Some dotint.careers features are easy to spot. You upload a CV. You see vacancies. You click Help me apply.
Others are quieter.
They sit in Preferences (opens only if you already registered in dotint.careers), Applications (opens only if you already registered in dotint.careers), or the feedback box under a draft. They do not look dramatic, but they change how much the platform understands about your search and how useful its help becomes.
It is tempting to imagine dotint.careers as a matching oracle. The platform uses automation and AI, but its best results also depend on the signals you give it: what you want, what you do not want, how your profile is structured, which vacancies you actually decide to pursue, and what kind of application text feels right to you.
Here are five controls worth a five-minute tune-up.
1. Structured preferences
Preferences (opens only if you already registered in dotint.careers) are one of the most practical places to steer the system.
They help dotint.careers understand the kind of market you want to be considered for: organisation types, organisations you want to exclude, locations, salary minima, grade ranges, contract preferences and consultancies.
This is where firm boundaries belong.
If you do not want consultancies, say so. If a region is genuinely off the table, do not leave the platform guessing. If your target level has changed, update it. A strong profile can still produce noisy results if the search settings describe an old version of your career.
Location preferences are easiest to read as two lists. Leave "Include locations" empty if you are open to roles anywhere. Add countries there when you want to narrow the search to those countries. Use Exclude locations for places you do not want to see. Exclude wins over Include: if a country appears in both lists, or if a vacancy has several locations and one of them is excluded, that vacancy is treated as outside your preferences. Local recruitment and work-authorisation rules are checked separately, so choosing a country does not override the employer's eligibility rules.
Structured preferences are also stronger than vague notes. A dropdown or toggle is easier for the system to apply consistently than a paragraph that says, in human terms, "probably not this kind of role anymore."
That does not mean you should make the search impossibly narrow. Preferences are a steering wheel, not a wall. If your results feel too quiet, it may be time to loosen one setting. If they feel too broad, one honest exclusion can save you from a lot of useless reading.
2. The free-text preferences box
The free-text preferences box in Preferences (opens only if you already registered in dotint.careers) is for the things that do not fit neatly into structured controls.
Use it for nuance.
You might explain that you are open to a consultancy only if it is with a particular kind of organisation. You might say that you want roles with real management responsibility, or that you are trying to move from technical delivery into policy leadership. You might describe the kind of organisation where your network, recommendations, governance experience or regional background make a role strategically more realistic.
This text helps the platform interpret tradeoffs. It can also help features such as application drafting and vacancy prioritisation understand the direction behind your search.
But it should not carry the whole burden. If something is a hard rule and there is a structured preference for it, use the structured preference. The free-text box is best when it adds judgment, context and career direction.
A good note can be short:
I am looking for programme management or policy roles in climate, resilience or development finance. I prefer staff or longer-term contracts, but I would consider a consultancy if it is senior, strategic and with a major multilateral organisation. I am not interested in junior administrative roles.
That kind of note gives the system more to work with than a list of keywords.
3. The Applications workspace
Many candidates keep each vacancy in a slightly different place.
One place has the employer page. Another has a draft letter. Another has a CV version. Somewhere there is a note saying "maybe apply." Then the deadline comes closer and everything feels more urgent than it needed to.
The Applications workspace (opens only if you already registered in dotint.careers) is meant to reduce that chaos.
When you start from a vacancy and use Help me apply, the platform creates or reuses an application record in Applications (opens only if you already registered in dotint.careers). That record can keep the vacancy snapshot, your draft material, status, feedback and previous versions together.
You still apply on the employer's website. The Applications workspace gives you a working space before you submit.
Use statuses honestly. Mark something as in progress when you are working on it. Mark it skipped when you decide not to spend the time. Mark it applied after you submit externally. That small habit keeps your own pipeline cleaner and helps you avoid rethinking the same decision every time you open the app.
4. Feedback and regeneration in Help me apply
The first AI draft is rarely the final answer.
It should not be.
A useful application draft has to sound like you, reflect the vacancy, stay factually accurate and make sensible choices about emphasis. The system can start that work quickly, but it cannot know everything you would say after reading the draft.
That is why feedback and regeneration in Applications (opens only if you already registered in dotint.careers) matter.
If the draft is too formal, say so. If it overemphasises one job and underplays another, say that. If it misses a project, a donor, a region, a technical method or a management responsibility that should be central for this vacancy, tell it directly.
Specific feedback works better than general disappointment.
"Make it stronger" is hard to use.
"Put more emphasis on my work managing regional partners and less on the training workshop" is useful.
"The tone is too grand; make it more direct and practical" is useful.
"Do not claim I led the project. I coordinated the reporting work" is very useful.
Do not let AI write unattended. Use it to shorten the distance between a blank page and a draft you can responsibly edit.
5. Vacancy-specific CV recommendations
There are two different kinds of CV advice in dotint.careers.
Review my CV looks at your profile as a whole. You can run it from Your CV (opens only if you already registered in dotint.careers). It is the general health check: completeness, chronology, clarity, missing facts, undersold experience.
Vacancy-specific CV recommendations are narrower.
They ask a different question: for this particular vacancy, what should be clearer?
Maybe your profile contains the right evidence, but the most relevant part is buried. Maybe the vacancy asks for stakeholder coordination and your CV describes the project without naming the coordination work. Maybe your education is fine, but the field of study could be clearer. Maybe a language, duty station, methodology, budget size or management responsibility needs to be easier to see.
These suggestions are not automatically applied to your stored profile, and that is deliberate. A platform should not silently rewrite your career record. Treat them as suggestions for your own judgment.
For a serious application, this can be one of the most useful checks: not "is my CV good in general?", but "does my CV make the right evidence visible for this role?"
Other quiet controls are worth knowing too
Some useful features have already had their own articles, so they do not need a full retelling here.
If you have several Apply vacancies in Vacancies (opens only if you already registered in dotint.careers) and limited time, Prioritise vacancies can help you decide where to start. If you want to understand the market rather than one vacancy at a time, Hiring Pulse (opens only if you already registered in dotint.careers) and Your Reach (opens only if you already registered in dotint.careers) show broader signals about demand, barriers and what is currently within reach for your profile. Our article Something will always stand in the way explains how to read those signals without getting discouraged by them.
Notifications are also worth checking in Preferences (opens only if you already registered in dotint.careers). Vacancy alerts and platform-news emails are separate channels, and weekly alerts can still allow urgent deadline reminders.
Deadlines deserve a final mention. dotint.careers can help you notice them, but the employer page remains the authority. On the final day, always check the exact time, time zone and submission rules. Better yet: don't leave your application for the final day!
And behind all of this sits Your CV (opens only if you already registered in dotint.careers). If your CV, education, languages, nationality, work permits or employment dates are incomplete, the platform has less to work with. A small profile update can change the quality of later matching, screening and application support. Our article on formal eligibility screening explains why those details matter before a human reader ever reaches your strongest evidence.
Do one tune-up today
You do not need to optimise everything at once.
Change one structured preference that no longer reflects your search.
Improve one free-text note so it explains your direction better.
Open one application draft and give it specific feedback instead of accepting or discarding it too quickly.
Check one vacancy-specific CV recommendation before deciding whether a role is worth the effort.
Used this way, dotint.careers becomes a workspace you shape around your real search. A few careful updates today can move the next good opportunity a little closer to a win.