The job market is in transition, and the people telling you what to do are guessing. The game has not changed, it's still persuasion (saying what changed because you were there) and visibility (getting in front of the people who can actually move you forward). Stop running a one-woman marketing agency. Get clear on your impact, reconnect with the people who already know your name, and use Hiring Cafe and Google Jobs over LinkedIn Easy Apply and auto-apply bots.

What an absolutely wild job world we’re living in right now. My Millennial brain is baffled by the polarized experience that we had from a few years ago to now.

Remember when you would apply to like 8 jobs, get 4 or 5 interviews, make it to the final rounds for 2 or 3 of them, and then you’d decide which offer was best?

Those are our glory days, a simpler time without algorithms and 3,459 other applicants all fighting for the same job.

Fast forward to now, the bar keeps moving because no one actually knows where the bar is going right now.

Hiring is in the middle of a major transition that is still playing out. The systems and processes used to hire no longer meet the need, but we aren’t fully sure on what the future of hiring looks like.

Will resumes be replaced? Probably.

What will replace resumes? TBD.

ATS technology was designed for a world where a few hundred humans applied to a job.

Teal's research now puts the average at 750+ applications per job post and that includes the every growing mass of deep fake applicants (ugh).

And around 88% of qualified candidates get rejected before a human sees them. That means the hiring game odds are already stacked against you.

Recruiters cannot keep up. The algorithms cannot keep up. Job seekers cannot keep up.

So everyone is panicking in the same direction at the same time.

I mean, look at what people are actually doing right now.

Everyone is submitting AI-written applications they barely proofread, sliding into LinkedIn DMs hoping to bypass the line, or funneling AI-generated posts onto LinkedIn to manufacture visibility.

Everyone is downloading a new tool, a new tracker, a new "strategy” and even more people are trying to get your money by telling you they have the “secret” to it all.

But the game hasn’t changed at it’s core, it’s always been about two things:

1.       Persuasion. Are you saying something specific, sharp, and unmistakably yours?

2.      Audience connection. Are you writing and speaking for a real human who can move you forward?

I would venture to say that at least 90% of the thousands of resumes and LinkedIn profiles I see every year fall into the same category…

They’re about tactical responsibilities/activity and not about impact.

Activity sounds like this:

Impact sounds like this:

Same role. Same person. Two completely different resumes.

Run every bullet on your resume and every line of your LinkedIn About through one filter: what changed because I was there? So what? If the answer is not visible in the sentence, the sentence is not doing its job.

When you write to your impact you automatically personalize the story. It becomes less about some generic job description language and more about you as someone who doesn’t just do the work, you do it exceptionally well. In fact, you do it so well that you made mega impact when you did it in your last role.

Behind every offer letter is a person who decided to move you forward.

Most job seekers are pouring hours into “beating the ATS” (which, don’t even get me started on that…you can’t out AI or keyword pack in this market…) and almost none into the person who will ultimately make the decision.

Flip the ratio and start with the people who already know your name.

Make a list of 10 people who have worked with you, hired you, reported to you, or watched you do the job in the last decade. Not the fake LinkedIn connections from strangers you accepted to be polite, but the actual professional relationships. Then work through that list with intention:

Visibility is the right person seeing the right thing about you at the right time, and it gets built one human at a time.

But visibility also compounds over time. Don’t expect to send one or even fifty messages and get a life changing response. It needs repetition and consistency to build and reach the right audience.

Personal website, video intro, AI-generated post, voice memo intro, Loom walkthrough.

Every new tactic somebody is selling you is just a format. The question is whether the person you want to hire you actually pays attention to that format.

For most senior leaders, the answer is no. Most CEOs aren’t going to be interested in you sending a random voice memo intro (no offense, it’s not you, it’s the pace of work they maintain).

For creative or early-career roles, sometimes a portfolio or a video moves the needle, but a resume doesn’t hit as strongly.

The answer depends on your audience, not on some viral LinkedIn post that promises a hack to solve all your job seeking woes.

Instead of asking "what should I be doing?!”, try asking "what does the person I want to hire me actually pay attention to."

You already know how to do this. You did it when you got your last three jobs. You did it before LinkedIn or someone on Tiktok told you what you were supposed to be doing.

Go back to that version of yourself. She was not running a marketing agency, she was just being clear about what she does and making sure the right people heard her say it.

A 2026 cheat sheet for the sites and AI tools worth your time.**

One of the most common questions I get asked is “What job search sites should I use?” There are so many out there and I keep seeing more and more AI based search tools. Fortunately for you, I test all of them!

I’ve spent the last six months testing emerging job search engines and here are the ones worth your time (and the ones that aren’t)!

I’ve also been following the data on response rates against job sites. Huntr’s 2025 Annual Job Search Trends Report analyzed 1.7 million applications, 1 million job postings, 243k resumes, and a 1,049-respondent survey to identify what works.

This list is based on my research, testing, the data, and my aggregated experience across the 800+ people I’ve coached in this market.

Without further adieu…

Hiring Cafe is my love obsession. Built by ex-Meta and Stanford engineers, it scrapes tens of thousands of company career pages and links you directly to the employer's application.

No third-party recruiters, no Easy Apply black hole, no ghost listings.

The UI is clean, the filters work, and salary ranges are visible without scrolling. Free for candidates, no premium tier.

Use the filters to build your ideal search and save it to receive auto-digest emails of what you should apply for.

They just launched a new AI-search agent feature that builds your own custom agent and it’s wonderful. The agent is in charge of sourcing roles, ranking them against your criteria, and alerting you to what is worth your time.

Seriously, this is how job search should be. Not sponsored, I’m a genuine advocate!

Google Jobs still outperforms most of the platforms charging for the privilege. They maintain an 11% response rate according to data analyzing 600k applications, which is roughly three times what LinkedIn delivers on cold apply.

Open up Google and click on the “jobs” tab at the top to start your search.

LinkedIn is still indispensable, but the quick apply button is the worst thing on it. Seriously, the easy apply button just sends your name and profile to the job poster… which means it goes straight into the blackhole.

Indeed still owns volume in the US, and response rates of 20-25% in industries like healthcare, education, and operations beat LinkedIn on raw conversion. Less impressive interface, lots of spam/fake posts, so beware.

Best for mid-level searches and operations-heavy industries. Skip it for executive or senior level roles.

Niche boards:

Auto-apply bots are the worst thing on the market right now. Sonara, AutoApply.Jobs, LazyApply, and the rest of the "we will apply to 500 jobs while you sleep" category have a documented response rate of around 0.24%.

Worse than the response rate: these bots flood employers with generic applications, frequently violate the terms of service of the platforms they apply through, and feed your resume and contact information into systems that scammers actively scrape.

The juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

Deepfake recruiters are the new normal. Job scam losses in the US hit $513M and AI has supercharged the polish on fake recruiters, fake offer letters, and deepfake video interviews. Two rules will keep you safe:

The tools are not the strategy. The strategy is persuasion and visibility, and the tools are only useful when they serve those two things.

**The best strategy is always to apply directly on the company’s career page, whenever possible. I like the listed boards because they either take you directly to the company’s career page or give you the listing so you can apply directly with the company.

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