it to summarise, cross-reference, rewrite, or compare against other documents.
"Here's our current parental leave policy [uploaded]. Rewrite it in plain English without changing any of the entitlements."
"I've uploaded two job descriptions. What are the key differences? Which role seems more senior?"
"Here are 10 performance reviews [uploaded]. Identify any patterns — are there recurring themes in development areas?"
Projects let Claude remember context across conversations — so you don't have to repeat yourself every time.
Click "New Project" from your sidebar on Claude.ai and give it a descriptive name.
Tell Claude who it's working with, the tone to use, and any standing rules it should follow.
Add your employee handbook, tone of voice guide, policy templates, org chart — anything Claude should be able to reference.
Every conversation inside this project starts with your context loaded. No more copy-pasting background every time.
Upload your onboarding guide, FAQs, and first-week checklist. Draft personalised welcome emails, role-specific day-one plans, and manager prep checklists.
Add your tone of voice guide and recent announcements. Get on-brand drafts for all-hands notes, manager updates, and sensitive internal communications.
Add your existing policy library. Draft new policies, rewrite existing ones in plain English, and check for consistency and gaps across documents.
Upload your JD templates, interview frameworks, and company values. Draft JDs, prep interview questions, and create candidate communication templates.
Upload your management principles and competency framework. Managers use it for coaching prep, script writing, review drafts — HR BP support at any hour.
Track competitor org changes, executive moves, and hiring trends in your focus sectors. Useful intel for portfolio companies building out leadership teams.
These projects run on a schedule — daily, weekly, or monthly — and deliver a summary without you having to ask. Set them up once and they just work.
Every morning, pulls your calendar, flags external meetings, and surfaces anything relevant from email. You wake up briefed and ready.
Every Friday, summarises open roles, recent applications, and where each req stands. One clean summary — no chasing hiring managers for updates.
First of the month, auto-generates a headcount update, attrition flags, and key hires — formatted and ready to drop into a board update or leadership Slack.
Skills are pre-built specialist tools — they give Claude deep capability for a specific type of task. No setup needed on your end; just know how to trigger them.
"Give me a full brief for today — pull my calendar, flag any external contacts I should know about, and surface anything in my email I might need before my calls."
What you get back: a structured rundown of your day — internal vs. external meetings, company context on external attendees, any follow-ups or emails surfaced from your inbox. Most useful as a morning ritual.
Check-in: "Draft a check-in email to the Head of People at [portfolio company]. We met 3 weeks ago and I want to see how their hiring freeze is landing with the team. Warm and brief."
Saying no: "I need to decline a speaking request for a panel I just don't have bandwidth for. Polite, firm, leave the door open."
Follow-up: "I had a call with a CHRO candidate last week. Draft a follow-up asking if they've made any decisions and reiterating our interest. Keep it short."
"Prep me for my intro call with the VP People at Acme Corp. They're a Series B cybersecurity company. I want to understand their headcount, any recent news, and come in with good questions about their people strategy."
"Brief me on [Name], the new CHRO at [portfolio company]. What's their background? What should I know before our first conversation?"
What you get back: company overview, key recent news, person's background, suggested questions, and watch-outs for the conversation.
"Create an onboarding plan for Alex, joining as Senior Engineer on May 1st. Manager is Sarah Chen. I'll paste the JD below — use it to build out relevant 30/60/90 goals and a manager checklist. [paste JD]"
What you get back: a shareable HTML page with 30/60/90 plan, quick-start checklist, manager tasks, and key resources — all branded and ready to send.
"Find a 30-minute slot next week where me, jsmith@company.com, and kdavis@company.com are all free. ET preferred, avoid early mornings."
"Create a slide deck summarising our Q2 people metrics — headcount, attrition, open roles, and key hires. Audience is the board. Keep it tight: 5–6 slides max, data-forward, on-brand."
"Build a Word document outlining our new performance review process for managers. Include: overview, timeline, how to write good feedback, and FAQs. Use our standard doc formatting."
What you get back: a properly formatted, downloadable .pptx or .docx file — not just a text outline. Ready to present or share.
"Write a manager talk track for an expectation setting conversation. The employee has been missing deadlines and the manager has already had two informal conversations. Include: how to open, what to name directly, expected reactions and how to respond, and how to close."
"A manager needs to tell a high performer they're not getting promoted this cycle due to headcount freeze — not performance. Draft a script that's honest, empathetic, and keeps the person motivated."
Particularly useful to send to managers before a difficult conversation — gives them structure and confidence without requiring an HR BP in the room.
"Write a job description for a Senior People Business Partner at a 300-person Series C SaaS company. They'll support the GTM org, own the full HRBP remit, and report to the VP People. We're direct, low-ego, and move fast. Make the JD compelling — not a laundry list. Include: the role, what you'll do, what success looks like in year one, and what we're looking for."
"Here's our current Head of Talent JD [paste]. Rewrite it — less corporate, more honest about what the job actually is. Keep the requirements but make it sound like a real company wrote it."
"Here are exit interview notes from 12 employees who left in Q1 [paste or upload]. Analyse them for: (1) top 3 themes by frequency, (2) any patterns by department or tenure, (3) specific quotes worth flagging to leadership, and (4) anything that looks like a systemic risk."
"Summarise these exit survey results into a 1-page report I can share with the leadership team. Lead with what's actionable, not just what's interesting."
Works best with structured notes or survey responses. The more consistent your input format, the sharper the pattern recognition.
Four common HR workflows — with before/after breakdowns and prompts you can use today.
Here are some ideas to spark inspiration and for you to build towards — each one shows the full workflow, not just the prompt.
Starting every JD from scratch. Reusing the same five interview questions for every role. Spending 30 minutes on a rejection email that still sounds generic. Inconsistent candidate experience. Debrief notes scattered across emails. Offer letters buried in last year's Google Drive.
"Write a job description for a Forward Deployed Engineer at a 120-person Series B AI infrastructure company. This role sits at the intersection of engineering and customer success — they embed with enterprise customers, understand their technical environment, and build solutions that make the product work in the real world. We want someone who's technically strong but thrives in ambiguity and customer-facing settings. Make it compelling but not corporate — not a laundry list. Include: the role, what success looks like in year one, and what we're looking for in the person."
"Write a short, personalised LinkedIn message to a passive candidate for a Senior People Partner role. They've been at their current company 4 years, their background is in HRBP work at a mid-size tech company. No fluff — just a real, specific reason to consider this. The company is an AI infrastructure startup, 80 people, growing fast. Keep it under 100 words."
"Build a full interview guide for a Senior Recruiter role. We're assessing: sourcing creativity, stakeholder partnership, data-driven decision making, and operating with urgency. Format: one section per competency with 2 behavioural questions each, a recommended follow-up probe, and a brief 'strong answer looks like' note. Assume interviewers are hiring managers, not HR."
"I have a debrief in 20 minutes. Here are the interviewer notes from 4 rounds: [paste notes]. Summarise the key themes — what everyone agreed on, where there were splits, and what questions are still open. Flag any red flags or things worth probing in the debrief itself. Don't editorialize — just synthesise what's there."
"Draft an offer letter for a candidate named Alex joining as Director of Talent Acquisition. Start date: May 12. Base: $185k. Bonus: 15% target. 4-week notice period. They've been negotiating so keep the tone warm but clear — no wiggle room language. Use our standard template format."
"A candidate we want to hire has come back with a counter — they've been given a competing offer $20k higher. We can't match on base but we can move on equity and title. Draft talking points for the call: acknowledge, reframe our value prop, present what we can offer, and close. Don't be defensive. Keep it conversational."
"Draft a rejection for a candidate who made final round for Head of Talent but wasn't selected. It was a close call — they were genuinely strong. Tone: warm, specific (not generic), acknowledges how far they got, and genuinely leaves the door open for future roles. Avoid anything that sounds like copy-paste."
Chasing managers to complete pre-start tasks. Generic welcome emails that don't reflect the role. No one's told the buddy what to do. IT isn't ready. The new hire arrives and the team is surprised to see them.
"Draft a pre-start brief for the hiring manager of a new Senior Engineer (Alex, starting Monday). Include: what to do before Alex arrives, what to cover in the day-one 1:1, how to set expectations in the first week, and what not to overwhelm them with. Tone: practical, not corporate."
"Write a briefing note to send to Alex's onboarding buddy. Explain their role, what we're asking of them in the first 30 days (informal check-ins, cultural context, answering the questions people don't want to ask HR), and what good buddy support looks like. Keep it friendly and short — they're doing us a favour."
"Draft a short team announcement for Slack: Alex is joining the engineering team as a Senior Engineer on Monday. Based in NYC. Include a couple of lines about their background (I'll fill in the details), a warm welcome, and a nudge for the team to introduce themselves. Tone: human, not HR-speak."
"Draft a welcome email to Alex from their manager ahead of their first day. Cover: what to expect on day one, who they'll meet, practical logistics (where to go, what to bring), and something genuine about why we're excited they're joining. Warm but not over the top."
"New Senior Engineer starting Monday — Alex, NYC, reports to the CTO. Draft the full pre-start pack: (1) manager brief, (2) buddy note, (3) welcome email to Alex, (4) pre-start checklist split by owner — IT, HR, manager, buddy. Flag anything that needs to happen more than a week out."
"Create an onboarding plan for Alex, joining as Senior Engineer on May 1st. Manager is Sarah Chen. I'll paste the JD below — use it to build role-specific 30/60/90 goals and a manager checklist. [paste JD]"
"Create a 30/60/90 for Alex, joining as Senior Engineer at a 120-person AI infrastructure company. Frame each phase: what to learn, who to meet, what to ship. Include 3 measurable success metrics at 90 days."
Blank page paralysis on sensitive announcements, inconsistent tone across senders, 45 minutes to write a 3-paragraph email, worrying about how it'll land.
"Draft an all-staff email: we're moving from 2 to 3 days in-office from September. Tone: warm but clear — acknowledge it's a change, explain the why simply, tell people what to do. Two versions: 300 words with full context, 100 words for Slack."
"We're announcing a new Chief Revenue Officer joining next month. Draft a full comms suite: (1) a company-wide email from the CEO — start with why we hired for this role now, what it signals about where we're going, then introduce the person and what they bring; (2) a shorter Slack version under 100 words; (3) talking points for managers to use with their teams. Tone: energising, not corporate. Make the 'why now' the lead."
"Here's our draft announcement about moving from unlimited to 20-day PTO. [paste draft] Read this as a skeptical employee who liked the old policy. What concerns will come up? What's unclear? What would make it land better?"
Vague or harsh manager feedback, dreaded blank review forms, inconsistent quality across the org, 3 hours on a write-up that should take 45 minutes.
"Writing a mid-year review for a Senior PM. Strengths: strong execution, ships on time, great cross-functional relationships. Gap: still operates too tactically for their seniority — struggles with strategic thinking. Write 200 words of balanced feedback: acknowledge strengths, name the gap directly, propose a concrete development path."
"I'm an HR BP prepping a manager for a performance conversation. Employee has underperformed for 3 months. Manager avoids conflict and softens too much. Draft talking points: direct but not harsh, acknowledge positives, name the issue clearly, explain what changes by when. Flag what not to say."
"Help me prepare talking points for an expectation-setting conversation with a manager who's been unclear with their team on priorities and ways of working. I want to name the pattern directly, set clear expectations going forward, and make sure they leave the conversation knowing what good looks like — not just what's not working. Tone: direct but supportive."
Not sure how to phrase your ask? Fill in the fields below and get a ready-to-paste prompt.
💡 Tip: paste this into Claude, then iterate in the same conversation. "Make it shorter", "add a section on X", "less formal" all work well as follow-ups.
Copy, fill in the brackets, and go. These are the high-leverage prompts worth having in your back pocket.
Claude is your home base — but it's not the only tool worth knowing. These are genuinely accessible without a deep technical background and pair well with everything you've learned here.
Build dynamic web apps and internal tools with no coding experience. Describe what you want and Replit's AI builds it. Great for HR dashboards, custom onboarding portals, or lightweight tools your team actually uses.
Build a custom AI assistant for a specific task — an interview prep bot, a policy Q&A tool, or an onboarding guide people can chat with. Set up once, share a link. No code required.
AI-generated presentations that actually look good. Paste in your content or a prompt and Gamma builds a polished deck — better than a blank slide every time. Great for team decks, company updates, and training materials.
AI image generation that's fast and approachable. Create visuals for internal comms, culture docs, team pages, or presentations without needing a designer. Describe what you want, get something usable in seconds.
An AI-powered code editor that lets you build and work with data using plain English — no coding background required. If you've ever wanted to analyse a CSV of employee data, build a custom HRIS report, or create a lightweight internal tool without waiting on engineering, Cursor is worth exploring. You describe what you want, it writes the code, you review and run it. The learning curve is steeper than the other tools here, but the ceiling is much higher — especially for anything data-heavy.