Most of what I do happens in conversations. I speak with clients and candidates literally every day, along with careers teams and hiring managers. And like anyone, I have thoughts I keep to myself, because they’d come out wrong in the moment or start an argument nobody has time for.
This isn’t me having a go at anyone. It’s me asking all of us to take a second.
“I got rejected by AI”
Maybe you did. But someone sat down and decided what that AI should look for. A person wrote the criteria, set the knockout questions and chose what counted as a match. If your application didn’t meet those criteria, there’s a good chance the same person would have passed on it reading it themselves.
The AI didn’t invent a reason to say no. It applied the reasons a human gave it, just faster. I’ve written more about this in “AI isn’t why you didn’t get the job”.
“AI is taking all the jobs”
More jobs are being made redundant because of AI, and I’m not going to pretend that isn’t true. But look at the two big ones everyone is talking about.
NAB has announced up to 2,500 roles will go by the end of its 2027 financial year, mostly in corporate functions and senior management. Its announcement talks about duplication, speed and “rapid technological change”. It doesn’t mention AI at all.
CBA has cut hundreds of roles this year, and AI and automation are part of the story. But the Finance Sector Union says some of those same roles are being advertised through CBA India, which almost doubled in size between 2022 and 2024, to more than 5,600 staff. CBA says the two aren’t connected. But in one earlier round of cuts, after the union took it to the Fair Work Commission, CBA admitted two of the roles it had cut had been moved to India. Either way, it’s a conversation almost nobody is having.
AI makes a better headline than offshoring. But if we only talk about one, we misunderstand what’s actually happening to jobs, and we give people the wrong advice about how to protect their careers.
The AI job search experts
There’s a lot of advice out there right now about how AI has changed job searching. Some of it is excellent. But understanding the technology and supporting a real person through a job search are two different skills. The second one means watching someone lose confidence after the fifth rejection, helping them rework an application at 10pm, and prepping them for an interview they’re terrified of.
When you’re taking advice, it’s worth knowing which of those skills the person giving it has.
Who are graduates listening to?
Graduates and school leavers are making some of the biggest decisions of their lives on advice from people who don’t know how the market works.
I’m not saying those people aren’t qualified. Most of them absolutely are, in their own field. What I mean is market knowledge: how hiring decisions actually get made, what employers want to hear and what they’re really looking for. A qualification in careers or education doesn’t automatically give you that. Sitting in on hiring decisions every week does.
Before you take advice, ask where it comes from. How recently has this person been close to a real hiring decision?
“I’ve applied for so many jobs and got nothing”
I hear this every week, and I don’t doubt it. The market is hard right now. There are fewer roles and more applicants for each one. Is there bias in hiring? Yes. Some of it is unconscious.
But after acknowledging all of that, I still want to ask: what are you doing in your job search? Are you tailoring each application, or sending the same one everywhere? Are you talking to people, or only clicking apply? Whose advice are you following, and is it working? If it isn’t, it might be time to change the advice, not just the number of applications.
Being between roles isn’t a failure. I’ve been made redundant twice. It happens to good people all the time. But you can’t control the market. You can control how you navigate it.
“They’re ageist”
Maybe they are. Maybe they aren’t. Age bias exists, and I’ve seen it. But when a candidate is told no and the explanation becomes “they’re ageist”, the conversation stops there, and nobody asks the next question.
Is it because the team is on the younger side, and the hiring manager is worried about how someone more experienced would fit in? Is it because they’ve hired someone more senior into a junior role before and it didn’t work out, and they’re still carrying that? Is it because the role genuinely won’t stretch someone with twenty years behind them, and they’re worried you’ll be bored and gone within a year?
None of those makes the decision right. But each one is a different problem, with a different answer. You can’t address a concern nobody has named.
The same goes for every blanket statement I hear. “AI is taking all the jobs.” “You’ll be made redundant soon because of AI.” “They’re ageist.” Do those comments actually help anyone? They feel like answers, but they shut the conversation down before it starts.
We need to ask more questions, not make more assumptions.
The green banner
The green “Open to work” banner on your LinkedIn profile is a personal choice, and I’m not telling anyone to take theirs down. But be aware of what it does and doesn’t do. It tells people you’re looking. It doesn’t tell them what you’re looking for, or why they should call you.
The people I end up calling usually aren’t the ones relying on the banner. They’ve reached out, had the conversation, asked for the introduction. The banner can sit alongside that work. It can’t replace it.
Careers isn’t employability
Careers support helps people choose a direction, write a resume and apply. That matters. But employability is something else: understanding what employers are actually weighing up, how hiring decisions get made, and what it takes to start a job, settle in and keep it.
We use the two words as if they mean the same thing. They don’t. A student can have a polished resume and a career plan and still have no idea what happens on the other side of the desk.
Bagging recruiters on LinkedIn
Recruiters are an easy target, and some of the criticism is earned. Ghosting, vague feedback, roles that disappear. I’ve been frustrated by my own industry plenty of times.
But a lot of the people writing those posts will, at some point, want work through a recruiter. It’s worth remembering what that involves. When we put someone forward, our reputation goes with them. Clients ask us who we’d back, and that’s a judgement we take seriously. How you talk about the people you’ll one day ask for help is worth a second thought.
So, take a second
None of these thoughts come from a bad place. I work with people who are job hunting every day, and I want them to land well. That’s exactly why I’d rather say this once, out loud, than keep nodding along.
Most of what frustrates me comes back to the same thing: we reach for the easy explanation. It was the AI. It was the recruiter. It’s the market. They’re ageist. Sometimes that’s true. But the easy explanation never tells you what to do next.
Before you blame the tool, bag the recruiter, follow the expert or settle on the assumption, take a second and ask one more question. That’s usually where the real answer is.