From Skeptic to Believer: How Simplify Simplified My Job Search

Fundraising is heating up again, but jobs still feel cold. Anyone else notice that? Over the last few months, I’ve seen a flurry of fundraising announcements. Reminds me of 2019/2020. That’s exciting… but I’m also hearing from a lot of people about how difficult it feels to enter the job market right now. These are weird times: a market full of optimism for capital but uncertainty for candidates. And in moments like this, differentiation matters more than ever. One of the clearest ways candidates can stand out? Having a sharp, thoughtful AI story. Across nearly every job function, interviewers are starting to look for signals that you understand how this technology is reshaping work. Whether you’re in sales, operations, design, or engineering. If I were interviewing today, here are the kinds of questions I’d expect (and ask): - What AI tools do you actually use today, and how? - What have you learned about how models have evolved over the last year? - How has your role already changed because of AI? What excites you and what scares you? - How might AI reshape the industry you’re applying into over the next few years? How has it already started? - Do you understand the fundamentals? (e.g., What does GPT stand for? What is a transformer? What is an LLM?) You don’t need to be a technical expert. But you do need to show you’re thinking critically, learning continuously, and capable of applying first-principles reasoning to a world that’s moving quickly. The companies getting funded today are betting on that future. The candidates who can confidently tell their AI story will be the ones who get hired to build that future. 👉 Curious--> if you’re hiring right now, what AI-related questions are you asking candidates?

People have been asking me, “What’s next for you?” Whenever I’ve had time or space, I’ve ended up building something. I’ve shared bits of that before, and it seems that’s just where my mind naturally goes. Before I start my new role next week, I’ve decided to start something new. It's called 'Learning Out Loud.' The plan is for this series to serve as my public lab for experiments in learning AI, hiring (with continuous improvement), and building things from scratch. I like the idea of a series on various topics as it means I'm not wedded to just one thing. Which, if you know me, I struggle with. The first project in that lab is TA Unboxed: an open-source platform for Talent Acquisition (TA) knowledge and resources. Your central hub for articles, news, tech and whatever people think they need. TA Unboxed will be a place to test new workflows, create a database of the best TA articles, surface better ways to hire, and understand how we navigate AI in this new era. Alongside that, in Learning Out Loud, I’ll also be: 📌 Reshaping the Get Hired Toolkit into a simpler, sharper product. 📌 Working on co-building a new 'Thinking' model that I use every day. 📌 Building out Notion + AI automations to see how far they can take us. 📌 Sharing the process each week, what works, what breaks, and what I learn. None of this is pre-planned. That’s the point. It’s building in public, in real time and sharing my learning along the way. 👉 If you want to follow along, I’ll share updates here and through a short weekly newsletter. Which newsletter? That's a good question. Maybe that's the first post. Does anyone have any recommendations? LinkedIn, BeeHive, Substack, Kit?

🚀 Hiring is changing faster than résumés can keep up LinkedIn just expanded its AI stack to build agent-style assistants—think “recruiter copilots” that draft role briefs, screen signals, and schedule outreach while humans focus on judgment calls. ✨ Last year’s Hiring Assistant trials are graduating from pilot to platform thinking. 👉 Translation: less inbox ping-pong, more qualified conversations. 🔑 What shifts for teams ✅ From tasks to outcomes: AI handles the busywork; recruiters double down on candidate experience and decision quality. ✅ Signal over keywords: Agents synthesize portfolios, recency of skills, and network credibility—résumé keyword bingo loses power. ✅ Measurable loops: Time-to-first-touch, interview conversion, and acceptance rates get monitored like product metrics. 😅 Reality check (and a smile) No, AI won’t tell if someone “has good vibes”—but it will stop 12 back-and-forth emails just to book a slot. ❓ If an AI agent removed 30% of hiring friction, where would that time go—👉 sourcing, 👉 stakeholder alignment, or 👉 candidate coaching? #Recruiting #TalentAcquisition #AIinHR #AgenticAI #FutureOfWork #LinkedInAI

LinkedIn Instead of flooding our timelines with more AI generated dribble. Why don't you look at fixing your broken Job Application process? I'll make it easy for you - here's how you do it: Implement a Job Application Credits system 1) X credits per person - People will focus their applications just to roles they qualify for, instead of every vacancy on the platform with one common keyword. 2) Credits are refunded to the candidate each month or once their application has been responded to. Creates mutual accountability and is easily managed by LinkedIn if recruiters frequently aren't responding. This would reduce stress on talent teams. Gives them the chance to focus on 100 applicants per role, instead of 4000, which is impossible. Creates a better user experience for everybody - companies are less encumbered with thousands of applications - candidates get more actual responses and feedback from applications. We don't need more AI generated content for clicks and interactions. We need to fix the broken system that is losing it's personality and relationship qualities to AI filtering. This platform is now a huge part of the problem. It is also more than capable of being a huge part of the solution. What will you do about it? #recruitment #applicationprocess #AI

Real words from ApplyAll: "Play the numbers game and win." - "Game the application process." - "Accelerate your job search without pouring time and effort into the application process." Here's what they don't say... When everyone uses AI to send 500 applications, the average just went from 500 applications per interview to 5,000. Then 50,000... and they all end up looking very similar. Today, I was speaking with a former colleague (she inspired this post)—a smart, experienced professional looking for work. She told me she HAS to use these tools now. Not because she wants to game the system. But because if she doesn't, her thoughtful applications get buried under the avalanche of AI-generated applications. When you build AI on top of a broken system, you just scale what wasn't working. We're running recruitment like industrial-era assembly lines—assessing humans en masse like products to be assembled. Then we slap AI on top and wonder why everything gets worse. Companies use AI to screen. Candidates use AI to apply. It becomes keyword matching versus keyword optimization. Complete homogeneity. less signal. lots of noise. The result? We're training candidates and recruiters to NOT invest time and effort. We're creating a generation that sees job hunting as a numbers game instead of finding meaningful work. Even companies trying to do discovery-led hiring can't get candidates' attention because everyone's been trained to spray and pray. Especially for start-ups or scaling companies, this is a major problem... when you're growing from 50 to 200 people, you need every hire to multiply your team's capability. You can't afford the failure rate that comes from this broken system. But you're forced to compete in a game designed for volume, not value. The solution isn't more AI or faster processing. It's fundamentally rethinking how we match humans to work. (See my comment below for some ideas on "Discovery-Led Hiring" principles that could be a good place to start!) #TalentAcquisition #FutureOfWork #Hiring #TalentDensity

This Isn’t AI Panic — It’s Positioning Let’s be clear: AI isn’t taking everyone’s job. It’s just changing the criteria for who gets hired. The old resume isn’t enough. The old way of showing up online isn’t enough. The old way of waiting for a recruiter to “find you” definitely isn’t enough. The future isn’t about being the best. It’s about being the most clearly positioned. Ask yourself: - Can people tell what problem you solve in 3 seconds? - Are you showing up in the spaces your next opportunity lives? - Would a hiring manager know why you’re worth more than a plug-in? This isn’t about panic. It’s about proactive positioning. Because the people winning right now aren’t necessarily better than you. They’re just more obvious about why they matter.

AI and the Job Search: A Surprising Side Effect An interesting side effect of AI is that it’s actually making it harder for many people to land a job. How so? AI tools have made it incredibly easy to tailor a resume to match any job posting—sometimes in minutes. As a result, more people are applying for more jobs, including positions they may not truly be qualified for. On top of that, some candidates are now using AI-driven bots to automatically apply for roles as soon as they’re posted—if they meet even the minimum criteria. So what happens next? Imagine a recruiter posts a job and receives 1,600 applications. If they have a week to choose candidates, that’s 168 hours—meaning they’d need to review about 9.5 applicants per hour nonstop. In a typical 40-hour workweek, that jumps to 40 applicants per hour—just 90 seconds per resume, assuming they do nothing else all week. The result? Many qualified candidates never even have their resumes seen. From the employer’s side, it’s overwhelming—a flood of unqualified applicants makes it harder to find the right person. These are growing pains of AI in the hiring process, and things will improve over time. As for me, I’m adapting. Since around 80% of jobs are filled through personal connections, I focus on opportunities where I know someone at the company. It’s not a silver bullet, but it helps open doors. I also search in less crowded spaces—like company websites directly—while continuing to build my own business and meet new potential customers. Ever onward! #AI #LearnAndGrowDaily #EverOnward!

With Easy Apply, 1-Click Apply, and other one-click tools, over 50% of candidates don’t fully read the job description before applying. 💡 The opportunity? High application volume isn’t just noise — it’s a gold mine. Semi-passive, currently employed candidates are raising their hands, too. Instead of spending big on sourcing or branding, you can engage the talent that’s already inbound. ✨ Enter AI agents: +Chat with applicants in real time. +Share what makes your company great. +Answer questions instantly. Ask them relevant questions. Even if a candidate isn’t a fit today, they learn about your company. Tomorrow, when the right role opens, you have a warm, engaged talent pool ready to reach out to. Employer branding + better candidate experience = smarter talent pipelines, with less spend. #attestoai #futureofwork

We've built a $10 billion lie detector that nobody trusts. Recruiters feed resumes to AI. Candidates feed AI-written resumes back. We're not hiring humans anymore—we're running a Turing test where everyone loses. Here's what nobody wants to admit: The "AI revolution" in hiring has become a theatrical performance. Candidates pay ChatGPT to write fiction. Recruiters pay different AI to detect that fiction. Meanwhile, the actually talented developer who can't keyword-stuff, or the brilliant marketer who doesn't fit the template? Ghost-rejected in 0.3 seconds. The numbers should terrify us: - 99% of Fortune 500 companies filter you through AI - 74% of candidates admit they don't trust it Yet we keep pretending this is "efficiency" I watched a friend—10 years experience, stellar track record—get auto-rejected from 47 companies. The 48th? They skipped the AI, talked to him, hired him on the spot. He's now their top performer. This isn't disruption. It's dystopia. At Talentiply, we flipped the script. No keyword gymnastics. Just conversation. Our AI doesn't hunt for buzzwords—it uncovers stories. That time you salvaged a failing project? The creative solution you found at 2am? The leadership moment nobody saw? That's what actually predicts success. We're not anti-AI. We're anti-bullsh*t. Here's my challenge to every recruiter and HR leader reading this: Name ONE transformational hire your ATS found that a human wouldn't have. I'll wait. Because I can name dozens of incredible people your system rejected for missing the word "synergy." Time to choose: Do we want hiring that's 10x faster? Or hiring that's 10x better? Drop your horror stories below. Or defend the status quo. Either way, let's have the conversation this industry desperately needs. talentiply.app #FutureOfWork #TalentAcquisition #RecruitmentRevolution #HiringCrisis #PeopleFirst